Sir Ian Rankin

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1:49Hello and welcome to another episode of Rosebud. I'm Giles Brandreth and I'm speaking to you from Edinburgh, one of my favourite cities, because, well, I've read a lot about Edinburgh and when I read about Edinburgh, the writer I like reading the most, I think, is the person who's my guest today. It is Ian Rankin, now Sir Ian Rankin, the creator of really one of the most memorable characters in crime fiction in our time. They talk about tartan noir, and at the heart of tartan noir are the novels about Detective Inspector Rebus, created by Ian Rankin. The first Rebus book was Knots and Crosses, a long time ago now.

2:31Since then, there have been many of them. They've sold some 35 million copies around the world. He's written about other things, other detectives, other mysteries. Can I say something? This isn't just another interview with another crime writer who's got a new book to plug. this is a proper conversation about a very interesting life the man happens to be a writer i found it revelatory i found it moving i think he's very impressive i mean i love his books but that's almost by the by having met the man i now rather love the man he is remarkable so sit back and listen to the story of a man who's written some of the best stories i think of our time and that is Ian Rankin.

3:15Cue the music.

3:30How long have you been called Sir Ian? Not long. Two or three years. Have you got history? Nobody calls me Sir Ian. I've just suddenly realised, of course, I have to have called you Sir Ian. It's quite exciting, isn't it? Only in front of the Queen do you need to call me Sir Ian. Very good. But you were excited. You wouldn't have said yes, aren't you? Yeah, no, it was extraordinary. I just thought how proud my parents would have been to receive it. And I got an OBE a while ago, but I got that in Edinburgh. This, I decided to go down to Buckingham Palace, and it was Princess Anne who did the honours, and it was all very lovely.

4:03It was great. But it's never opened many doors for me, James, I have to say. Well, you are Sir Ian Rankin. I love that. Born on the 28th of April 1960, got that right? So I want to ask you, Ian, what is your very first memory? There are a few conflicting notions in my head, but the one that sticks out clearly is that I was in a pram or a buggy of some description in a very small dowdy sweet shop in the village where I grew up, being bought sweets by a mum, an auntie, I'm not sure who, and just the elderly woman behind the counter reaching down to give me the sweets. And it was a corrugated iron shack, basically.

4:49Tiny corrugated iron shack in the middle of the village. And that was where I went to get sweets. And it must also have sold newspapers and things. Do you have a favourite childhood sweet that comes to mind? Milky Bar. Oh, that's chocolate. Yeah, white chocolate. Remember the Milky Bar kid? Of course I do. And in fact, that's another early memory is that you could save up tokens and you could send away for a Milky Bar kid rifle. And I fell down the stairs one day and as I was being comforted at the bottom of the stairs, I would have been about four or five, the door opened and there was the postman with my Milky Bar kid rifle.

5:25So then I cheered up immediately. That's marvellous. So here you are on this corrugated iron roof, this shed where sweets are being bought for you by an auntie and your mum. Who was your mum? Who was the auntie? My mum, Isabel, born in Bradford. My dad and her, that was both their second marriages. She had moved to Fife because her husband was from there. He had died. She went into the local green grocers or grocery shop and there was my dad who ran it. And they eventually got married and I came along. So the aunt would have been, the village we grew up in was very tribal. It was a very working class tribal mining village in Fife.

6:06So my mum didn't have any family nearby. It was all my dad's family, but my goodness, there were so many of them. I had an aunt and uncle, his brother, over the back fence. Two doors away from us on our cul-de-sac was my dad's sister. So it would have been her, my aunt Lizzie, and possibly my mum as well. Aunt Lizzie did a lot of looking after me in the early days because my parents both worked. What did they work at, your parents? Well, my dad was in this grocery shop in Loch Galley, which was three miles away. He got the bus to work every day and neither of my parents could drive. My mum worked in a school canteen and then laterally in a chicken factory canteen.

6:45Goodness. In Glenrothes. And she had to get a lift from somebody in a car because, again, there was no transport links between the village I lived in and Glenrothes. us what were they like to look at what was your what did your dad look like and what if you came into the room now what sort of person would we be meeting uh charming and charismatic a twinkle in the eye bald from a very young age which made me very worried when i was young um but i retain a thick head of hair good thank goodness um he uh yeah he was a he ran a shop you've got to be charming and be a people person and be sociable and he was all of those things um telling terrible jokes, singing songs.

7:24Did he have a dark side? He did not have a dark side at all. Didn't swear. Neither of my parents, I think, ever, I ever heard swear. No drinking or hardly any drinking. When he came home on a Friday night, he went out, I think, on a Friday for a couple of drinks with his mates. And when he came home, I was in bed and he always had to come up to bed to assure me that he wasn't drunk. I made sure he told me that. He'd also tell me terrible stories about World War Two, which it turns out were all fictitious. But that's another, that's another story. And he had had a first wife? Yes. What happened to her?

7:56His first wife had died young. I'm not sure how. There was a daughter from that marriage. Gosh, who you knew? Yes, Maureen. She was about 15, 16 years older than me. Did she live at home with you? No, no. She was married the year I was born. So she'd never lived with us. My other sister, Linda, who was from my mum's first marriage. It's getting complicated now. So two half-sisters. Linda was seven years older than me. And she's still with us. My other sister, Maureen, sadly no longer is. So the pair of us were in the house. So the widow and the widower, they get married. What age are they when they get married?

8:32Well, I mean, when I came along, my mum was in her late 30s and my dad was in his early 40s. So I was very aware when I started school that all my friends' parents were much younger than mine. You described your dad as if he came into the room. What did your mother look like and what impact would she make if she came into the room? She was very small. I mean, my dad would be about 5 '10", but he seemed very tall to me. My mum was 4 '9", 4 '10". Oh, petite. And my sister Linda is much the same. Petite. Small, bustling, always busy, despite having the job, doing all the cooking, most of the shopping, the ironing, the hoovering, the washing.

9:10You know, my dad would come in from work and dinner would be ready, or tea as we called it. Your first home then? What do you remember of your first home? Your bedroom? Well, I was there. I was born in a prefab, a little prefabricated bungalow. You were actually born at home? Yeah, I didn't make it to the hospital. Born at home. But soon after I was born, we moved into a brand new SSHA, the Scottish Special Housing Association, the equivalent of a council house in a cul-de-sac, with lots of other families all moving in at the same time, most with young children. So it was, again, it was like a tribe.

9:45It was a very, you knew everybody, and you could knock on anybody's door. and walk in. So it was a nice house. Never had central heating, never had double glazing. I mean, the old stories you often hear, oh, it was hard. We had, you know, frost on the inside of the windows in winter. And Dad would get up and put the coal fire on before anybody else got up, because otherwise the place was freezing. And you depended on the coal fire for your hot water. Yeah. But it was, you know, it was fun. It was a fun place to live. What was your bedroom like? Tiny. My first bedroom, because my sister Linda was still at home, my first bedroom was at the back and was approximately seven feet by six, I would say.

