Jessie Kesson – författare

In the summer of 1944, three Italian prisoners of war are billeted in a remote village in the north-east of Scotland. For most of the locals, their arrival is of little interest, hardly distrubing the quiet routines of their isolated crofting community. But for the young farm-worker’s wife who has to look after them, the Italians bring with them a tantalising glimpse of another, more exotic world, reawakening dreams of a future removed from the harsh realities of crofting life.A moving portrayal of the tragic consequences of a clash of cultures, Another Time, Another Place is a haunting tale of love and war from one of Scotland’s finest authors.

Collection of short stories which draw heavily upon Jessie Kesson's own experiences of growing up in a small town in Scotland. The title story, Where the Apple Ripens, is the story of Isabel Emslie, a young girl facing up to her last day at school and an uncertain future in service in the town. On the very threshold of womanhood, Isabel's overwhelming zest for life and desire for new experiences leads her to the door of the local Lothario. An intense, highly charged view of rural Scotland, where sensuality wars against Calvinistic repression, this novella is one of Jessie Kesson's finest achievements.

This miscellany of Jessie Kesson's writings brings together a variety of her work in different genres, all focusing on childhood and adolescence.

Jessie Kesson is best known for her loosely autobiographical novel The White Bird Passes, first published in 1958. It tells the story of a sensitive child in an Elgin slum, and her later banishment to an Aberdeenshire orphanage. She also published Glitter of Mica, Where the Apple Ripens and Another Time, Another Place, which was made into an award-winning film by Michael Radford. She was a writer of radio plays for the BBC for many years, and Stewart Conn has described her as 'one of the finest of for-radio writers'. She died in 1994, aged 78. Since then, Isobel Murray has edited a selection of her poems, plays and stories, Somewhere Beyond, and written a biography, Jessie Kesson: Writing Her Life. It was published in 2000, and was awarded a prize from the National Library of Scotland, as Research Book of the Year. Kesson and her husband were farm workers in North East Scotland from 1939 to 1951, and this volume contains work from this period, illustrating her abiding love of nature and immersion in the changing seasons. 'I carry climates within me', she said, and 'woods are my territory'.Her writing career was established in 1946 when she was commissioned to contribute twelve monthly articles on 'A Country Dweller's Year' for The Scots Magazine: 'I'm a real writer now'.

In the parish of Caldwell, in the heart of rural Aberdeenshire, life goes on much as it always has done for those who work on the land. Isolated and inward looking, it is a place where no one challenges the way things have always been, and everyone knows exactly where they stand in the local hierarchy.But up at Darklands farm change is in the air. Helen Riddel, daughter of the head dairyman, has been to university and seen what the outside world has to offer. Now she must choose between family ties and the chance of a new life away from the narrow confines of Caldwell.An unforgettable portrait of a world that has now vanished forever, Glitter of Mica is a moving evocation of a close-knit rural community in the first half of the 20th century.'One of the literary treasures of modern Scotland.' – WILLIAM DONALDSON'Jessie Kesson writes beautifully, her strong, delicate prose full of poetry and humour.' – DAILY TELEGRAPH