List of Literary Non-fiction Texts

7/27/2019 List of Literary Non-fiction Texts

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Angelou, Maya I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Bauby, J D The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

Bryson, Bill Notes from a Small Island, Down Under, Notes from a Big Country

Cook, Alastair Americas Days of Terror, Letters from America

Dahl, Roald Going Solo

Eames, Andrew The 8.55 to Baghdad

Ferris, Stewart Dont Mention the War! A Shameful, European Rail Adventure

Gray, Muriel Sandstone Vistas

Hawks, Tony Various

Keane, Fergal Spiritual Damage

Keeble, Alexandra Che Guevara: the Motorcycle Diaries

Lee, Laurie Cider with Rosie

MacArthur, Ellen Race Against Time

McCourt, Frank Angelas Ashes, Tis

Moore, Michael Downsize This! DUDE: Wheres my Country?

Orwell, George Essays, various

Paulsen, Gary Pilgrimage on a Steel Ride

Pelzer, David A Boy Called It

Reid, Piers Paul Alive

Ridley, Matt Genome

Simpson, Joe Touching the Void

Seierstad, Asne The Bookseller of Kabul

Stephenson, Pamela Billy, Bravemouth (both of these with health warnings)

Szpilman, Wladyslaw The Pianist

Yen Mah, Adeline Falling Leaves

Adie, Kate Nobodys Child, From Our Correspondent

Amis, Martin Experience


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Brittain, Vera Testament of Youth

Burchill, Julie On Beckham

Diamond, John C: Because Even Cowards Get Cancer

Fiennes, Ranulph Beyond the Limits, Living Dangerously

Fry, Stephen Moab is my Washpot

Holloway, Richard Looking in the Distance: The Human Search for Meaning

James, Clive The Meaning of Recognition: New Essays(20012005), Snake Charmers in

Texas, Even as We Speak, Unreliable Memoirs

Keane, Fergal All These People: A Memoir

Keenan, Brian An Evil Cradling, Between Extremes: A Journey Beyond

McCarthy, John Imagination

Kennedy, Helena Just Law

Kureishi, Hanif Dreaming and Scheming: Reflections on Writing and Politics

Morrison, Blake When Did You Last See Your Father?, If

ORourke, P J Peace Kills

Holidays in Hell Eat the Rich

Pilger, John Heroes, Tell me no Lies: Investigative Journalism and Its Triumphs

Robertson, James A Scots Parliament, (in Scots from Itchy Coo Publishers)

Scott, Paul H (Ed) Spirits of the Age: Scottish Self-Portraits

Self, Will Junk Mail, Feeding Frenzy

Snow, Jon Shooting History: A Personal Journey

Theroux, Paul The Old Patagonian Express, The Great Railway Bazaar, Riding the Iron

Rooster

Thubron, Colin Behind the Wall, In Siberia


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Text 1: Life is the Clay

John Byrne

John Byrne is a playwright and artist who was born in Paisley in 1940. His best known play is The Slab

Boys, set in Stoddarts carpet factory in Elderslie and based on his own experiences working therebefore, and after, going to the Glasgow School of Art. His best known work for television is probably

Tutti Frutti the story of a Glasgow rock band torn between fame and self-destruction which

starred Robbie Coltraine as the lead singer and Richard Wilson as their manager.

Byrne is well known internationally as an artist and his work can be found in major galleries both in

Britain and abroad. Perhaps the John Byrne painting which most people recognise instantly is the

portrait of Billy Connolly which can be seen at the Peoples Palace Museum in Glasgow.

In the following short autobiographical sketch, Byrne reflects on his development as an artist and

playwright over a period of about twenty years from the ages of 18 to 37.

It was 1958 and I was in London, living in Harlesden and working undercover as a Counter Clerk

(Temporary Grade) at the Labour Exchange in Medina Road, Holloway. It was the dullest job in

Christendom but it did allow me the opportunity to trawl the galleries of Cork Street and its environs

in search of that ladder of legend upon which I could set a toe. Prior to my unlucky break in securing

that position with the Civil Service I had borrowed enough money from my pal Peter ONeil to

purchase a tin box of watercolours from the toy shop underneathhis mothers flat in Harlesden

High Street and with the help of a tin of boot polish, a small rectangle of plywood prised from the

skirting board of their bathroom, and some Brasso, managed to paint a circus scene of such glowing

intensity that I had no qualms about hawking it around the fashionable galleries of Mayfair on my

Saturdays off from work in the certain knowledge that not only would I get a foothold on that first

rung but I would be scaling the ladder at such a rate that there was a definite danger that I might

disappear into the clouds and be celebrated only after my death. I was 18.

TEXT

Ten years later the penny dropped. I was working as a Carpet Designer with my old sparring partner

A F Stoddard & Co in Elderslie, having gone through Glasgow School of Art, been to Italy on a

scholarship, got married and had two small children, been accepted for the Painting School at the

Royal College of Art (I was to share accommodation with a chap called Henk Onrust at their Halls of

Residence) but hadnt gone I discovered years later that the then Director of Glasgow School ofArt, HJefferson Barnes, had paid me the huge, albeit back-handed, compliment of informing the

Bursar at the RCA, when asked to provide me with a letter of recommendation for a College grant

that would see my family and me through the Painting School, that there is nothing more that you

can teach him, thus putting the kybosh on that particular source ofrevenue (for which I say a prayer

of thanksgiving each night) and was not enjoying it one bit. What to do? I had by this time

realised that those London galleries Id visited my little circus upon were but shops, each with a

particular clientele to be catered for with a particular kind ofpainting. Id been back and forth to the

metropolis in the intervening years and the glowing reviews I read in the art columns of the Sunday

Times and the Observer never squared for me with the stuff on the walls.


