I READ with real delight Alan Riach’s latest essay on Scotland’s often overlooked writers, as he chose two of my own favourites to analyse with his customary insight. As it happens, I knew Tom MacDonald in the 1960s when he spoke at a branch meeting I chaired in Edinburgh.

His dignity, strength and vision shone through that night, despite his obviously failing health, and made a telling contrast with the shallow, supercilious heckling from a bunch of young Tory students who for some reason had infiltrated the meeting.

It is wonderful that Alan Riach is restoring Tom to his rightful place in Scottish literary history.

Regarding Eric Linklater, another of my heroes, it is churlish to complain about Alan’s excellent review of his work. But I do wish he might have mentioned Linklater’s late and semi-autobiographical novel The Dark of Summer, or derk o’ simmer as they say in Orkney. Apart from sheer readability, it seems to sum up the dichotomy that Alan Riach identifies in Linklater, and in so many other Scots who have a problem with their sense of national identity.

But heartfelt thanks to The National and to Alan Riach for this intelligent and important series.
Peter Craigie
Edinburgh

A LEAKED paper hints that all that No 10 will get from the EU, despite its continuing sense of absolute of entitlement to demand what it wants, is a Canada-style deal.

David Davis has already “warned” the EU not to put politics above prosperity in his continued bluster. He wants “a new framework”. It is sad to watch him twist and turn in his semantics. It has not occurred to him that by activating Article 50 the UK has given up all benefits it had from within. Accept the consequences which the EU will impose.

He cannot accept that his party was the spearhead for the referendum to settle its own internal political contradictions and it has backfired. Party politics before prosperity indeed!

The EU will not set up a “new framework” just to get No 10 out of a mess! The UK had a bespoke framework as a member. It had a veto, now its only veto is to walk away.

Why should the EU rejig itself to re-accommodate a former and at times petulant and condescending member?

The final word in this Brexit debacle will always lie with the EU and the 27. The people of Scotland and Northern Ireland voted to remain. They will draw their own conclusions. Better together?
John Edgar
Stewarton

IT never ceases to amaze me how some Edinburgh citizens can use some apparently totally unrelated issue in order to have a go at trams.

Your correspondent CS Lincoln (Letters, November 17) is a typical example. While making an otherwise reasonable case that Edinburgh should do more to exploit its connection with the creator of Sherlock Holmes, he manages to fit in an attack on the completion of the tram line to Newhaven, replete with the usual cliches about the city’s populace enjoying an excellent bus service. I’m not sure “enjoy” and “excellent” are the right adjectives from any perspective.

Do bus passengers really enjoy the hideously bumpy ride as their vehicle lurches from one pothole, sunken drain cover or badly filled in trench to another? Do passing pedestrians and cyclists really enjoy the stench of exhaust fumes from a constant stream of buses?

Your report on air quality zones failing to meet pollution targets – fortuitously illustrated by a shot of half a dozen empty-looking buses dominating the roadspace in a Glasgow street – amply illustrates why more trams and fewer buses are needed not just in Edinburgh but in all big cities.
Andrew McCracken
Grantown-on-Spey

SO Ruth Davidson is the so-called Scottish Politician of the Year. By what criteria? What kind of sad farce is this? Why are otherwise moderately sensible folk of all political parties getting involved in this? OK, it’s presumably a nice meal, a few drinks and you get to dress up like a penguin. On the same day as a landmark study links Tory austerity to 120,000 deaths. How ironic!
Brian Lawson
Paisley