10:28Oh. My gosh, smaller than a prison cell. Really, a single bed and eventually a little cany desk and a sort of airing cupboard, and that was it. Can you remember the first book that you looked at, a picture book or a story book? Well, there weren't many books in the house. My parents weren't really readers, But the local library, the Carnegie Library, was terrific. And my mum would take me down to the library once or twice a week to renew books. So a lot of books came from there. Once or twice a week? Yeah. That's a lot. Well, I mean, you could take out three books and I would take them out and mostly look at the pictures, you know.

11:05I wouldn't do a lot of actual reading. I remember getting Rupert Anio and I would sort of look at the pictures, but I would never read the extended text. That was too much. The illustrations are brilliant, aren't they? Comics was the thing. It wasn't really books. It was comics. DC, Thompson, God bless them, and Dundee were the purveyors of literacy to generations of working class kids in Scotland and beyond. And I went from the kind of really, Bimbo was the one I remember getting first when I was very young, the Bimbo, pre-five. Then you moved on to the Bino and the Dandy. And then as you got a little bit older, you moved on to the Boys Adventure comics, Hotspur and the Victor, and the Lion and the Tiger, and then American comics from that.

11:46Wonderful thing, DC Thompson. Yeah, it was affordable literacy, and it was a rung of the ladder. So when you ask me about books, I would often, if my mum had to go to Kirkcaldy, which was our local big town for shopping, I would be allowed to buy a Ladybird book. They were cheap, and they were good. Lots of good illustrations. And at home, what room did you live in? Your bedroom's very small. Was there a sitting room or a kitchen that you were mostly in? Downstairs, there was just a living room with what we in Scotland call a bowling hole, A bolly hole is a serving hatch through to the kitchen.

12:18So as a kid, you could crawl through that. It was a lot of fun. As long as your mum didn't catch you doing it, it was a lot of fun. And hide under the pulley, which was full of clothes, hanging up. What were your parents like together? Picture them together as a couple. Well, I don't remember physical intimacy, hugs and kisses and things. I don't remember that at all. Their relationship was a working relationship. They made it work. I remember vividly them sitting down at the kitchen table on a Friday evening, which was payday getting their pay packets open and dividing up what needed to be so much for the rent, so much for electricity so much for summer holiday so much for insurance and so much for Christmas Are you making it seem like a working partnership rather than a great romance?

13:08Well, I don't think that But, I mean, you know, where I grew up, when I grew up, I don't remember anybody being kind of touchy-feely. I mean, the working class in Scotland weren't, really. They just got on with stuff. My mum and dad went out. They went out to dances and parties, and I do have photographic evidence of that. Not many, but they did go out. But they tended not to go out together. My dad would go with his mates on a Friday night to the pub, and my mum would, I don't know. I don't remember my mum really going out with friends at all. Do you think they were happy together? Yeah, I think they were.

13:40Happy or contented or settled? I mean, I think they'd been through a lot. I mean, you know, my mum had lost a husband young and had brought up a young daughter. My dad had lost his wife young and brought up a young daughter. He'd been through the war. She'd served in the war. You know, they'd met in the late 50s. It was a hard time. And as I say, they never owned their own home. They never owned a car. When my dad died, his entire estate, because my mum pre-deceased him. When he died and I went back to the family home, which he was still in, the home I grew up in, his entire estate was£400 divided between three of us.

14:21And what age were they when they both died? My mum was very young. I went off to university aged 18 and she took ill literally a week after I started university and she died when I was 19. so she would have been, I mean she wasn't even 60. I know the pair of them were starting to think about retirement. They were starting to consider retirement, their last child had left home and it was like her body just switched off as soon as the last child had left. And how did that affect you? How were you rocked by her death when you were only 19? It was terrible. I mean from 18 to 19, here I am, I've left home, first member of my family to go to university, came to Edinburgh University, studying, you know, on the surface having a great time, but having to phone home to check with my dad, how my mum's doing, and then going home at weekends to see her and watch her decline slowly but surely over the course of about 10 months.

15:21It was hellish. And how did your dad go? I mean, not brilliantly, I wouldn't have said. I mean, he looked after her, but because I wasn't there, I really don't know how he coped. I think it was tough. It was very, very hard. Did you and he talk about it, or did you just sort of got on with life? You know, we didn't really talk about it that much. We didn't. We weren't open. It wasn't a very open, you know. Even with my sister, I didn't really talk about it. I mean, I had my other life. I was like a Jekyll and Hyde character. You know, I was studying Shakespeare midweek and then going back to this little working-class enclave and watching my mum die.

15:59It was a really weird time. And I started writing very dark poetry. I remember that. Yeah. My poetry got very dark. Was it any good? No. It was cathartic. It did what you use writing for a lot of the time, which is therapy and catharsis. And how soon after did your dad die? Oh, he stuck around. Another woman came in tow. Yes, he had yet another lovely woman acquaintance that he hung out with. And did you like her? Was that okay? She was great, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I was very pleased for him because it gave him a boost. He died when he was 72, and he died in his sleep. And that was a bit of a shock.

16:38I was in London by this stage, married, living in London, and the phone call came. And it was out of the blue because he had high blood pressure, but he didn't have anything else. He didn't smoke. My mum and dad had both given up smoking when I was in my early teens, thankfully. and I thought he was generally fairly fit. What did your parents give to you that you've got in you now? There's a good Scots word I like, throne, T-H-R-A-W-N. It means to be stubborn, just to keep pushing ahead, not to give up, not to get downhearted, to take adversity on the chin and keep going. All of that I think I got from my parents.

17:23and I think they were very bemused but proud that I was clever and had got the grades that meant I could go to university. But yeah, I took all of that from them and, you know, family, hopefully. It's kind of weird because the job I do means that a lot of the time I'm physically present but psychologically not because my head is in the book somewhere and trying to balance that can be difficult sometimes. go back to your childhood and this small but happy home I can picture your parents perfectly now and I can picture you with your comics disappearing into the world of the dandy and the beano and the rest describe yourself as a little boy as a small boy what did you look like, how did you behave what were the games you played terrible homemade haircut there's a photograph of me somewhere wearing this little clip on tartan bow tie that I wore at weddings.

18:22I did it very occasionally when I was small, wear a kilt. Were you a cheerful child? I don't know. I was very self-contained, very self-contained. I did try, because the place where I grew up was quite tribal, I tried to look like I fitted in. So when the time came, you're too young to remember this, around about 71, 72, the boot boys arrived, the bover boys, the skinheads, all the rest of it. And like everybody else, I got my Doc Martens, and I would wear a Harrington jacket and hang around the street corners looking tough. And what inspired you to do that? The fact that you didn't want to stick out from everybody around you.

18:57So you wanted to be like everybody else. So everybody around me was doing that. So I had to do it too. Otherwise, you would think Ian's a bit weird and different. And you didn't want to be different. You didn't want to be seen to be different. Though in your head, you felt you were different. In my head, I was. And whenever they said, right, we're heading off to Loch Ghelly to have a battle with the local Loch Ghelly hoodlums, I would say sorry guys I've got to go home and I would go back to my bedroom get a notebook and write about it I would imagine what that would have been like that experience What made you a loner?

19:25Why do you think you were like this? I don't know is it genetics? What is it? Just a predisposition I really enjoyed being creative so I liked playing with soldiers and cowboys and Indians and toy cars and I would create these adventures for all my toys that I played with. And sometimes I would try and draw comics and write comic strips and stuff. Did you have a best friend outside of home? I had a lot of friends I would go and play with, play football with and go for long walks with. And we were allowed off the leash. You know, we could disappear for 10 hours at a stretch and our parents wouldn't worry about us.