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The smell of stinking fish? I thought Id give it another go and set about making another little

picture. Under the desk in the Design Studio in the Carpet Works. Of course, nowadays, it probably

would be stinking fish but then it was a little painting of a man in a panama hat holding a bunch of

flowers in the naif style. Id come across a feature in one ofthe colour supplements about the

Innocent Eye self-taught painters and primitives and recognised that what one needed was a

hook. Ifyou could say that you were an ex-prisoner or a one-legged Trappist monk this was a hook

the gallery could hang the show on. We had all of us while at Art School subscribed to the ridiculous

notion that if one hadnt made it by the time one was 25 that was it oblivion and Hell mend one. I

was already 27 by this time. My days were numbered and then some. Six months on and I was dead

meat. Never mind how it was accomplished. Never mind to what lengths one had to go. Better a

One Hit Wonder than a Nobody, right? I picked the Portal Gallery in Mayfair. Wrote them a covering

letter with The Man in the Panama Hat (in the naif style), said it was painted by my 72 year-old

father, an ex-busker, signed it with his name Patrick. Got a letter by return. Rather a dry letter but

they were interested to know how to get in touch with my father and whether he had produced

any other paintings. I wrote back saying that he was at his beach hut in Dunoon and that I wasacting on his behalf and yes, he did have more paintings. Quite a lot of them. Enough for a show,

certainly. My father was summoned to Mayfair. I went in his stead. Confessed to the ruse. The

gallery said theyd already twigged but I could tell from the wheelchair that had met me off the bus

and the uncorked bottle of Sanotogen Tonic Wine on the reception desk that they were fibbing. In

the interests of fame and commerce we arrived at an understandingif I didnt say too much to the

press then they wouldnt either. Patricks debut show was a sell-out bought by the rich and

famous, reviewed in the pages of Apollo (in exchange for two tickets for Oh, Calcutta, the hit show

of the moment), celebrated in Vogue with a photograph by David Bailey, and eventually undone in

the Letters page of the Observer where the Registrar of Glasgow School of Art, on the instruction of

my nemesis, the aforementioned H Jefferson Barnes, revealed the true identity of the guilty

innocent. Again, the trademark backhanded compliment the most sophisticated student to

pass through the Mackintosh building since Joan Eardley winner of the coveted Bellahouston

Award ... but the damage was done, my cover blown. I had fallen among thieves. Sold my birthright

for a mess of potage. What to do now??

In 1977 I sent off a theatre script to the doyenne of play agents, Peggy Ramsay. It was called

Writers Cramp and featured one Francis Seneca McDade, a self-styled author with a big hit for

himself whose lack of success in the literary world, despite his obvious genius, resulted in penury,

forcing him to turn his hand to painting (at which he was that rara avis, a genuine primitive) under

the nom de pinceau Sconey Semple, a one-eyed illiterate whose seminal work George the Baptist

painted on the inside of a kettle using specially-designed brushes was bought for the nation and

is now on display at the McDade Memorial Archive, Shoogly Walk, Barrhead.

I was once told by Robin Philipson the then Head of Painting at Edinburgh College of Art where Id

transferred for my Third Year from Glasgow, that once Id rid my work of its vulgarity I might have

the opportunity of becoming a proper painter. I hadnt the gumption then to tell him that

vulgarity and life were to me synonymous. I have acquired that gumption now, though. I would

never have become a playwright nor, in my own estimation at least, a better painter (i.e. a painter

from the life), had I not been something of a vulgarian. My work is suffused with the vulgar. I have

no time for ivory-tower-ism. The worthy the dead hand. What is Art if not the embodiment,

distillation, and celebration of Life itself? We are born with gifts and weaknesses the great


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triumph as I see it is to turn our weaknesses, our foibles, our failings, through our work as artists into

something other.

Life is the clay Art is the vessel.

Life is the Clay Student activities

Activity 1

Having read John Byrnes account of his career development over 20 years, which of the following

words do you think describe the character who comes across in the writing. You may choose more

than one but you must be prepared to justify your opinion by reference to the text.

Conventional

Unconventional

Big-headed

Manic

Adventurous

Talented

Other?

Activity 2

(a)

Writers of non-fiction often include some very specific detail in order to emphasise the fact that

theyre writing about real events rather than just making up a story.

Identify three examples of this in Byrnes writing. What makes it real for you?

(b)

Sometimes writers of non-fiction embellish the truth with imaginative add-ons. One well-known

writer has said that the minute you start using personal experience in your writing, you start

inventing.

Are there any bits of John Byrnes story which you think might have been invented?

Why do you think this?

What effect is created bythese inventions?

Activity 3

Re-read the first paragraph.

(a)


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Byrne says that, when he was 18, he was working undercover in a Labour Exchange.

What do you think the phrase working undercover tells us about how he saw himself at the time?

(b)

In the course of this paragraph, Byrne uses an extended metaphor. Can you identify this metaphor

and explain why combined with his notion of being undercover it is effective in describing the

author at 18?

Activity 4

The second paragraph is very long and, for the first half at least, quite complex. This is because

Byrne packs in a great deal of detail about his life in the ten years between the ages of 18 and 27.

(During which he didnt become a legend!)He begins by saying, Ten years later the penny dropped.

(When someone says this they usually mean that theyve finally realised something.) Several lines

later we find out that what Byrne had realised was that he wanted to get on with his life as an artistand to do this he needed a hook, some sort of gimmick, which would get people interested in his

paintings.

Lets look at the summary of the ten years, focusing on how John Byrne felt about his life at the time

and how he feels about events looking back on them.

(a)

He tells us that he had gone through Glasgow School of Art and then got a job as a Carpet Designer

with A F Stoddart & Co in Elderslie, describing this carpet firm as his old sparring partner. What do

you think the phrase old sparring partner tell us about his attitude to his job?

(b)

A feature of Byrnes writing style is his use of parenthesis. Parenthesis is when a writer adds

additional information which isnt strictly necessary into a sentence to help make things clearer.

If you remove a parenthesis, the sentence should still make sense without it.

Sometimes parenthesis is signalled by using commas, sometimes by using dashes and sometimes by

using brackets. The second sentence of paragraph 2 is 13 lines long and contains one huge

parenthesis. Without this parenthesis, the sentence would still make sense and would read like this:

I was working as a Carpet Designer with my old sparring partner A F Stoddart & Co in Elderslie and

was not enjoying it one bit.

When you take the parenthesis into account:

, having gone to Glasgow School of Art . . . thanksgiving each night)

you realise that Byrne has used this to pack in a lot of extra detail about his life over the period of

the ten years hes referring to.


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In fact, when you look more closely at this giant parenthesis, you realise that there are several

smaller parentheses inside it.

How many smaller parentheses can you find?

List all the extra things that we find out from the parentheses.

How does this extra information add to our understanding ofthe character?

Activity 5

(a)

Not getting a grant to go to the Royal College of Art, actually brought about a turning point in

Byrnes life and that is why he isthankful. He asked the question What to do? and came to the

conclusion that he needed that hook.

What hook did he come up with?

Why did he think this was a good hook?

What does this tell you about his views of the art establishment at the time?

(b)

His hook worked for a while until, for the second time in his life, his nemesis H Jefferson Barnes

intervened and brought about another turning pointWhat to do now?

Do you know or can you find out what a nemesis is?

What did Byrne do now?

