Perth author rubs shoulders with celebrated writers

LITERATURE: Novel set in Fair City in the running for major prize

A novel set in Perth and written by an author based in the Fair City is in the running for a prestigious UK literary prize.

Ajay Close’s A Petrol Scented Spring has been selected by the judges of the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction, alongside novels by Kate Atkinson, Robert Harris, William Boyd, Patrick Gale and others.

Close’s novel, set in the early 20th Century, draws on factual research to explore the lives of a group of characters caught up in the Scottish battle for women’s votes.

At the heart of the story is an Edinburgh suffragette, Arabella Scott, who was jailed for nine months for setting fire to a racecourse stand in Kelso.

In Perth Prison she encounters Doctor Hugh Ferguson Watson, who force fed all five of the militant suffragettes subjected to “artificial feeding” in Scotland. The novel is narrated by the doctor’s wife, Donella, who believes her marriage was blighted from the start by her husband’s obsession with his suffragette patient.

A Petrol Scented Spring was published in September by Scottish publishers Sandstone Press, to rave reviews, and is already in its third imprint. The Times called it “a fascinating insight into one of the most compelling stories in the history of the women’s suffrage movement” and writer and playwright Fay Weldon has described the author as “brilliant”.

Publication coincided with the release of the film, Suffragette, which grossed £14 million in the UK. Ajay was asked to introduce screenings across Scotland, balancing the film’s London-based storyline with an account of what happened north of the border, where a hard core of militant suffragettes were prepared to bomb and burn down buildings to gain publicity for their cause.

The Walter Scott Prize longlist of 13 books will be whittled down to a shortlist in late March and the winner of the £25,000 prize will be announced at the Borders Book Festival in Melrose on June 18.

Ajay Close will find out next month if her novel has made the shortlist for the prize.

A Petrol Scented Spring by Ajay Close is set in early 20th-Century Scotland.