20:05No phones in those days. I mean, those are the days when you would walk two miles to your friend's house, knock on the door and ask if he was home. And if he wasn't, you just walk home again. You know, so it was pretty good. And all the friends I've still got, actually most of the friends I've still got, aged 66, are friends from school days. And I still keep up with a fair number of them. And what is childhood friendship? What happens in childhood friendship? Well, back then, it was socialisation. You were learning skills. You were learning to be brave. I remember vividly there was a pipe, a big metal pipe that went over the river in my village.

20:46I think it carried wastewater from the mines, coal mines, I can't remember. And I was terrified of crossing it because I thought I would fall in. But because everybody else was crossing it, you had to cross it too. And so you're learning to be brave, you're learning skills, you're learning how to socialise, and you're having a great time. Were you a good boy or were you naughty? I was a very good boy. The only times I got the belt really were for talking. You got the belt? This is at school or at home? Yeah. No, at school. I remember my mum hitting me once and my dad never hitting me at all. No, at school, you get the belt for talking.

21:23Was this primary school or secondary school? Primary school. Oh, secondary school. You say the belt, you mean? The Taws, we call it. T-A-W-S-E. Made in Lock Yelly. This was actually an instrument. A leather belt, notched into two or three little straps at the end. Provided by a school supplier. I think teachers had to buy their own. Gosh. And they were thick leather. You can still buy them. They're mostly used for S &M, Giles. You might be interested in that. You're not allowed to have them in schools anymore, but you're not allowed to have them in S &M clubs. And so they're still made, I think, in Locky Alley, which is two miles, three miles away from where I grew up.

21:58And yeah, some teachers were very good at giving a belt. Oh, yeah. They wrapped it around your wrist. They produced welts. They could make you bleed. they would put one palm on top of the other palm so when you hit one hand it went through to the other so it stung both your palms and then you would cross them back over and they would do the other hand so you were getting double measures really and what did you think of this at the time? what age were you? well this is from the age of five onwards you just took it as this is what happens I think the belt was outlawed round about 1976 or 77 so I would have been about 16 and I do remember getting the belt up into senior high school so I would have been 16, 17.

22:36And this was for cheek, basically, talking? Talking out of turns, very occasional. I mean, one time we cheated on a cross-country run we hid, and one time we just took a half day off school and we got the belt for that. Most of the time it was for talking out of turn. So what is your happiest memory of school? Give us a good recollection of either of your schools, primary or secondary. Well, it's a succession of very good teachers, very, very competent teachers. And in fact, that's what I was going to do. My parents were horrified when I said I was going to go to university to study English literature because they thought working class kids went to college to get a job, to get a trade.

23:16So they were thinking accountancy. So they were trying to push me into accountancy. I had one successful uncle. He lived in Bradford. He was married to my mum's sister. And he was an accountant. And they owned their own house. And he owned a car. But that's a good ambition. I mean, in a sense, accountancy is a good profession. Yeah. Well, my parents were hoping I would keep them in a lifestyle to which they would become accustomed in old age. And then I turned around and said, no, I'm going to study English. And they went, well, what kind of job will you get with that? And I said, well, I'll come back to Fife and teach.

23:45Because all the teachers at my school had all grown up locally and gone off to college and come back. And my English teachers were terrific. There was one especially in high school, Mr. Gillespie, Ron Gillespie, hopefully still with us. and he was very young, seemed very young to us but he was working class, very Glaswegian but passionate about Elliot and Greek history and everything else and we used to go to the pub after school to continue the conversation that would not be allowed these days of course not but there was a Jekyll and Hyde inside you as well because part of you is dressing up to be part of the gang part of the tribe and being this boy, except when he gets frightening or dangerous and you protect yourself by disappearing.

24:37And part of you is this loner who is creating his own world, eventually writing poetry. And were you comfortable that these two sides of your personality, that you were managing it well during your teens? Yeah. I mean, teens and before. You know, I was drawing these comics and drawing cartoons and only showing my parents. In fact, probably only showing my mum. these productions and then writing song lyrics for bands that only existed inside my head. But I went further. I would have a top ten every week, which meant I had to invent nine other bands and the songs they were playing. And I was creating this world.

25:14Did you write it down? Yeah, all written down. Sadly, no longer with us. I don't know what happened to it all. It was in little ledger books. My dad gave me lots of ledger books from his grocery shop and I would use those for my creative writing and drawing. And was this happening up in your bedroom? Yeah, up in my teeny tiny bedroom. At your little desk? And well, yeah, it was an old bureau that belonged to an uncle of mine. It was a very old fashioned bureau. I used to pretend I had a secret drawer, but I never found a secret drawer. I would sit there and write. And, you know, so I had this extraordinary interior world.

25:45In fact, you know, one of the blithe things I said until recently as a writer was every child is creative. they all have this extraordinary interior world where they're making stuff up having role playing games and adventures inside their heads and I met a teacher recently who said no it's just not true she teaches primary school in East London she said the kids who come to my class have no interior life they are not creative everything is given to them everything is produced for them and they've become mere consumers and that just saddened me so much there were girls at the school? there were girls at your school?

26:21Of course, good old comprehensive Scottish school. Lots of girls I lusted after. Tell me. Well, I couldn't talk to them, so I just would write poetry about them. Did you ever give the poems? No. No, no. And what kind of poetry was it? I was a stalker once. I remember being a stalker once. There was a new girl arrived at school and she lived up the hill from me. And I just, I walked, after school, I walked up past her house and I just kept walking past, hoping she would see me. And she didn't. So then I went home again and never did that again. But yeah, this kind of unrequited thing, I was just very, very shy.

26:53I mean, people were trying to introduce me to girls. I'd go to parties and be introduced to girls who I would hang out with. But nothing, nothing ever. I had one girlfriend when I was in fifth year, so I'd be 17, Janice. And then she paired up with a guy in the year above us. And they're still married. They're still happily married. That's something. But I mean, with Janice, did you hold hands? Did you kiss? Oh yeah, we kissed, we held hands, we snogged. You'd go to these parties and you would all sit around somebody's parents' living room while they were out and you would drink and you would play records and you would snog.

27:27Did you think about saying the words I love you for the first time in the context of a relationship? No, I don't think I said I love you until I met my wife when I was 21. Gosh. Yeah, I think that was probably the first time. I certainly never remember saying it to my parents. Ah. I think the biggest memory I have of a tactile experience with my dad was putting my arm around him as we were leaving the crematorium after my mum's funeral. And I put my arm around him. And before that, I remember him taking me to a tailor's to get a suit for the funeral and just making sure that I was going to look the part.

28:05I mean, that was about as close as we ever got, I think. So at school, and you're a teenager, you're clearly clever. You do O-levels or GCSEs or whatever they are by then. And you think, actually, I'm not going to be an accountant. I'm going to go to university. There must be a teacher who says, good idea, Ian, you can make it. Or do they call you Rankin? What do they call you? Oh, no, no, they would call you Ian. No, there was none of that. You've obviously got a very different kind of school from me. Oh, I certainly did. We had teachers dating pupils at my school. It was very like Gregory's Girl.