Can you see any parallels here?

Activity 6

In the final two paragraphs, Byrne reflects on what he calls the vulgar being at the heart of his art

both his painting and his writing.

(a)

Read the second last paragraph, the one which begins I was once told by Robin Philipson . . .

Explain, with close reference to the text, why John Byrne sees being something of a vulgarian as

being so important.

Can you see any links between this point of view and what hes told us about himself earlier?

(b)

The final paragraph is a single metaphor which sums up John Byrnes message:

Life is the clayArt is the vessel.


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Can you explain this metaphor?

How does it connect with the previous paragraph?

How effective do you find it in terms of the piece as a whole?

Finally, Byrne talks about painting in the naif style. It could probably be said that he also writes in a

naif style.

Text 2: Letter to Daniel

Fergal Keane

The following letter by Fergal Keane to his newborn son was broadcast on the BBC Radio 4

programme, From our own Correspondent. As a BBC foreign correspondent, Keane has reported,

first hand, from various international crisis areas including Northern Ireland, Southern Africa

and Asia. His reporting has been honoured with an Amnesty International Press award and an OBE

for services to journalism. His book on Rwanda, Season of Blood, won the George Orwell Prize for

political writing.

Hong Kong, February 1996

Daniel Patrick Keane was born on 4 February, 1996.

My dear son, it is six oclock in the morning on the island of Hong Kong.

You are asleep cradled in my left arm and I am learning the art of one-handed typing. Your mother,

more tired yet more happy than Ive ever known her, is sound asleep in the room next door and

there is a soft quiet in our apartment.

Since youve arrived, days have melted into night and back again and we are learning a new

grammar, a long sentence whose punctuation marks are feeding and winding and nappy changing

and these occasional moments of quiet.

When youre older well tell you that you were born in Britains last Asian colony in the lunar year of

the pig and that when we brought you home, the staff of our apartment block gathered to wish you

well. Its aboy, so lucky, so lucky. We Chinese love boys, they told us. One man said you were the

first baby to be born in the block in the year of the pig. This, he told us, was good Feng Shui, in otherwords a positive sign for the building and everyone who lived there.

Naturally your mother and I were only too happy to believe that. We had wanted you and waited for

you, imagined you and dreamed about you and now that you are here no dream can do justice to

you. Outside the window, below us on the harbour, the ferries are ploughing back and forth to

Kowloon. Millions are already up and moving about and the sun is slanting through the tower blocks

and out on to the flat silver waters of the South China Sea. I can see the trail of a jet over Lamma

Island and, somewhere out there, the last stars flickering towards the other side of the world.

We have called you Daniel Patrick but Ive been told by my Chinese friends that you should have aChinese name as well and this glorious dawn sky makes me think well call you Son of the Eastern


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Star. So that later, when you and I are far from Asia, perhaps standing on a beach some evening, I

can point at the sky and tell you of the Orient and the times and the people we knew there in the

last years of the twentieth century.

Your coming has turned me upside down and inside out. So much that seemed essential to me has,

in the past few days, taken on a different colour. Like many foreign correspondents I know, I havelived a life that, on occasion, has veered close to the edge: war zones, natural disasters, darkness in

all its shapes and forms.

In a world of insecurity and ambition and ego, its easy to be drawn in, to take chances with our lives,

to believe that what we do and what people say about us is reason enough to gamble with death.

Now, looking at your sleeping face, inches away from me, listening to your occasional sigh and

gurgle, I wonder how I could have ever thought glory and prizes and praise were sweeter than life.

And its also true that I am pained, perhaps haunted is a better word, by the memory, suddenly so

vivid now, of each suffering child I have come across on my journeys. To tell you the truth, its nearlytoo much to bear at this moment to even think of children being hurt and abused and killed. And

yet, looking at you, the images come flooding back. Ten-year-old Andi Mikail dying from napalm

burns on a hillside in Eritrea, how his voice cried out, growing ever more faint when the wind blew

dust on to his wounds. The two brothers, Domingo and Juste, in Menongue, southern Angola. Juste,

two years old and blind, dying from malnutrition, being carried on seven-year-old Domingos back.

And Domingos words tome, He was nice before, but now he has the hunger.

Last October, in Afghanistan, when you were growing inside your mother, I met Sharja, aged twelve.

Motherless, fatherless, guiding me through the grey ruins of her home, everything was gone, she

told me. And I knew that, for all her tender years, she had learned more about loss than I wouldlikely understand in a lifetime.

There is one last memory, of Rwanda, and the churchyard of the parish of Nyarubuye where, in a

ransacked classroom, I found a mother and her three young children huddled together where theyd

been beaten to death. The children had died holding on to their mother, that instinct we all learn

from birth and in one way or another cling to until we die.

Daniel, these memories explain some of the fierce protectiveness I feel for you, the tenderness and

the occasional moments of blind terror when I imagine anything happening to you. But there is

something more, a story from long ago that I will tell you face to face, father and son, when you are

older. Its a very personal story but its part of the picture. It has to do with the long lines of blood

and family, about our lives and how we can get lost in them and, if were lucky, find our way out

again into the sunlight.

It begins thirty-five years ago in a big city on a January morning with snow on the ground and a

woman walking to the hospital to have her first baby. She is in her early twenties and the city is still

strange to her, bigger and noisier than the easy streets and gentle hills of her distant home. Shes

walking because there is no money and everything of value has been pawned to pay for the alcohol

to which her husband has become addicted.

On the way, a taxi driver notices her sitting, exhausted and cold, in the doorway of a shop and he

takes her to hospital for free. Later that day, she gives birth to a baby boy and, just as you are to me,


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he is the best thing she has ever seen. Her husband comes that night and weeps with joy when he

sees his son. He is truly happy. Hungover, broke, but in his own way happy, for they were both

young and in love with each other and their son.

But, Daniel, time had some bad surprises in store for them. The cancer of alcoholism ate away at the

man and he lost his family. This was not something he meant to do or wanted to do, it just was.When you are older, my son, you will learn about how complicated life becomes, how we can lose

our way and how people get hurt inside and out. By the time his son had grown up, the man lived

away from his family, on his own in a one-roomed flat, living and dying for the bottle.

He died on the fifth of January, one day before the anniversary of his sons birth, all those years

before in that snowbound city. But his son was too far away to hear his last words, his final breath,

and all the things they might have wished to say to one another were left unspoken.

