KH Irvine and the ‘Twisted Fifers’ of Kirkcaldy
From Val Mcdermid to Gordon Brown, as her latest thriller appears in bookshops, KH Irvine ponders on why her home town has produced so much creative talent
Ileft Kirkcaldy, in body but never in spirit, in the 1980s with two phrases of my Gran’s ringing in my ears; “dinae be feart” and “dinae be a blaw”. For those in need of translation; don’t be scared but don’t be a big head. Somehow that sums up Kirkcaldy and maybe starts to explain why it produces such a wealth of talent, creativity and innovation, but it’s only a start. The
Who’s Who list of The Lang Toun is awe inspiring; Adam Smith, Robert Adam, Gordon Brown, David Steele, Val Mcdermid, Jack Vettriano, John Buchan, Aileen Paterson, Bob Carruthers and of course, the irreplaceable Jocky Wilson. With a population 0.6 per cent the size of London’s, that’s not bad.
But I am going to start with two people who sum up the dichotomy that is Kirkcaldy and surrounding villages perhaps best – Jackie Leven and Ian Rankin. Both talented, both self-effacing and both in need of a new nomenclature to describe their art.
Leven was described in the English newspapers as “Celtic Soul” and Rankin by US crime writer, James Ellroy, as “the King of tartan noir” but it was their own description of themselves, as they took to the stage together in 2004, that is perhaps the most enlightening; “Twa twisted Fifers”’ as if there’s any other kind. In his review of their performance at the time Paul Du Noyer coined “Levenesque” to be “themes of exile, masculinity, Scottish culture, violence, drink and poetry”. Rankin says Rebus would love Leven because “they’re stories about disappointed hard men. Guys who are like stone on the outside but if you chip away long enough, you’ll get to what makes them humane”. And it is the chipping away that helps us understand the Kirkcaldy psyche.
Fighting for the underdog is in our blood (we kept electing a Communist MP, for God’s sake). Rebus for all his hard talking, hard drinking violence is on the side of the angels. Anyone who listens to Jackie Leven’s “The mystery of love is greater than the mystery of death” cannot help but be torn asunder by the profound melancholy and beauty in his lyrics. The fact he chose to quote Oscar Wilde in his title tells us something of the man who once said: “I would have been less embarrassed to say – yes, Mum I’m a drug addict, than actually I’m a poet.”
The emotional dichotomies that form the Kirkcaldy psyche are built on a history of tough communities hewn from the back-breaking work that creates unbreakable communities in coal and fishing and coupled with an oft-buried burning passion for underdogs and social justice. Kirkcaldy has a memorial to the men who fought against Franco in the Spanish Civil War, a war a disproportionate number of Scots, and Fifers, went to fight. As a kid I used to read the inscription over and over and always be stirred by the passion, commitment and bravery of those men who travelled great distances to fight for people like them they never knew. How can that NOT spawn a storyteller? To this day if asked for the phrase that best sums up my hometown I look to the hopeless romance of the Spanish Civil War and La Passionara: “It’s better to die on your feet than live on your knees.” A sucker for a cause and a hero.
That was the nascent
“My characters are complex, flawed, funny, ferocious and with a moral compass that is etched from bitter experience”