28:37I mean, I watch Gregory's Girl every year or so, and I go, God, that is my school. That is my experience of growing up in the 70s. Yeah, so let me think. What was the question again? Oh, a teacher. Well, I mean, Mr Gillespie was terrific as an English teacher, and I think he would have said, yes, go and study English. But I don't remember ever really consulting with my teachers or anybody. I do remember one extraordinary thing, which is the way education was back then in non-fee-paying schools in Scotland. At the age of, so you'd done two years at junior high, and if your results were good enough, you were then marched into the headmaster's office.

29:16and the headmaster said, your results are good enough, you can go to the senior high school. Now, the junior high school would only teach you to 16 and you would leave and get a trade. The senior high school would teach you to 18 and you would be going to college or university. And I remember there was one kid who was much cleverer than me and there was no parents there, no teachers there, just you and the head teacher. And this one kid went in to see the head and he was cleverer than me. And he said, well, I don't want to go because I would lose all my friends and I'd have to get up early. I'd have to get a bus to this other school and I'd have to wear a uniform.

29:49So I'm not going to go. And he was cleverer than me and ended up leaving school at 16. So what would his life have been like? That moment when a 14-year-old has to decide their future with no input from anybody else. I just thought that was an extraordinary thing.

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31:36But Mr Gillespie encouraged you to apply for university. Yeah, well, you know. And had he been to Edinburgh University as well? No, he'd been to Glasgow, I think. He went to Glasgow University. And Edinburgh was my first choice, I think, because I thought it was posh. My second choice was Stirling, which is where my best friend, Jock, was going. And he was trying to persuade me. He said, Ian, all you have to do is fail German. If you fail the German exam, you can't go to Edinburgh. You needed a language. to go to Edinburgh University. He said, just sit in the exam and don't do anything. Just stare at the blank sheet and then you can come to Stirling with me.

32:11And I sat in that exam hall. I couldn't do it. No, of course you couldn't. I couldn't do it. So I scraped a C pass. I scraped a pass in German, which meant I could be accepted at Edinburgh. I wouldn't be accepted at Edinburgh now with the grades I got. You're saying I was clever. I wasn't that clever. I was good at English, but I wasn't great at anything else. So you came to Edinburgh. Was this the first time you lived away from home? Oh, yeah. What was that like? Well, I filled in all the forms to stay in halls of residence, and they said, oh, there's a housing shortage for students in Edinburgh, so we can't give you any accommodation.

32:45You're going to have to travel from home. I went, I don't want to travel from home. You don't have to get a train every morning and get a train back. I want to be in Edinburgh. So a friend of mine, George, who I still know, who was coming to the Edinburgh College of Art, the pair of us came through to Edinburgh a few times and just got the evening newspaper and looked up boarding houses and eventually got a room in a motel on the outskirts of the city. And we shared a room in this motel for the first few, probably first term. And by then we'd got a few friends together and we then rented a flat.

33:21So we were able to go and live in a flat in the centre of town. I was still sharing a room. so for the first two or three years of uni life I was sharing a bedroom with my friend George gosh didn't make a love life very easy oh was love life burgeoning well I didn't have one but he did oh my gosh and him and his girlfriend it was not made easy for them him sharing a room with me but did you have to I mean you stayed in the room you didn't kind of I would sleep on the sofa there were nights I slept on the sofa yeah and I think there were nights he sneaked her into the room when I was asleep. Oh my God.

33:57Let's not go there, James. Well, no. Well, he went there. We don't need to. So these years, this is changing. Your life has completely changed now. Yeah. And the important thing for me, the most important thing for me was not the English classes that I was studying. It was the extracurricular activities. It was the poetry society. And suddenly being able to say, yes, I'm a poet. I write poetry. And being surrounded by people who didn't think that was weird or wanted to beat me up as a consequence. Because that was the kind of writer you were at that stage. You were a poet. It was poetry and lyrics, yeah, mostly poetry.

34:30And poetry, writing a poem a day? I mean, you were writing all the time. Oh, easily, easily writing a poem a day. And the themes were mainly what? That's a good question. All kinds of things. The very first poem I had any success with at all was when I was still at high school. And it was a poem called Euthanasia. And my Aunt Jenny thought it was about her. It was about an old man sitting in a park bench, twiddling his thumbs and waiting to die. Anyway, it won a prize. It won the second prize in some poetry competition. Well done. Well, you put it in for the poetry competition. You were clearly ambitious.

35:02I did. Because at school, you had edited a school magazine? I worked on a school magazine called Mainlines. Yeah, I was the music correspondent, so I got to write album reviews. That was great. What was the magazine at school that the headmaster didn't like? That was Mainlines. That was Mainlines. Well, because we had a pub correspondent. A pub correspondent. So you'd be selling the magazine to these 14 and 15-year-olds, I was telling the best pubs in Cowdenbeath are. You'll get served in here, lads. We used to take off our blazers and go into pubs at lunchtime. I mean, come on. So you come alive at Edinburgh University.

35:34Yeah, what I was going to say to you was it was a time of punk. And what punk said was it doesn't matter what your background is. It doesn't matter if you've got any ability. If you want to try and do something, just have a go. And that was, so, you know, so I was trying to... This is really good. You're the first person ever to explain to me what punk was. Yeah, that was the ethos. Ethos, do it yourself. Do it yourself and do what you want. Because before that, we had grown up in a world of progressive rock and synthesizers. Nobody could afford to buy a synthesizer unless you'd gone to private school or had parents with money.

36:04Nobody could afford all the stage equipment you needed to be in a progressive rock band. But everybody could afford a Woolies electric guitar and just thrash. So you formed your first real band as opposed to the fantasy bands you'd had in your top ten. I was in a band for a year or so at uni, yes. Called? Called The Dancing Pigs. I like it. Yeah. Was it quite successful? I came up with that name. I was very happy with that. Quite successful, no. I think we played six gigs. Can you remember any of the lyrics from any of the numbers? Give it a flavour. Mutated machine guns patrolling the subways while glue-sniffing kids hang themselves in lift shafts was the opening couplet of one number.

36:46We get the flavour. Yeah. This is strong punk. Yeah. It was me just writing rubbish down and the band being happy. We did go into a recording studio twice and we recorded five tracks, which I still have a cassette with the five tracks on. That's also going into my casket. Oh, with your diaries? With my childhood diaries. You've been keeping a diary? I used to keep a page a day diary from the age of 12 till I was about 32. And how confessional was it? Very, which is why it's going into the casket. But a real writer like you now, one of the world's bestsellers. This should be going to the Harry Ransom Centre at the University of Texas to go into their huge archive.

37:26It's interesting you should mention that because, of course, I was offered money for my archive from several universities, mostly in the States, and instead of which I gifted it to the National Library of Scotland. So they've got all the early jottings and writings, my very first novel unpublished. They've got... I did not give them the diaries. We'll work on that, Ian. Sir Ian we will work on that together privately at a later date because I think we want to see those in the fullness of time when you've gone and when Miranda has gone as well because she must feature She's never seen them She's never seen my diary Has she asked about them?