Yet now, Daniel, I must tell you that when you let out your first powerful cry in the delivery room of

the Adventist Hospital and I became a father, I thought of your grandfather and, foolish though itmay seem, hoped that in some way he could hear, across the infinity between the living and the

dead, your proud statement of arrival. For if he could hear, he would recognise the distinct voice of

family, the sound of hope and new beginnings that you and all your innocence and freshness have

brought to the world.

Letter to Daniel Student activities

Audience and purpose

When writers plan their work, there are three basic questions they have to consider:

Who am I in this piece, myself or some other character?

Persona

Who am I writing for?

Audience

What effect do I want my writing to have on the reader?

Purpose

The answers to these questions help authors determine which form of writing or which genre they

should adopt.

Letter to Daniel is a non-fiction text and in non-fiction we would normally expect authors to write

as themselves rather than to adopt a different persona.

However, audience and purpose in non-fiction will vary and are extremely important. So, whether

we are reading an extract from a longer piece in order to answer interpretation questions, or

whether we are studying a complete work of non-fiction we should be thinking, as we read:

Who is this aimed at?


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Why has the author written this?

Activities 1 and 2 which follow, are designed to get you thinking about purpose and audience and, in

doing so, come to an understanding ofwhat Fergal Keane set out to achieve in his writing. Youll

work in pairs or groups to begin with, before whole-class discussion on the issues.

Activity 1

The piece is addressed to My dear son and the narrative technique is that of a letter, speaking, at

all times, directly to Daniel yet it was broadcast to the nation on a BBC radio programme. Discuss

the following statements about the audience for the letter, decide which one you agree with most

and be prepared to report your conclusions.

The letter isnt really aimed at his son.

The letter form is a device to get the attention of the general public.

The letter is aimed both at his son and the general public.

Other?

Activity 2

Consider the following possibilities and decide which one you think is Fergal Keanes main purpose

for writing this letter. Referring closely to the text, you should try to offer at least three reasons for

your choice. Fergal Keane wrote this letter in order to:

express his feelings of pride and joy at having a new-born son;

express wonder and delight at how his life has changed as a result of becoming a father;

reflect on the world his newborn son has entered;

use the letter as a sort of time-capsule for his son to open and read when he reaches maturity;

express his regret about never having known his own father;

other?

Activity 3

The mood in the first five paragraphs is one of love and joy.

Read over these paragraphs and identify all the ways in which Keane conveys his love for his new

son and his joy at becoming a father. (When doing this you should consider techniques such as word

choice, use of imagery, use of setting . . .)

Choose one feature which you particularly like: be prepared to talk about this feature and explain

why you feel it is effective.

Activity 4


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Your coming has turned me inside out. (Opening of paragraph 6) Daniel, these memories explain

some of the fierce protectiveness I feel for you, the tenderness and the occasional moments of blind

terror when I imagine anything happening to you. (Opening paragraph 11) Between these sentences,

Keane reflects on his life and experiences as a war correspondent.

(a)

Look at the ideas, the imagery and the word choice contained in paragraphs 6 and 7. Be prepared to

explain how, in your view, Keane tries to convey the way his outlook on living has changed.

(b)

Look at the use of setting and at Keanes choice of detail in paragraphs 8, 9 and 10.

What do these examples have in common?

Why, for Keane, are these memories suddenly so vivid now?

(c)

Which one of the following, do you feel, best describes the mood of these paragraphs? You may

choose more than one.

Horror

Despair

Anguish

Fear

Depression

Desolation

Helplessness

Other?

List all the examples of word choice which you feel help convey the mood which you have identified.

Activity 5

(Paragraph 11 continues) But there is something more, a story from long ago that I will tell you face

to face, father and son, when you are older.

This sentence acts as a turning point, with Keane telling Daniel that another reason why he feels so

protective towards his son is that he never really knew his own father who had died, an alcoholic,

separated from his wife and family.

(a)

Look at paragraphs 1215.


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How does the narrative stance change in these paragraphs?

What effect do you think the author is trying to create here?

(b)

In paragraphs 12 and 13, for the only time in the letter, Keane is writing about something of which

he has no first-hand experience.

Do you believe the facts conveyed in these paragraphs?

Do you think the detailed description is accurate? If so how could Keane know?

If the facts are accurate but the detail faulty, does this make these paragraphs less reliable as a

non-fiction account?

(c)

Look at the final paragraph. Its no great revelation for it to be confirmed when Keane seems to

just slip in the phrase, Ithought of your grandfather that his story has been all along about

himself and his parents.

Consider which of the following effects Keane might have been trying to create by telling the story

in the way he does and by playing down his revelation. You may choose more than one effect and

you must be prepared to explain and justify your choice(s).

He wants to suggest that he didnt really care about his father.

He wants to suggest that it was all in the past and that hes forgiven his father.

He wants to suggest that he has left his origins and upbringing far behind.

He wants to suggest that he wishes his father had been around for him, the way he is determined

to be around for Daniel.

Activity 6

Look at the final paragraph. The tone here returns to one of love and joy but added to it is a sense

of hope for the future.

What is this hope that Fergal Keane has found in the birth of his son?

Keane uses powerful, positive language to express his hope. Work carefully through the final

paragraph and list as many examples of this language as you can.

Finally

Look back at your answer to Activity 2.

Do you still stand by the choice ofpurpose you made there? If so, what additional evidence can

you now offer to justify this choice?


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Have you changed your mind about the purpose of Keanes writing? Ifso, explain why and give

your reasons for the change.

Text 3: Showing Off

Janice Galloway

Janice Galloway was born in Saltcoats, North Ayrshire, in 1956. After

attending Glasgow University, she went back to Ayrshire, where she

taught for ten years. On leaving teaching, she made her living from

writing and reviewing music. Her first novel, The Trick is to Keep

Breathing, was published in 1990, and today Janice Galloway is widely

regarded as one of the foremost contemporary Scottish writers.

In this autobiographical essay, Janice Galloway reflects on the various

influences which inhibited or encouraged her development as a

writer. This piece is an extended version of an article for the Edinburgh

International Book Festival publications, republished in A Scottish

Childhood, 1998.

When I was very wee I didnt read at all. I listened. My mother sang

Elvis and Peggy Lee songs, the odd Rolling Stones hit as they appeared.

These gave me a notion of how relationships between the sexes were

conducted (there were no men in our house), the meaning of LURV (i.e.

sexual attraction and not LOVE which was something in English war-

time films that involved crying); a sprinkling of Americanisms (to help

conceal/sophisticate the accent I had been born into and which my

mother assured me was ignorant and common) and a basic grounding in

ATTITUDE (known locally as LIP). This last, was the most useful one. In

fact, the only useful one. The words to BLUE SUEDE SHOES are carved

on my heart.

