Thanks all! I’m fully booked
Drug tragedy
Thanks to everyone who responded to my call in last week’s column for good crime novels to read in lockdown. There was a fabulous selection of suggestions and I’m about to start with The Anniversary by Fife man Ian Anderson. There are two reasons for this – it’s his debut novel born out of lockdown and I like the cover.
Before the pandemic, I was in airports a lot and enjoyed the WH Smith section devoted to Scottish authors. It was only when my own book, Knowing The Score, was published in 2017 that I became aware of all the work that goes into getting books onto shelves. I hadn’t realised just how many authors are out there, or how many book festivals. Now that the festivals are on hold and bookshops closed, it’s great to get recommendations from Sunday Post readers. Keep them coming!
Actor Ewan Mcgregor narrates the documentary detailing the treatment snubbed by drugs minister Angela Constance.
Made by Bafta-winning director Norman Stone, The Final Fix follows hardened drug users in America as they try to quit drugs using NET.
Stone said: “I’d no influence over who was taking part, or the outcome. This was a no-holds-barred look at how NET could be used to break the destructive cycle we’ve fallen into of creating generations of addicts with the NHS as their supplier.
“Just one man didn’t break free from drugs. Despite him responding positively to NET within a couple of days, the pull of opioids was too much after being addicted for so many years.
“Tragically, he died. It showed the system wasn’t perfect. Some may struggle with the enormity of changing their lives. But the success of the others, who remain drug-free, shows the possibilities of NET.”
Mr Stone said he had first heard of the treatment in 1979 and, on visiting Meg Patterson at her home, met an unrecognisable Eric Clapton who was sleeping on her couch while undergoing treatment. He said: “I have absolutely no interest in this other than wanting to find a way to help Scotland end the tragedy of thousands of needless deaths each year, because I’ve seen what this treatment can do.”
But he said his efforts to have the Scottish Government watch the film – which has won 10 awards – have come to nothing. He said: “I’ve tried on three occasions to have the Scottish Government watch The Final Fix so they can see the incredible potential this treatment has.
But despite Scotland’s catastrophic drug death figures, they cancelled each time.”
They are among some of the first criminal mugshots in Britain. Dating back to 1869, the photographs capture the cold, hard stare of a mother-turned-double-child-killer; the glare of a murder accused who plunged a knife into his victim’s neck; and the hopeless resignation of a petty thief who was to later meet her end in the cold, dark waters of a north-east harbour.
Now some of the images held in the Register of Returned Convicts for Aberdeen will feature in the city’s three-day international crime writing festival Granite Noir. The festival – held online this year due to Covid-19 restrictions – starts on Friday. The criminal portraits and the stories behind them will be the focus of an illustrated webinar by city council archivist Phil Astley, 53.
He said: “The photographs are among some of the earliest in Britain. There are one or two places where mugshot technology was employed as early as the 1840s, but it didn’t take off until the 1870s. So these early images in 1869 are quite unusual.”
Historian Phil, who has exhibited at the festival since its inception in 2017, said they are a fascinating snap shot of Victorian Aberdeen, and give “an immediate glimpse of the personality, appearance, vulnerability or otherwise” of the convicted – most of whom were from the poor lower classes.
He said: “The mugshots bring it home to you that some of these people lived a life of crime,” he said. “It was their only way of subsisting. It is not that their stories are particularly shocking, but they are extraordinary because they were quite ordinary people whose photographs probably would not have been taken had they not committed a crime. They themselves wouldn’t have ever seen the photographs.” Now – thanks to the register – we can.