38:02Oh yeah well yeah I mean she was aware that I write this diary because we met when I was 21 and I wrote the diary until I was 32 Tell us about the moment you met Describe the moment of meeting Miranda Oh gosh let me think we were at university together she was a year above me and our two years would sometimes meet up for tutorials if you were doing the same sort of specialisms and we were both doing American literature as a specialism. So she just seemed an exotic creature, an exotic creature. She was wearing clothes I'd never seen young women of my acquaintance wear before, tweeds and things and long socks and she had very long hair and very pale face, very sharp eyes.

38:45She knew a heck of a lot about everything. She was very worldly. When she left school, she took a gap year and went to work in Shakespeare and Company in Paris and then hitchhiked to Morocco. The bookshop. The bookshop, Shakespeare and Company bookshop, which she introduced me to years later. We worked to her for a short time and got bedbugs together because she slept there as well. And no, so every adventure I then had in life was because Miranda instigated it. And how quickly did you become friends and then lovers? Well, she teases me that we were in the pub one night and she was lunging across me to snog the guy next to me, but fell short.

39:24And that was it. Good line to take. Yeah. But we know the truth. Although I vaguely knew her, I remember I was in my flat, Morrison Street in Edinburgh, and she lived just along the road. And I happened to be looking out the window one day and there was Miranda walking past. And so I opened the window and shouted to her. and she came up for a cup of tea. And that was pretty much the start. Can you, you've almost described it there, the first sort of physical looking into her face and thinking, yes. They often say, don't they, that you're attracted to people who resemble your parents in some way.

40:00I think she had my mother's eyes. I think the same colour eyes as my mum. And the physical resemblance probably ends there. But there was that, I think, was there. You know, just kind of, I don't know, she looked like someone she'd be painting her, you know? Pale face and long brown hair. And although she grew up in Belfast, very English, very English accent. The important thing for me, speaking as a skint working class Scot, was that I could borrow her books. I didn't have to buy any textbooks after that. And she had every book you could want. She had all the books. And then she would be furious at me because, of course, I would write in the margins.

40:38Are you a margin writer? Yes, I'm afraid I am. Yeah, I'm a margin writer. But not in other people's books, except that's part of the ownership of the relationship, is it? Yeah, I guess. I mean, sometimes our son borrows a book from me, and he says, why did you underline that passage? And I go, I've got no idea. Why have you written Yowza in the margin? I don't know. So how quickly did you realise this is going to be it? We are going to be together. Oh, I think it took us a while. I think it took us a little while. Did you drift off? Did you have other girlfriends around the city? We did. She did.

41:06She went to work in Belfast when she finished. She was a year above me, so she finished university a year before me. She got a series of jobs which took her away from Edinburgh and would come back fleetingly or I'd meet her in Belfast. No, she never had another guy in her life and I never had another woman, but we did sort of drift a little bit. But the thing that really cemented our relationship was when I finished uni in the summer of 1982, she'd been working in a bookshop in edinburgh and she'd met someone who knew someone who knew this vineyard come commune in southwest france and she said let's go there and so we went to work in this vineyard for six months um with a bunch of other hippies and reprobates uh you didn't get paid you just got all your meals and you got a very funny experience uh and that was great because we were overseas together.

42:03We had to rely on each other. We went travelling. We went hitchhiking around southern France and northern Italy. So that bonded us. And then when you got married, you lived in France for a while. Well, we lived in London. Yeah, we got married and then we lived in London for four years. And when you got married, everyone knew this was the right thing to do. All your parents, her parents, your parents. Everyone was happy. I mean, her mum was at the wedding. My dad was at the wedding. Yeah, I think so. Sadly, we had to act as translators between our two families because I'm speaking as near to RP English as I can for you today.

42:38Oh, my God. But when I get back to Fife and I'm with my family, you would find me very hard to understand. I'd need the subtitles up, would I? Exactly. So Miranda's mum would be looking at my dad going, what did he just say? How would you tell me off for something? If I'd been your boy, how at home would you have heard me being told off? You'd be saying things like, oh, you're absolutely numpty. You know, what are you doing? What are you doing? Get Ben a scullery. Talk to your ma. I think I've got the flavour of that. I'm a numpty and I'm going to the scullery to talk to my mother. Yeah, we never had a kitchen with a scullery.

43:09It was called a scullery. Very good. So, yeah, there was quite a lot of translation going on, although we were all speaking English. Did you feel you'd achieved above your league? Oh, yeah, very much so. Come on. Do you still feel that? Marrying into a family of English professors. Indeed. And also this beautiful, exotic creature. Yep. No, no. You should be so lucky. Yeah, I did feel lucky. I think her family went, who is this guy? And what did she see in you? What worked for her? That's a very good question. What do you think worked for her? What cards did you play in the early days? I mean, maybe she liked it.

43:43I was trying to be a writer. Yeah. You know? I mean, coming from a family who had studied literature and taught literature, here's someone who's actually going out to try and make literature in some form or another. And when did you start to go beyond the poetry? When did that begin? Postgraduate. At Edinburgh, I did a postgraduate degree, well, PhD, and I was studying Muriel Spark and trying to write a thesis, falling short of writing a thesis. And I wrote a short story for a competition and it won second prize. And then I wrote a short story for another competition and it won first prize and it was published in the Scotsman newspaper.

44:21And I thought, OK, this is what I'm meant to do. I'm not meant to write lyrical poetry. I meant to write prose. Prose is my thing. And then some of the short stories just raged out of control and got so long that I could never publish them as short stories. And one of those became an unpublished novel. And then one after that became a published novel. So I was 25. So I was still at uni. I was still studying for my PhD when the flood came out. And that was February 86. The money ran out for the PhD in May 86. and I got married in July 86 and moved to London where my wife was working as a civil servant.

45:01Gosh. And we lived in Tottenham. And you lived off her? I lived off her. While you went on writing, she supported you. She did. And then how quickly did you have the children? Well, after four years in London, we hated it. You know, London's a tough place to be when you're working and not making a lot of money. We were living in Tottenham. She was working in Victoria Street. I eventually was working in Crystal Palace, which was a 90-minute each-way commute. And what were you doing in Crystal Palace? I was a journalist on a hi-fi magazine reviewing hi-fi equipment. It was a great job. But it was three hours a day of my life was just travelling to and from work.

45:38She said, we've got to get out of this place. And we still had very fond memories of France from our time living on the vineyard. So we started looking for a place and eventually found somewhere in the Perigord, which was a ramshackle farmhouse that an English guy was trying to get rid of. and he said we said look we can't afford to buy it and he said well let's do a deal pay me rent and after four years if you're still keen pay me the residual that it would cost to buy so that was that became the arrangement and then panic stations miranda didn't have a job and i was the breadwinner from writing books and then the kids came along so we moved to france in 1990 first son was born 92, second son born 94.

46:25It was a tough time. Was that the toughest time of your life? Yeah. Well, especially when the younger of our two sons was born with severe special needs. And what does that mean? What are the special needs? He's got a thing called Angelman Syndrome. Angelman Syndrome. No, it's a micro deletion of chromosome 15, I believe. Angel? Angelman. Angelman. Named after a guy called Harry Angelman. The person who discovered it. Harry Angelman. Yeah, yeah. It used to be called Happy Puppet Syndrome in the early days. Very rare. Anyway, Kit is now 32. Can't walk, can't talk, can't feed himself, can't dress himself.