I was reading by the time I went to primary school. I know because I got

a row for it. Reading before educationally permissible was pronounced


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SERIOUSLY DETRIMENTAL TO HER IN CLASS. This was true because I

had to do it again their way, with JANET and JOHN and THE DOG with

the RED BALL. Books were read round in class i.e. too slow, and you

got the belt if you got carried away and keeked at the next page before

you were allowed by the teacher. WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?

shed roar, SOMEBODY SPECIAL? Dulling enthusiasm, or at least not

showing, became an intrinsic part of my education. This did not trouble

me. I was a biddable child. Most are.

TEXT 3

TEXT 3

CRITICAL EVALUATION OF NON-FICTION (INT 2, H, ENGLISH)

38

At home, I read OOR WULLIE and THE BROONS, the BEANO and

BUNTY. BUNTY was best because it had girls in it. There was Wee

Slavey (the maid with the heart of gold) and the Four Marys (who went

to boarding school) amongst others. They had spunk. Only the former

seemed a role model, however. I also read Enid Blyton Fairy Tales and

Folk Tales of Many Lands, a whole set in the local library. When the

Folk Tales were finished, I began fingering the Mythology Religion books

on the adult shelves whereupon the librarian (Defender of books from

the inquiry of Grubby People and Children) smacked my hands and told

me I wasnt allowed those ones: I would neither like nor understand

them and was only Showing Off. This was another lesson in the wisdom

of hiding natural enthusiasm because it sometimes annoyed people in

authority. I ran errands to the same library for my nineteen-year-old

sister who read six books a week and hit me (literally) if I brought back

books by women authors. WOMEN CANNY WRITE, shed say: CAN YOU


16/42

NOT BLOODY LEARN? She was afraid, I think, of Romance. Other

hitting offences included asking to watch A Midsummer Nights Dream,

keeping a diary and, mysteriously, reading too much. Words, it

seemed, carried pain, traps, bombs and codes. They were also, alas,

addictive. Nursing bruises, welts and the odd black eye, I blamed myself.

Earlier than I learned to do the same thing with sex, I learned to look as

though I wasnt doing it at all and became devious as hell.

Thrillers, adventures and war stories caused no ructions. They were the

things my sister liked. My mother read too, mostly biographies of film

stars, to learn how theyd escaped, I suppose. She also read the odd

novel from a stack on top of the cupboard shelf which I could not reach,

books that had pictures of women with their frock falling off on the

covers and the name ANGELIQUE featured on the spines. I knew

enough to understand, however, that she was not the author. My father

had apparently been a reader but hed been dead for ages and not

around much before that either. His books from a club were stacked

at the bottom of a cupboard. The only one that had jokes was a big

black tome with gold letters on the side: THE COMPLETE PLAYS of

BERNARD SHAW. Without understanding much, I read it anyway. At

ten or eleven, I accidentally wrote a novel in blue biro and pencil. My

mother found it but didnt tell my sister. She lit the fire with it.

Secondary school proved my sister uncannily perceptive. Women

couldny write. There were none, not one, not even safely dead ones

like Jane Austen, as class texts. On the plus side, they encouraged

reading, largely on the grounds you could pass exams with it. You

could only pass exams, though, with books from the school store, which

meant the aforementioned no women and not much that was Scottish


17/42

TEXT 3


39

save Burns who had the added benefit of being useful for school suppers

which girls might attend if they served the food. This troubled me a bit,

but not oppressively. I was good at exams. I passed everything, though

what to do then seemed a mystery to all, especially Head of Girls who

told me Id never get far with an accent like mine, and why I wanted to

go to University was anybodys guess. Actually it was the Head ofMusics

idea. With treacherous speed, I fell away from books and fell in love

with MUSIC because nobody had told me (not yet anyway) that women

canny compose. The Head of Music became my Bodyguard and my

sister and the Head of Girls couldnt say boo because he was a teacher.

He taught me Mozart was pronounced MOTZART and not as spelled on

the biscuit tin at home. He taught me lots of things. Through third to

sixth year, I hoovered up Purcell and Byrd, Britten, Warlock and

Gesualdo (my sisters example meant I wanted nothing to do with

something called Romantic music, even if it was by men) and sang folk

songs. These were not pop songs. They had better words and led me

by a sneaky route to Opera. Opera! It was unbelievable! In my final

year, the Head of Music gave me a copy of The Prime of Miss Jean

Brodie, my first book by a living Scottish author. Read, he said. Learn.

And he talked my mother, mortified in her school dinner lady overall,

into letting me fill in the Uni forms. The day I left, I turned up at school

in trousers and got sent home. This did not trouble me. I was taking

the music and getting out. I visited Hillhead, peering out the filthy

windows of a 59 bus without apology or concealment. At last, I would


18/42

revel in Great Works of Music and Profound Literary Texts without

shame or concealment. I couldnt wait.

In three years of MA I read less than two Scottish authors and two

women, all dead. My music list seemed not to know women or Scotland

existed at all. There were no folk songs. In my third year, I cried a lot

and everyone was very nice. They let me have a year out. I was, I

realised with intense embarrassment, suffering from a broken heart. I

went back and finished the fastest degree they had only because

someone called the Student Advisor said, GIRLS OFTEN GIVE UP, ITS

NOTHING TO BE ASHAMED OF. Books were bastards. I could no

longer listen to music. There was only one thing for it. Teaching.

On teaching practice, I turned up at school in trousers and was sent

home. This troubled me a bit but it wasnt new. I could handle it.

Eager as a squirrel, I taught happily for ten years. I got into trouble for

not taking my register seriously enough and teaching stuff outside the

syllabus to the wrong age group sometimes, but the children were very

forebearing. I was a good teacher, the Head informed me one day, but

not promotion material. He wasnt sure why. Maybe I needed my wings

TEXT 3


40

clipped. I thought he had a point. I wanted to stick with this job. I

enjoyed the children, their enthusiasm and inventive cheek. I did not

like the book shortages but teaching was fine. I still cried off and on and

took to writing the odd poem, but wary I was heading down the

primrose path of SHOWING OFF all over again, concealed them as much

as I could. Occasionally I caught myself gazing down the stairwell, at the


19/42

bland, blank walls. One day, a propos of nothing, I caught myself glaring

at a child. WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? a voice roared, terrifying

from the back of the classroom. SOMEBODY SPECIAL? And the voice

was mine. This troubled me a lot.

