Her life makes an amazing story, one you would not credit if offered as an 'Angela's Ashes' spin-off.

This is partly because she published relatively little, partly because so much of her work was done for the fine but now unfashionable medium of radio, partly because. I have to try to connect them, and include also one of the most gifted Scottish writers of the last century, and one at least until very recently shamefully neglected. She was a spell-binder, maybe a witch.īut what connection does that Jessie Kesson have with the young girl in the orphanage in 'The White Bird Passes'? The one who declared to the orphanage trustees on their last visit before her 16th birthday: Yet she'd tried hard, and successfully, to find new things to say to us.

That was the Jessie Kesson I met in 1985, on a hectic day at the Book Festival, when she'd reluctantly agreed to be interviewed on tape before continuing a heavy day with an appointment at STV. (Quoted by Isobel Murray in 'Jessie Kesson: Writing her Life,' 2000) She takes small steps, always loses her way, heads off in an instant for the wrong door, chain-smokes all day, dribbles ash all over herself and clothes – and just makes you want to take care of her. She always fits a joke in and laughs herself speechless frequently, nudging up her glasses with the act of dabbing a Kleenex at her eyes. Out tumbles history, stories, experiences. She is nervous and covers it with verbosity and enthusiasm – verbose she may be but she is a spell binder.

She talks endlessly, never-never stops, a hoarse, rough voice, a groan above a whisper, but excited as if she fears time may not allow her to finish. But then she leans over and puts her hand on my arm, and quotes, 'But I laugh that I weep not.' Her memory is awesome. I've met only two or three people who regularly laugh so much tears stream down their cheeks, but none who do so as regularly nor as copiously as Jessie Kesson. Jessie Kesson has so much fun in her she is a one-woman riot. I met her four years earlier, but cannot better the description he confided to his journal: Alastair Scott, travel writer and photographer, did not meet Jessie Kesson until 1989, when she was 73.

The House of Winter by Isobel Bird