46:59Very happy in an extraordinary care situation in Edinburgh. 20 minutes walk from where we live. Very well looked after. Very busy. They just took him to Legoland Windsor recently for a holiday. But yeah, non-verbal, non-everything. And has Kit defined your life? Well, he led to lots of things. Number one, he led to us moving back to the UK. Because even though Miranda spoke very good French, I should have said, when we moved to France, I could not speak French. And we knew you could speak German, not very well. I could speak a little bit of German. Ein bisschen, ein bisschen mein Herr. But I could pronounce it, I could do the...

47:41We sprechen Deutsch. I could do all that. But yeah, vocabulary, no. But French, no. Miranda was the French speaker. so we go into hospitals to talk to specialists in a specialist medical jargon in a country you don't know in a language you don't know that got very tough very quickly and we said we've got to go we've got to go back so we came back to edinburgh in 1996 and so because i was back in the uk my publishers could suddenly promote me in a way that hadn't been possible they were very frustrated all the time I was in France, they could not, I couldn't go and do stuff for the BBC, I couldn't do stuff for Giles Brandreth, I couldn't go to libraries, bookshops.

48:22So suddenly things clicked. And actually the books, because of Kit, I think, ironically, the books got darker and angrier and more complex and more successful. Explain darker, angrier, more complex in relation to Kit, how you responded, why it made the books like that. Well, writing for me has always been therapy. It's always been a way of exploring the world, making sense of the world, asking big questions about the world and hopefully maybe getting some answers. So I vividly remember the first, when Kit was being diagnosed, the first book, the book I was writing at the time was called The Hanging Garden.

49:01And in it, Rebus's daughter is hit by a car and put in a wheelchair. Because we had learned that Kit probably would never walk. I think, okay, if my son's not walking, your daughter's not walking, pal. so I just channeled all that to him as a way of dealing with it. But you said that, pal, in the way that you're expressing anger rather than saying this is going to be a learning curve for me. You felt anger. Oh, I mean, the universe. You feel anger. Of course you do. You always think, why us? Did your family have any faith as children? My mum and my sister Linda went to church. My sister still goes to church every Sunday.

49:37I vividly remember I was about 12, and my mum sat me down and said, okay and you're 12 years old now you're going to high school you need to decide if you want to keep coming to church with us or stay home with dad and i said oh i think i'll have the extra half hour in bed please thank you very much and that was the end of my church going days so there wasn't faith to fall back on no there was anger there was miranda yeah um and well they were just getting on with it actually you know going back to what you got that scottish word tell us again that your father yeah thrown to be thrown to be stubborn just to keep getting on just got on plow on so I met extraordinary people parents of of children with very severe needs I mean even more severe than my sons who were doing just amazing things that they didn't know they could do you know raising money for wheelchairs if you needed an electric wheelchair there'd be a raffle at the local pub trying to go on holidays trying to find care trying to go through the bureaucratic systems for getting the help you needed I mean these people were were working themselves into the ground to make sure their kids got what they needed.

50:41And how do you keep the balance right so that your other child did not feel that everything's about Kit? This world, Kit is now the world. Yeah. I don't know. We just tried to involve Kit in everything. And I think we were lucky in a way when I was growing up, when I was young, if it was someone with special needs, someone disabled, you never saw them. They were hidden away by their families or they were put in a home somewhere in the middle of nowhere now we're much more used to seeing disabled people young and old on the streets around us as part of the community and so kit we would take him everywhere we would take him to the shops and never never looked to see if people were looking at us weirdly take him on holiday without without blinking an eye so jack our other son just got used to kit being kit you know describe if you can the worst moment during those early years a specific worst moment that you remember?

51:36What comes into your head? I mean, the diagnosis was terrible. Were you in a room? Who was in the room with you? Well, I mean, the main diagnosis came when we got back to Edinburgh and we went to the Children's Hospital in Edinburgh and spoke to a specialist who talked us through and said, you know, Kit is at the bottom of the curve for ability. I mean, there's plenty of Angelman's people out there who can communicate. some even are a little bit verbal a lot of them can walk and they can feed themselves kicks at the bottom of the curve so you can't do any of these things that was tough that was tough uh i remember one day changing these changing them on the floor and my back went and i thought and i was in pain for weeks after that i remember thinking ian one day you're going to be too old for this.

52:33You're, you know, and now he's 32 years old, I can't pick him up. I can't physically pick him up. So that's tough. That first sense of mortality came to me quite young, because I thought there's going to come a time Ian when you aren't able to give him what he needs. And did this bring you more close to Miranda, or were there times when it was very difficult between the two of you? I mean, you know, there was a lot of emotion, a lot of emotional moments. And how are you in emotional moments? Not great. You know, very, very working class Scottish male. What does that mean? It just means you block everything off if you can or you don't show emotion.

53:13To show emotion is to show weakness. So you try not to do it. So you become silent and strong and just carry on. I don't know if you're strong or not, but on the surface, you're just hiding stuff from the world. But Miranda's the opposite. I think that's why we work so well together is that in many ways she's so different from me. so she'll be emotional, I'll be unemotional. She'll start things and I'll finish them. She'll start painting a room and then give up, and I'm the one who's got to finish it for her. So that balancing act, that Jekyll and Hyde, that kind of two sides of the same character, I think that's very complementary.

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55:24Is Kit one of the reasons that you are still together because you could never be apart because of Kit and your obligation to Kit? Well, you know what? It's actually, sadly, quite the opposite. A lot of relationships with people with special needs kids break up because one partner or the other, and it's usually the man, can't take it anymore and they leave. so there's quite a few people we know families of special needs adults and children that are one parent families which makes it even tougher you know it was never going to be the case with us never going to be the case with us but we got lucky that Kit got the care that he needed so that our family wasn't as broken apart as some families do get.

56:14And you got lucky because you became a success as a writer yeah what you did Well, I did, I did. Quite quickly too, wasn't it? No, no, it wasn't at all quickly. I mean, you might think it's quickly. I mean, the first book, I got 200 quid, and it sold about 50 copies. The first Rebus novel, I think I got 500 quid, and it sold probably 50 copies. The Rebus books didn't take off until book number, financially, until book number 10 or 11. Was that Knots and Crosses? Knots and Crosses was the first one, and Black and Blue was the one that won the big prizes and got me noticed. And a couple of books after that, Suddenly I was making money.

56:50And the breakout, when the real money came in, because we're talking now about 35 million books sold around the world, dozens of translations, the TV versions. I mean, it's extraordinary. It is extraordinary. And next year we celebrate 40 years of Rebus. I mean, I would never have dreamed when I invented this character as a student sitting in my digs in Edinburgh. You were a student when you thought of the idea. Yeah. And did you write notes? Did you describe it on a piece of paper? Oh, the very first sheet of A4 paper, lined A4 paper, that just says, main character may be a cop. Yeah, I've still got that.