Bizarrely, it led me to reading. I re-read the curious woman who had

written the equally curious BRODIE, then everything else I could run to

ground. I read Carver and Kafka. I read Duras and Carter. I read

Machado de Assis and Mansfield and Carswell and Borges and Woolf and

chewed up national anthologies of storiesany countrys whole. I fell

over Grays big book about Glasgow that is also a big book about

everywhere, and something clicked, not just from Alasdairs work but

from everybodys. It was the click of the heretofore unnoticed nose Id

just found on my own face. It was astounding, a revelation. For the first

time since I learned how to pronounce MOZART, I realised Something

Big. I had the right to know things. Me. I had the right to listen, to

think; even godhelpus to join in. A tentative glimmer of freedom

started squirming around beneath the sea of routine shame and I

remembered being another way. I remembered being wee. I

remembered the Saltcoats Library and the living room fireplace. I

remembered Elvis. And I knew three things. I knew:

(a)

that all Art is an act of resistance;

(b)

that the fear of SHOWING OFF would kill me if I let it; and

(c)

the words WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? stunk like a month-old

kipper.


20/42

My mother was dead.

I had not seen my sister for years.

Reader, I started writing.

TEXT 3


41

Showing Off Student activities

Activity 1

Consider the following possibilities and decide which one you think is

Janice Galloways main purpose for writing this article. Referring closely

to the text, you should try to offer at least three reasons for your choice.

Janice Galloway wrote this article in order to:

encourage women to become writers;

encourage women and men to become writers;

to explain how she became a writer;

to explain why she became a writer;

to highlight the extent to which talented women in the arts music,

literature, art, drama were, in her day, ignored or dismissed by the

educational establishment;

to demonstrate the value of reading in terms of personal

development.

Activity 2

In the late 1950s Elvis Presley sang:

You can knock me down, step on my face

Slander my name all over the place

Do anything that you wanna do

But uh uh honey lay off of them shoes


21/42

And dont you step on my blue suede shoes,

You can do anything but lay off of them blue suede shoes.

(a)

Janice Galloway claims that this song contributed to her basic

grounding in ATTITUDE: The words to BLUE SUEDE SHOES are

carved on my heart.

What do you think she means by this?

Was it the attitude conveyed by the lyrics that she found

attractive?

Was it something about Elviswho was seen by many of the

establishment as a dangerous, immoral, rebellious influence on

50s and 60s youth that she found attractive?

Was it a combination of both?

Other?

TEXT 3


42

(b)

What do we learn from the opening paragraph about Janice

Galloways background and character?

Activity 3

Consider the title of the article, Showing Off.

(a)

Which of the following attitudes is usually implied when we accuse

someone of showing off?

Admiration

Dislike


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Impatience

Envy

Intolerance

Other?

(b)

Given your understanding of Janice Galloways main purpose for

writing this article, what do you think in this context is her

attitude to showing off?

(c)

Early in the article, Janice Galloway uses two anecdotes to illustrate

instances of her showing off: the one about her getting into

trouble for being able to read before she started school, and the

one about the library.

Looking at these closely, show how she injects humour into

them and identify the more serious underlying point that she is

trying to make. When doing this you should consider

techniques such as language, characterisation, dialogue,

sentence structure . . .

Choose one feature which you particularly like: be prepared to

talk about this feature and explain why you feel it is effective.

Activity 4

(a)

It might be argued that the title of the article, Showing Off, is

ironic.

In the light of your discussion on Activity 3, do you agree or

disagree with this statement? Give reasons for your viewpoint.

TEXT 3


23/42


43

(b)

Janice Galloway goes on to sprinkle her article with ironic

statements and comments.

Identify as many examples of irony as you can and be prepared to

explain the effect created by their use.

Activity 5

Throughout the article, there are clear indications that the author has

always been a bit of a rebel.

Identify at least two of these and consider if these instances were just

showing off or if they tell us something more about Janice Galloway.

Activity 6

Among other things, Janice Galloway uses her article as a platform to

reflect on issues of gender and of social class.

(a)

What points does she make about societys views on women

writers?

What evidence does she offer to substantiate these views?

(b)

What points does she make about societys views on women of

her social class?

What evidence does she offer to substantiate these views?

(c)

Janice Galloway appears to have lived in a household with two

other women, her mother and her sister but she is clearly very

different from them.


24/42

In what ways do her views on women and social class differ from

those of her mother and sister? What details does she choose to

illustrate these differences?

In what ways were the three of them alike?

Activity 7

From secondary school onwards, there appear to have been four

significant turning points in Janice Galloways life:

her falling in love with music;

TEXT 3


44

her disillusionment with university, I was . . .suffering from a broken

heart;

her realisation that she might be turning into the kind of teacher she

disliked, This troubled me a lot . . . Bizarrely it led . . .;

her realisation that she had a right to know things, even godhelpus

to join in.

(a)

How did each of these turning points shape her future?

(b)

Which of these turning points do you think was most significant for

her? Be prepared to explain your answer.

Activity 8

In her conclusion, the author talks about having the right to know.

She goes on to say I knew three things. I knew: . . .

(a)

Consider how each of the three things she knew helped resolve


25/42

the issues which she had struggled with up until this point.

(b)

Which of the following, do you think, best describes the tone of

the final sentence?

Resolved

Cheerful

Elated

Relieved

Triumphant

Sad

Other?

Finally

Janice Galloway uses some very distinctive stylistic features, for example:

block capitals in place of quotation marks;

short sentences;

brackets

dialect

Choose at least one of these or any other stylistic feature which you

find interesting. Say why you find it interesting and comment on the

effect you think she is trying to create by its use.


45

Text 4: From Factory to Firing Line: The Story of One Bullet

David Pratt

In this article David Pratt, Foreign Editor of the Sunday Herald, asks

how AK-47 bullets get into the hands of mercenaries and child soldiers.

He concludes that their journey tells us much about the modern world.


26/42

THIS is the story of a journey; one that begins in a drab industrial

complex, shifts to the splendour of luxury hotels and villas, then

ricochets across oceans and continents before its final stage is played

out in some beleaguered country. Though long and tortuous, its a trip

that invariably finishes swiftly at roughly 700 metres per second and

its ultimate destination is death.

This is the story of a 7.6239mm copper-plated, steel-jacketed, high

velocity cartridge for the famous AK-47 assault rifle, the most commonly

used bullet around the world. The new film Lord of War which stars

Nicolas Cage as amoral but charismatic arms dealer Yuri Orlov opens

with a rapid-fire montage which tells the story of a bullet, from its birth

in a manufacturing plant, to its fatal impact on a child soldier. But whats

the real story behind the Hollywood device?

