From Scenes Like These

by Gordon M. Williams

Overview

SHORTLISTED FOR THE FIRST EVER BOOKER PRIZE

'A MASTERPIECE. . . DEMANDS TO BE READ' - DOUGLAS STUART, AUTHOR OF SHUGGIE BAIN

It’s the west of Scotland in the 1950s. New houses are going up. Factories are opening.

But Dunky Logan, a 15-year-old brought up in a tenement flat in working-class Kilcaddie, is ditching school to be a labourer on a local farm. Dead set on becoming a hard case, he wants to work shoulder to shoulder with so-called real men.

Irish Catholic Mary O’Donnell arrives at the farmhouse as the new maid. She is pregnant - no boyfriend in sight. But she’s smart, and she has a plan to get herself up in the world.

As Dunky is swallowed up by a vicious cycle of violence, betrayal, and booze, Mary becomes entangled in a savage family feud.

Now there’s no going back, not for either of them.

'A devastating study of 1950s Scottish adolescence . . . a genuine lost classic just waiting to be rediscovered by a new generation of readers' - DJ Taylor, author of Orwell: The New Life

With an introduction by James Robertson

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781035073566
Publisher:	Pan Macmillan
Publication date:	02/10/2026
Pages:	352
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 8.00(h) x 1.00(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Gordon Williams was born in Paisley in 1934. He wrote for television and was the author of several novels, including From Scenes Like These, which was shortlisted for the first Booker Prize in 1969, Walk Don't Walk, Big Morning Blues, The Camp, The Man Who Had Power Over Women, and The Siege of Trencher's Farm, which was made into the film Straw Dogs. He was also the ghostwriter for the autobiographies of footballers Bobby Moore, Terry Venables and Tommy Docherty. He died in 2017.

Editorial Reviews

An elegy to ordinary lives. A forgotten classic entirely deserving of a place in the canon of great social realism novels of the twentieth century. A raw, unsparing tale of coming of age, of masculinity in crisis, of farm workers holding on as post-war Britain encroaches upon them . . . A masterpiece of time and place that looks you square in the eye and demands to be read” —Douglas Stuart, Booker Prize winning author of Shuggie Bain

“A devastating study of 1950s Scottish adolescence by one of the most consummate stylists of the whole post-war era. From Scenes Like These is a genuine lost classic just waiting to be rediscovered by a new generation of readers” —DJ Taylor, author of Orwell: The New Life

“'What impresses most is its harsh authenticity . . . Williams gets across the pains and perplexities of adolescent desire, guilt and aspiration convincingly and without literary frills'” —New Statesman

“'Raw and vigorous, harsh and authentic'” —Sunday Times

“'A remarkable talent'” —Times Literary Supplement

“'A rare, raw, meaty novel'” —Sunday Telegraph

“'A deep insight into the springs of violence'” —The Guardian

From the Publisher