57:24That was the start of Knots and Crosses. And is the Rebus? I wasn't a fan of detective fiction. I didn't really read detective fiction. Miranda had read Agatha Christie growing up, but I couldn't get on with Agatha Christie. My sister Linda read Agatha Christie. I tried it. I went, this world means nothing to me. I can't relate to this world at all. And the Rebus comes, because you and your dad did crossword puzzles together. Oh, I did crosswords and he would help me out. We'd have a little mini dictionary. We'd do the courier, the Dundee courier quick crossword. It wasn't quick when I started doing it, I'll tell you.

57:54Yeah, never cryptics. I moved on to cryptics when I was a student and I really got into cryptics and I still do a cryptic every day. And that's how the name Rebus came about. Rebus is a picture puzzle, yeah. So I think that's how Rebus came about. It was Inspector Morse, you know, a code. Now we've got Rebus, a puzzle. And now you're going on doing it? Who knows? I mean, I'm a pensioner now, a state pensioner, and it's not getting any easier. What is your routine when you're doing a book? Well, I used to contain a whole book in my head, so I'd sit down and think this is what the book's going to be and just start writing.

58:30And now I can't keep a whole book in my head anymore. My routine is I get an idea, I get a theme, I want to explore, I find a plot, and then I do the research, but I do minimal research to start with. I do most of the research after the first draft is finished because by then I know what I need to know. Not what I might need to know, but what I really do need to know. So you write your story first and then come up with the factual detail that you may need. And the factual detail is important. Well, if you're writing about Edinburgh. Oh, when I make a mistake about Edinburgh, I get, as we say, pelters, which means complaints.

59:06And why is it Edinburgh? Why? Why? I mean, it's a fascinating city. I mean, it's tiny. It's like a TARDIS. It's small on the outside, huge on the inside. You could spend your whole life exploring it. You could walk around it in a day, but spend your whole life exploring it. And it is Jekyll and Hyde. And it is Jekyll and Hyde. It's a city of great wealth and privilege and elitism. And it's also a place of huge social problems. And it's structurally that way. The new town, which represents order, and the old town represents chaos. but also the detective fiction allows me to explore you know themes of masculinity and how do you do that I mean you're conscious of doing that well partly I mean think about the kinds of books that I'm writing I'm writing about a male detective of a certain age who's grown up in a certain way I mean he grew up in the same back with the same background as me working class a bit chippy a chip on the shoulder um thinks he should have gone to college and been clever but he wasn't he didn't get the breaks uh he's investigating crimes which often involve male-on-male violence gangs running drugs that kind of stuff um the way he used the way policing used to operate is no longer viable um i mean i i hang out with a lot of retired cops and i hear some stories that would make your hair stand an end sexism racism you name it partly horrible partly a way of dealing with a job.

1:00:32You know, you've got to joke about it or you would just go mad. So a lot of very off-colour jokes that can only really be told by cops to other cops. You know, the public would not stand for it. But it's a way of dealing with a job and with the stuff they're having to look at and the people they're having to meet every single day. So Rebus is that world, but that world is changing very, very rapidly. So he's almost, he's a dinosaur and he represents the old ways. And I surround him with younger, college-educated cops who've got a very different take on the world. And why are we drawn to him? Why are we drawn to your particular kind of novel?

1:01:11I don't know. I mean, I think he's charismatic. I think he's brooding and he's slightly dangerous, or he was when he was younger. I think he's weirdly attractive to women. I know that because there are lots of women fans. I mean, I can't see what the attraction is, but obviously it's there. Well, this is how we feel about you. You can't see what the attraction is, but even I can. Really? Yeah. Oh, thank you very much. I'll buy you a coffee later. Yeah, more than the coffee I'm after. But are you putting yourself into it, is what I'm really trying to say to you? No, I don't. Obviously, to an extent you are.

1:01:47Not much. I mean, although we've got very similar backgrounds, he's very different. I mean, I'm more like the younger college-educated cops who are a bit wishy-washy and liberal in trying to teach them that the world doesn't operate like that anymore. So a lot of the conversations I have with him in my head are me trying to tell him, look, the world has changed. Your way of doing things doesn't work anymore. And then he'll fight back and say, well, actually, the way I work works perfectly well. I get results. And The Heights, the new one, is a rebus. It's not. Oh, no, my next book, The Heights, is set in London.

1:02:21And it's dark money and oligarchs and Chinese tech bros. and it's this huge shiny London that is lived in or not lived in by people who are basically just salting away their money ill-gotten or otherwise. So it's a huge big apartment block in central London. There's only about 15 people live there. All the other apartments are vacant. It's a motley crew who live there and the night security guard is found dead. and so the police interrupt this very cosy, privileged existence. And has the success of your writing changed you? Are you a different person now? Oh, totally different. I mean, I still drink in the same pub.

1:03:03I still wear the same clothes. I still buy the same music. I still have the same haircut. But I can afford better cars. I can afford better holidays. I can afford care for my son. Yeah, that's the big one. Yeah, it is a big one. Knowing he'll be looked after financially is a big deal for us. I mean, you can actually die. Well, it means you've got to get your wills in place. It means we've got trusts. It means we've got this, we've got that. It means you have to deal with lawyers a lot. But everything, hopefully, is in place. But has it changed your way of being with Miranda, with other people?

1:03:32I don't think so. I mean, I think I've, you know, I don't think I'm so different psychologically from the person I was back in the 80s. I mean, we all feel young, right? I mean, aches and pains, yes. I mean as Leonard Cohen once said I ache in the places where I used to play but I still feel 19 exactly you know you know Oscar Wilde's great line go on the trouble with being old is not the one is old but the one is young yeah I get that yeah I get that I sometimes look and go 66 how did I get to 66 what's the worst of you what's the worst of Ian Rankin er I think I think there's a lot of jealousy hiding away in there.

1:04:18I mean, writers are always very jealous of other writers' success. You know, I mean, again, Dorothy Parker, it's not enough that you succeed, but your friends must fail. So you're always looking at the big deals that are being done and thinking, why not me? Or young writers getting lots of money and thinking, oh, I wish I'd got lots of money when I was young. I would have had that helicopter that I always wanted. And gold-plated pinball machines in every room. thank god i didn't get success young i was well into my 40s before i was making decent money uh in fact that's a moment i remember really well i was on tour in america and there's some seedy motel in the middle of the midwest and i was phoning home and miranda said your your six month royalty statement has come in has been a mistake it's six figures and i went oh yeah they've made they've cocked it up so i phoned my agent and said look my royalty statement has come for my backlist sales, all my old books.

1:05:15This has obviously been a mistake. And I went, no, no. This is everybody who's bought your latest book and likes your character, who now introduced to you are now going back and reading them from book one. And I went, whoa, Miranda, we can move out of that small flat and get ourselves a house. And that was in, that would be in 1997, 98. Congratulations. Good fun. And also congratulations, if I may say so, on all the philanthropy there has been, which we don't need to talk about, but I've read about in doing the homework for this. And you've done good things with your money, not just for your own family and for Kit, but for other people, which is a brilliant thing to do, and I imagine satisfying.

1:05:55It's hugely satisfying. I mean, we've made a few missteps along the way. We decided that giving huge chunks of money to big, well-known charities, it kind of disappears into the maw of the big charity. Giving a small amount to a local charity doing something very specific can make a huge difference. So we tend to give a... We do it three times a year. We get together and we decide which charities are going to get how much money. And it's about 30 or 40 charities each time get a chunk of money. Well done. So, yeah, you're right. I mean, you've got too much money. What are you going to do? We're getting to the end now.