As a war reporter, I have often come across AK-47 cartridges. Ive seen

them stacked in foil-sealed wooden crates in the caves and jungle

hideouts of rebel armies. Ive watched fighters shoving them into their

familiar 30-round curved box magazines, which in turn are slipped into

khaki green canvas pouches strapped to the bodies of the gunmen for

whom they are simply the stock in a deadly trade. Time and again Ive

been around when they were fired, the discarded empty casings tinkling

to the ground then rolling underfoot in the dirt and sand of battlefields,

murder scenes and massacres, from Bosnia to Iraq, Congo to Angola.

Ive even fired them myself. The first time was in the 1980s, while

travelling clandestinely as a reporter in the mountains of Afghanistan

with mujahidin guerrillas fighting the Russian invaders of their country.

Shoot, shoot, mister Daoud! insisted the commander of my rebel hosts

for the umpteenth time, as we rested in a remote craggy valley. With his


27/42

holy warriors looking on, the commander slotted a full clip of the boat-

TEXT 4

TEXT 4


46

tailed bullets into a Soviet-made AK-47 and thrust the weapon towards

me. The time had long since passed for acceptable excuses about

journalistic ethics and my non-combatant status.

Judging by the looks of the fighters around me, this had simply boiled

down to an issue of initiation and acceptance; a very Afghan thing about

loyalty and brotherhood. To refuse now would have made my presence

at best uncomfortable, and at worst, untenable.

A battered plastic bottle was set up as a target. As I squeezed the trigger

and the first rounds cracked against some rocks reasonably close to the

bottle, the gawping bearded guerrillas who had clustered around began

to grin. It wasnt a question of them ever expecting me to fire in earnest,

just about passing some strange macho muster.

After only minutes of instruction, the ease with which I was able to

handle the rifle was proof of the AK-47s reputation as a so-called user-

friendly weapon. Its the firearm of choice among mercenary suppliers

who know that those who end up shouldering this oddly toy-like

weapon which fires 600 rounds a minute, each powerful enough to

punch a hole through a mans chest from 100 yards will have had little

or no proper military training. Put another way, its ideal for everyone

from Rwandan peasant farmers to Liberian schoolkids-turned-killers.

That afternoon, following my noisy initiation in the Hindu Kush

mountains, I picked up a few of the dark copper-coloured shells that lay


28/42

in the dust to keep as souvenirs. En route through Pakistan on my way

home from Afghanistan, I suddenly decided to throw them away,

ostensibly for fear of being pulled aside at airport security checks, but

also because of some lurking guilt about coveting a trophy of violence.

Pausing to drop them into a bin outside Islamabad airport, I couldnt

help wondering where these bullets had first come from. How did these

rounds make their way from a high-tech manufacturing plant to the war-

torn wilds of Afghanistan?

It was, of course, in RussiaAfghanistans mighty former communist

neighbour that the AK-47 (Avtomat Kalashnikova model 1947) rifle,

and those eight-gram bullets, were invented. The brainchild of a second

world war tank sergeant, Mikhail Timofeyevich Kalashnikov, the AK-47

was the weapon favoured during the cold war years by non-Western

powers. Robust, simple, cost-effective, it was the mainstay of military

assistance programmes, in which Russia supplied its communist allies

around the world officially and unofficially thus ensuring the AK-47s

global proliferation.

TEXT 4


47

With 100 million AK-47s across the planet, the rifles familiar silhouette is

part of modern iconography, making its way onto the flag of the Islamist

Hezbollah movement and the Mozambique national coat of arms. In

other African countries, Kalash a shortened form of Kalashnikov has

even become a boys name.

Whatever we may think about the morality of arms manufacturing, vast

numbers of AK-47 bullets start life legally in Russia. In the grimy,


29/42

polluted city of Tula, 170km south of Moscow, bullet-making is a way of

life. This city home to 550,000 people and hosting a military garrison

of airborne troops, a 16th-century kremlin as well as various onion-

domed churches and cathedrals manufactures only one other product:

the samovar, Russias answer to the teapot.

Since at least 1940, the Tula Cartridge Plant has been producing rounds

that fit the AK-47. Today it is the biggest domestic and export supplier of

the bullets, which are marketed abroad under the Wolf trademark. At

the factory, which resembles a scene from a socialist realist painting,

7.62mm rounds trundle off the conveyor belt by the million in a choice

of either brass or bimetal jacket with a steel case. These are packed by

some of the 7000-strong workforce into handy boxes of 20, or crated in

larger numbers for bulk orders.

Many of the new rounds are likely to be sold through the Russian arms

export agency Rosoboronexport, which also deals in older bullets

sourced from cold war stockpiles. Ever since those tense years four

decades ago, Russia and other central and eastern European countries

have been sitting on billions of rounds manufactured for use in a full-

scale war with the West that never came.

Much of this ammunition is 20 or 30 years old, all from the 1970s and

1980s, so its near impossible to check on where they come from, and

thats just the start of the problem, insists Alex Vines, a human rights

and Africa analyst who has intensively researched the arms trade.

According to Vines, former Soviet republics desperate for hard currency

were only too happy to sell off their large surplus armouries in the wake

of the communist meltdown.

******


30/42

Its at this point that our bullet, especially if it originates from an older

stockpile, can slip into a far more sinister channel, to become part of the

vast ordnance on offer to a new breed of east European racketeers.

TEXT 4


48

And what a breed they are. Gun-runners extraordinaire, like the

Ukrainian Leonid Minin, or the Russian Victor Bout. Many people say

that Yuri Orlov, the character played by Nicolas Cage in Lord of War, is

based on Victor Bout.

Indeed, the movies director, Andrew Niccol, is rumoured to have

rented the Russian-built Antonov cargo plane used in a fictional African

arms delivery scene from Victor Bout himself. In another case of fiction

mirroring fact, the thousands of AK-47s used by extras in the film were

bought by Niccol on the international arms market. Given that the

average going rate for an AK-47 in Africa is $30, it would hardly be

surprising. Niccol has said: I actually did become an arms dealer in the

making of the film, or in the logistics of making it. I had to get hold of a

tank for a scene and 3000 Kalashnikovs. I bought real Kalashnikovs

because it was cheaper than getting fake ones. One can only assume

that Niccol was making a political point by showing just how easy such a

transaction is.

