In the Shadow of the Cotton Tree

Jack Rillie

ISBN 10: 1905021135 / ISBN 13: 9781905021130

Published by Zeticula Ltd, GB, 2014

About this Item

In 1940, John Archibald McKenzie Rillie - serving in the Royal Army Medical Corps and newly married to Betty - was posted to the African city of Freetown in Sierra Leone. This is the first publication of the writing and the poems, drawn in the main from his diary and the notebook in which he collated much of his war-time verse, that mark his experiences in the sixteen months that followed. In the words of his editor, and grandson, Alasdair Soussi, it is an 'expressive, outspoken, sometimes raw and uncomfortable account of a bygone age'. The later reflections of Jack Rillie, the by then greatly admired and influential university teacher, on this period - and on his life prior to the war - are presented in a brief introduction, "A Young Life Recalled". With a foreword by Andrew Hook and an afterword from Marshall Walker; reproductions of photographs and letters; and even a list of books Jack read while in Sierra Leone, the man who inspired so many is revealed both for his formidable scholarship and his love.

Seller Inventory # LU-9781905021130

Bibliographic Details

• Title: In the Shadow of the Cotton Tree
• Publisher: Zeticula Ltd, GB
• Publication Date: 2014
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1905021135
• ISBN 13: 9781905021130
• Binding: Paperback
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

"All the afternoon the air was sultry, not a breath stirred among the dry grasses. The vultures hung uneasily low over the roofs of our huts, and sat bunched up like brown evil fungi among the branches of the mango trees in the compound." Jack Rillie, Freetown, 3rd October 1940 "The diary and poems written by Jack Rillie in Sierra Leone, in 1940-41, give a candid, shocking expression of the terrible necessity of war, futility, valour, stripped of romantic gloss; above all, Rillie's hope for the future sustained by love of his young bride left behind in Scotland. Alasdair Soussi has edited sensitively, with great skill, his grandfather's diary and poems, as a tribute to the early work of a crucially influential figure; an unsung hero of Scotland's post-war literary scene." Alexander Maitland, author of Wilfred Thesiger - The Life of the Great Explorer I heard Twi, or was it Swahili? Oh that was a long time ago. He was talking to a crocodile. Oh that was a long time ago. Rillie of Africa, huh? Part of the man, part of the man. From Thirteen Ways of Looking at Rillie by Edwin Morgan Jack Rillie was an outstanding and hugely admired academic in the English Literature department at the University of Glasgow. In a decades-long career that saw him teach the great works of English Literature to successive generations of Glasgow students, Rillie was a guiding influence behind some of Scotland's most celebrated writers. This West African war diary, written more than 70-years ago, is where it all began.

About the Author

Jack Rillie was an outstanding and hugely admired academic in the English Literature department at the University of Glasgow. In a decades-long career that saw him teach the great works of English Literature to successive generations of students, he was a guiding influence behind some of Scotland's most celebrated writers. The editor, Scots-born Alasdair Soussi - Jack Rillie's grandson - is an internationally-published freelance journalist, with a special interest in the Middle East and the Islamic world, and the Scottish political scene