1:06:32Three quick questions. I want whatever comes first into your head, immediately into your head. Can't think about it, just got to say it. A moment of joy Particularly from your earlier years A moment of joy Wow Oh Record shops Going to the record shop And getting the new album From your favourite band And what was your favourite band? The sensational Alex Harvey band In my very early teens Haven't seen them on the old grey whistle test So probably going down to Bruce's record shop in Kirkcaldy And walking in And there's the new Alex Harvey album And you go home On the bus excitedly because you can't wait to get it on and read the lyrics while you listen to the music.

1:07:11That's a lovely moment of joy. A moment now of sadness. Well, I mean, my mum's funeral when I was 19. 19 is very young to lose a parent, I think. And thinking, well, that's childhood gone now. You know, childhood is gone. And thinking I didn't really know enough about her. I didn't know a lot about her early life. She didn't have much family from her early years. She was very much estranged from her dad. He was long dead by this stage. So, yeah, not knowing enough about my mum while I was watching her coffin disappear. If she was coming into the room now, is there something you would say to her now?

1:07:53Yeah, I would say, I love you. Which you didn't really. Which I never did. No. Never did. I think I might have said it to her when she was, you know, when she was very ill and we moved the bed from the upstairs bedroom to the living room because she couldn't manage stairs. I mean, she actually did once say to me, I mean, she was very far gone by this stage. She said, I just want to die. I just wish I could die now. And I was trying to find something reassuring to say to her. I was 18 years old, trying to find something reassuring to say to her. And there was nothing. There was nothing. But in a way you didn't need to say anything, did you?

1:08:30Because she knew you loved her. Yeah, I thought, hopefully, yeah. I'm sure. Okay, what, Ian Rankin, this extraordinary life you've led and are leading, what has life taught you? Oh, I mean, lots to do with just, you know, I mean, cliches like take every opportunity. Don't let stuff pass you by. be aware that you only get I think it's

1:09:05Anthony Bourdain said you only get one go on this rollercoaster this ride doesn't last for long so just enjoy it and there's something to be said for that he was an extraordinary character I met him a few times yeah I mean people always ask me what's your writing tips and I go just write lots, read lots, get lucky, stay lucky. Your books are full of darkness. Give me to end with a beautiful moment, either from your life or a beautiful line of poetry that you've written or that you love, from the darkness of your world, that when you're writing, there must be a lot of darkness going on because of some of the things that happen in the stories.

1:09:49Give me a little moment of beauty for us to finish with. A moment of beauty. A moment of beauty Jeez You know, you've caught me You've caught me If you give me long enough, I'm thinking the Van Morrison lyric perhaps Maybe John Martin actually John Martin, a terrific complex singer-songwriter with a very dark life But producing beautiful music And he had a song about a friend, his song's called Solid Air I'm not going to remember the lyrics but I would say to everybody just go and listen to that song and that is a few minutes of absolute musical beauty Very good Sir Ian Rankin thank you very much Giles it's been an absolute pleasure thank you

1:10:43Well I love that conversation with Ian Rankin it was the last of our conversations recorded in Edinburgh I'm sure we'll be back in Edinburgh probably back in New York. There's talk of us going to LA soon and I can't wait to get to Australia because having met the actor Geoffrey Rush he mentioned lots of interesting Australian people that we must go and have conversations with. If you enjoyed hearing Ian Rankin and want to drop us a line the address is simply hello at rosebudpodcast.com I found the conversation with Ian Rankin really quite moving as you could tell and when he talked about his mother's funeral I immediately into my head came my father's funeral and the moment that my mother passed my father's coffin and touched the side of it and that picture of my mother touching the side of my dad's coffin often comes into my head anyway here is an email and I don't know whether Harriet Jane our producer chose this deliberately because it's about a funeral or not but it's an interesting email and it comes from Charlotte Sheehan.

1:11:54My name is Charlotte, she writes. I'm 33 and my very first memory is of Princess Diana's passing. I would have been around four and a half when I threw a rose onto Princess Diana's hearse from a bridge in St Albans along the M1. It was the first time someone explained to me that we don't all live forever. I remember asking my mum, where is the princess going? Mum told me. She's being driven to heaven. I remember the police motorbikes, the sea of people walking along the motorway, and the strange absence of cars. There were so many people, and yet everyone was completely silent. But what I remember most vividly is the hearse.

1:12:40I remember the deep, rich colours of the large royal standard draped over it, and thinking to myself, I can't believe that lovely blonde lady is inside. She really is in there. It's such a tiny snapshot from when I was four, but somehow it has stayed with me all these years, a little girl witnessing a huge moment in history without really understanding its enormity, but knowing that something incredibly sad had happened. Well, I have to say, I think, Charlotte, that's a very evocative memory and well interestingly enough i re-watched our conversation our rosebud conversation with charles spencer diana's brother the other day because following on from that conversation my publisher dan bunyard got in touch with charles spencer and said let's please do you want to put some of this into a book your recollections of your sister diana and he's done so.

1:13:40So that's going to be one of this autumn's books, I think. So if you haven't seen the episode with Charles Spencer, really do. It's completely fascinating. And it's obviously not all about Diana. It's about Charles Spencer and his life, his family, particularly the hardships of his childhood. I think you'll find it very intriguing. There are now hundreds of interviews in our backlist. You can find them by going to our website, which is simply rosebudpodcast.co.uk. and there are about 50 of them, I think, now on YouTube. And if you go to YouTube, you can find a whole range of conversations, including maybe the one with Charles Spencer there, and you can actually see them.

1:14:19I find actually watching them is a bit different from listening to them. So, you know, do one or the other or both. Anyway, I hope you continue to enjoy Rosebud. If you've enjoyed an episode, if there's an opportunity to leave a comment, we love that. We like to spread the word, because we know that word of mouth is the way that something like Rosebud has grown into what it is now. a podcast that is listened to around the world with millions of downloads. We are very proud of that, but we know it wouldn't happen if it weren't for you listening and for people like Ian Rankin, who doesn't need the publicity.

1:14:51He has sold 35 million books. He doesn't need the coverage that he has come in today to chat to me about his life. I find, well, I'm very grateful. So my thanks to Sir Ian and indeed to Charles Spencer and all the other people who have contributed to Rosebud over the past three years or so. and thank you most of all for listening. My thanks also to Alec Cadell, who does the editing often, and to our producer and the co-creator of Rosebud, my friend Harriet Jane. From me and Plain Jane Productions, this is Rosebud for this week. We'll be back on Tuesday, and if you belong to the family, you might even listen to us on Sunday.

1:15:31Bye for now, and cue the music.

1:15:42Thank you.

1:16:35The End in the McDonald's app. Get your bag. No purchase necessary. 50 U.S. and D.C. age 18 plus. See play at mcd.com for rules and play at mcd.com slash A-M-O-E for info and playing without purchase by mail by November 2nd. Chance card game ends November 8th. Game ends November 22nd, 2026. See rules for prize details. Monopoly is a registered trademark of Hasbro.