In the essay "Modern Scottish Novels" (Time and Tide, 19 April 1952) Fred Urquhart praises George Douglas Brown's savage work The House with the Green Shutters (1901) for giving "a picture of Scotland as it too often was--and still is," adding that realism in Scottish writing had gone even further since this violation of the falsely glowing picture painted by the Kailyard School (a group of Scottish writers who exploited a sentimental, romantic image of small-town life). Much of that advance is due to Urquhart's work, which for more than five decades has truthfully and revealingly illustrated the lives of the working people of Scotland, both rural and urban. His greatest achievement has been his brilliant use of dialogue to create a host of living characters: frequently women, old people, children, and other victims of social oppression.

He employs a detailed, realistic style to illustrate their lives in a way that...