Out and About…

Andrew Murray Scott is an established author of four published (and five self-published) novels, ten non fiction book titles and a collection of poetry. He has an extensive record of publication of short stories, prose, book reviews and journalistic features mainly for Scottish newspapers and journals over four decades and undertakes public book events and school visits. He is listed in Live Literature Scotland’s author database:  https://www.scottishbooktrust.com/authors/andrew-murray-scott

Andrew’s literary career was kick-started in 1999 when his novel manuscript Tumulus was selected from 84 entries as the winner of the inaugural £6000 Dundee Book Prize. The prestigious award ceremony lunch in which Scotland’s Makar, Liz Lochhead presented Andrew with the trophy and cheque, featured on the Scottish six o’clock TV news and he was then widely tipped for literary success. https://app.dundee.ac.uk/pressreleases/prfeb00/tumulus.htm

When the prize-winning novel was published by Polygon some ten months later in 2000 and went on general sale it began to sell and proved much less predictable than the cynical press pack had expected. In cricketing terms it bowled them a ‘googly’. For Tumulus was nothing less than a post-modern re-imagining of 1970s counter-culture in Dundee and the area’s Pictish past following victory over the Romans at Mons Graupius. Reviews began to appear and  while some reviewers had clearly expected a McGonagalesque melodrama involving jute, jam, witches and Oor Wullie’s part in the fall of the Tay Rail Bridge, one thing they all concurred on was that the work was lively, erudite, scabrously funny and for the first time in a novel, featured dialogue in phonetic Dundonian dialect, although this bold innovation was derided by critic Hannah McGill. Polygon followed the novel with a second, Estuary Blue in 2001. A third novel, The Mushroom Club was going through the presses when Polygon was taken over and later appeared in 2007 under the Twa Corbies imprint, while a fourth, The Big J (pronounced Jye), was published by Steve Savage Publishers in 2008.  A modest collection of poetry, Dancing Underwater was published by Cateran Press in 2009. 

As an independent author and freelance journalist, Andrew has supplemented his writing with various paid employments, initially working in factories, hotels, bars, a psychiatric unit, building sites, bookshops and oil yards, though after meeting Frances (who later became his wife) he was accepted as a mature student at Dundee University and obtained an MA with first-class honours in English and Modern History in 1997, also winning the Sam Selvon Prize for English. For nine years he worked fulltime or part-time as a media and comms lecturer and as information officer in the voluntary sector before being headhunted in 2007 for a new post of media officer for  initially three, then four politicians in two parliaments.

Leaving this busy post in 2017 to return to writing fulltime, he began a series of provocative and pacy political thrillers, the Willie Morton Investigations series, (under the slightly-truncated pen-name of Andrew Scott, which he thought would look better on the front jacket). The first two titles, Deadly Secrecy and Scotched Nation were published in February and October 2019, with Scotched Nation also available as an audiobook, narrated by former BBC presenter David Sillars. Oblivion’s Ghost was launched online in June 2020 and a fourth, Sovereign Cause appeared in June 2021. In 2024, Deadly Secrecy was the first to be relaunched with wider bookshop distribution by Lomond Books, along with a brand-new retrospective second title in the series, Suspect Loyalties. These have attracted positive reviews in newspapers and online, with ‘shout lines’ from Lesley Riddoch, Alan Riach, Billy Kay and Alastair Mabbott of The Herald. Readers like the insouciant cheekiness, the irony and the subtle knowing humour of the novels whose protagonist Willie Morton stalks the undergrowth of the Scottish independence debate. The urbane Morton, a rugby man and FP of George Watson’s is often in conflict with a British establishment that remains permanently outraged by the prospect of constitutional change in Scotland. Morton battles these monstrous proxies of the State and survives to tell the tale. So far! The series is available in paperback in selected bookshops and online and as Kindle eBooks and can be ordered directly from his Amazon author page: https://amzn.to/2ZTuoCV

Andrew is also the author of ten published non-fiction books including  highly-regarded biographies of Alexander Trocchi (‘excellent’ Colin Wilson, Literary Review), and John Graham of Claverhouse, both of which have been reprinted. Several commissioned books on the local history and culture of the city of Dundee have proved popular and, reprinted many times, these evergreen titles have been fixtures on bookshop shelves over decades.

Andrew has had a parallel career in media, having worked as a freelance journalist in the late 1980s to the mid-1990s (mainly writing for The Herald, Scotsman, Sunday Herald and Scotland on Sunday), with a stint as book reviewer at the Sunday Herald. During his nine years in the FE sector he worked as tutor to an evening class in creative writing. He presently writes a culture column for the monthly newspaper Scots Independent.

Andrew’s main interest is fiction writing. He is a member of the Society of Authors, Scottish P.E.N., the Federation of Scottish Writers and is a long-term former member of the N.U.J.

‘The Andrew Murray Scott Collection’  of his books, letters and manuscripts is held by University of Dundee Archives Services:

https://archiveshub.jisc.ac.uk/search/archives/6113ef47-3f03-36f8-ae70-8340d217b611  

More biographical  information from: 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Murray_Scott

The List magazine produced a booklet: 100 Best Scottish Books of all time, edited by Professor Willy Maley of Glasgow University in 2005. Tumulus was listed in “The Other 100” and his work on Alexander Trocchi and Dundee culture has been acknowledged in various compendium volumes of Scottish literature, including Alan Riach’s Scottish Literature: An Introduction (2022).