Peter Gilmour – författare

William Templeton is awoken from his dead life as an alcoholic by the murder of his mother. He has no memory of when he last visited her, and no sense of what their relationship might have been. He feels the need to reacquaint himself with the world: he stops drinking and embarks upon the long convalescence that is the story of this book. It is the story of one man’s struggle against alcoholism. It is witty and it is painful. It is a story of wasted lives, flawed relationships, and the horrors of old age, but through it all, humour and hope rebalance the drudge and misery.Who is William Templeton?He was once a son and a brother, a respected colleague and renowned peacekeeper. He became a husband and then a father. He was a keen birdwatcher.Gradually, he was erased by drink.William Templeton has become Willy, shacked up with Mrs McLehose, his malevolent landlady. Together they live in self-imposed banishment, bound together by their endless thirst and shrunken prospects. But when his mother is brutally murdered, dim fragments of William Templeton re-emerge.Fleeing McLehose’s squalor, he takes a dead end job guarding an abandoned farm in deepest Lanarkshire. In even greater exile, Templeton realises that before he can heal first he must dry out.Peter Gilmour’s portrait of the convalescent is immersive and unflinching. As Tempelton stumbles from one circumstance to the next, submitting to fate or fortune, we are spared few of his thoughts. The world around him is scrutinised, each relationship, whether intimate or fleeting, dissected. While William deconstructs, we begin, gently and often quite beautifully, to piece him together. From the blankness, a genuine, enduring character is revealed.

Douglas Low has reached the last slice of life. Recovering from a heart condition, he retires to a cottage on Holy Loch, his hope that this final bite might be a sweet one. For Edith, his invalid wife, the only wish is that new shores might bring relief from bitter, chronic pain.Douglas finds respite of his own in the form of Helen, his visiting lover. This new life, lived in the shadow of nuclear weapons, finds a gentle, clandestine rhythm. But this is complicated by the arrival of his son, an unpredictable drifter who soon ruffles military feathers. Peter Gilmour’s distinctive voice follows his beautifully drawn characters as they face the unpredictability of fate, each one touched by the cruel creep of expiration. A timely novel, Spring Manoeuvres addresses the blurring lines between protection, occupation and invasion, and the choice between compromise and sacrifice.

This is the first clear and comprehensive introduction to the philosophers of the Enlightenment. Nine contemporary specialists lead the student gently through Enlightenment thought by looking at the lives and writings of individual philosophers, such as Liebniz, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Reid, Kant, Voltaire and Fourier. This is an introduction to a complex subject which should become recommended reading for students of philosophy from school to university level, as well as anyone interested in Enlightenment thought. Contents: PETER GILMOUR Introduction; STUART BROWN 1. eibniz and the Fashion for Systems and Hypotheses; JOHN WILLIAMSON 2. Boyle and Locke: on Material Substance; STEPHEN CLARK 3. Soft as the Rustle of a Reed from Cloyne (Berkeley); ANGUS J. MACKAY 4. David Hume; R.F. STALLEY 5. Common Sense and Enlightenment: the Philosophy of Thomas Reid; MURRAY MACBEATH 6. Kant; CHRISTOPHER BERRY 7. Adam Smith: Commerce, Liberty and Modernity; PETER JIMACK 8. Voltaire; I.D. LLOYD-JONES 9. Charles Fourier: Faithful Pupil of the Enlightenment; Index^R