Men like Leonid Minin and Victor Bout are typical of the new breed of

racketeer. So its possible that, on its journey, our bullet was one of five

million catalogued in documents uncovered during a police raid on

room 341 ofMinins co-owned luxury Europa Hotel in Cinisello

Balsamo, outside Milan, on August 4, 2000. Or perhaps it was among the


31/42

113 tons of 7.62 rounds the Ukrainian delivered by air into the west

African country of Ivory Coast just a few weeks earlier a dispatch that

was revealed in a fax discovered during the same police operation.

Ironically, the Italian police werent there to arrest Minin on any arms

offences. When they crashed through his hotel room door at 3am that

August morning, it was because of a tip-off from an unpaid prostitute.

During the raidin a scene one reporter described as straight from a

Tarantino film the leader of the so-called Odessa Mafia was found

freebasing cocaine, naked, while flanked by a quartet of call girls.

The Italian police arrested him for a minor offence and only later found

out who he really is. Then they started to take an interest in the case,

complains Johan Peleman, a chain-smoking Belgian and one of the

worlds most prominent arms-trade investigators, who has served on

several UN expert panels.

To call Pelemans task difficult would be the ultimate understatement.

The world in which bullet detectives like him operate is characterised

by a complex array of international and local arms brokering syndicates,

clandestine air transport, money laundering, embargo busting and

TEXT 4


49

ruthless regimes. Its a shopping-in-the-shadows world, where

inventories of illegal arms which could easily include our bullet

circulate between traders and suppliers. Then, when a customer is

found (usually someone prevented from buying in the mainstream

government markets), our rifle round is shipped by civilian cargo

companies to a transit point, from where it is transported to its final


32/42

destination in a war zone.

Fake end-user certificates (EUCs) are the first line of camouflage for the

illegal arms dealers. In theory, these documents are provided by a

purchasing government to guarantee that that country is the ultimate

user of the arms being bought. But it is rarely this simple. I have come

across countless fake EUCs, confirms arms analyst Alex Vines.

One such example was the Pecos company of Guinea in West Africa, a

front organisation that supplied a seemingly endless stream of

counterfeit EUCs to the arms smuggling network of Victor Bout

(pronounced butt in Russian). A former KGB major, Bout has been

referred to as the poster boy for a new generation of post-cold war arms

dealers, who play an insidious role in areas where the weapons trade

has been embargoed by the United Nations. Though worldwide in

scope, Bouts main trafficking beat is the volatile Central African Great

Lakes region, from Burundi, Rwanda and Uganda across the Democratic

Republic of Congo (DRC) to Angola.

A specialist air transport fixer since the early 1990s, Bout has been the

overseer of a complex network of more than 50 aircraft, distributed

among several airline companies and freight-forwarding outfits.

Although the arms merchant formerly based in the United Arab

Emirates and now rumoured to be in Russia has been pursued for

years by bullet detectives like Johan Peleman, a positive visual ID only

became available when two Belgian journalists bumped into him at an

airstrip in remote rebel-held Congo in 2001. Bout was then working

with Jean-Pierre Bemba, the leader of the Mouvement Pour la Libration

du Congo.

During that time, one of the journalists, Dirk Draulans, saw two of Victor


33/42

Bouts planes, carrying the registration numbers 9T-ALC and MLC both

unknown to international aviation authorities. Later, a Belgian

researcher verified that the aircraft had been flying between Uganda and

DRC at least until November 2001.

TEXT 4


50

UN officials have accused Victor Bout of using many flags of

convenience and subcontracting arrangements for his aircraft to

facilitate illegal arms and diamond smuggling activities, despite Bouts

assertions that his aircraft were simply used to deliver supplies to

mining sites and take valuable commodities like coltan and cassiterite

out of places like DRC and Angola.

Landing heavy cargo planes with illicit cargoes in war conditions and

breaking international embargoes such as the one on Angola requires

more than individual effort, stated a UN report on Angola in December

2000. It takes an internationally organised network of individuals, well-

funded, well-connected and well versed in brokering and logistics, with

the ability to move illicit cargo around the world without raising the

suspicions of the law. One headed, or at least to all appearances

outwardly controlled, by Victor Bout is such an organisation.

As ever, the UNs use of earnest rhetoric in pointing out the obvious is

masterful. Across Africa, bullets, guns and other weapons are delivered

with alarming regularity in illegal operations that are chastised in a

similarly feeble manner by global bodies, yet remain immune from direct

international legal action.

In response, campaigners against the arms trade are placing great


34/42

emphasis on the need for all states to mark shells and cartridges with

codes or marks denoting batch/lot number, manufacturer and country of

manufacture, year of production and a code identifying the original

recipient of the ammunition lot such as a police or military force. All of

which would help in identifying the convoluted supply chain either back

to its original source or to its real end-user.

During many years of working across the African continent, I have stood

on countless dirt airstrips watching Soviet-era cargo planes being loaded

up with anything from gold and diamonds, to rocket-propelled grenade

launchers and mortars, much of which has little or no accompanying

paperwork.

African conflicts are wasteful of ammunition and are always in need of

more. The guys who carry this stuff in are just flying truck drivers, says

Alex Vines. He has a point.

In August 2003, at the height of Liberias rainy season, I flew into the

capital, Monrovia, on the second humanitarian aid flight to have reached

the country since the upsurge of the civil war a few weeks before. The

aircraft was flown by a group of volunteer pilots who told me that days

TEXT 4


51

earlier, coming in to land on the first aid flight, they had almost collided

with an unscheduled incoming cargo plane. Later we found out it was

flying in ammunition and guns for President Charles Taylor, which some

people said was coming from Libya, the 58-year-old Swedish pilot told

me. Its always the same across Africa, you never know who is flying

what. One member of the pilots own crew even admitted to having


35/42

ferried a few bullets in his time.

For arms dealers, its well worth the risk. According to Johan Peleman,

while its difficult to put an accurate figure on the profits men like Victor

Bout make, back in 2002 the Russian was sitting on a fortune. The

Rwandan government alone owed Bout $21 million. That gives you

some idea of the sums involved in his business. But that doesnt include

barter operationsarms for coffee or arms for diamonds, says Peleman.

******

There is, of course, an altogether different price to be paid for every

bullet that lands in those war-torn African lands . Take the Democratic

Republic ofCongo, which has been the focus of Victor Bouts activities

in recent years. Sustained by the easy availability of bullets and guns, war

crimes and other human rights violations have been widespread and

almost non-stop. Extra-judicial executions, unlawful killings of civilians,

torture, rape and other sexual violence, the use of child soldiers,

abductions, looting of villages and forced displacement are among the

atrocities to which bullet suppliers are callously indifferent.

How many rounds delivered by these international dealers in death

might have been used during May and June last year [2004] when

dissident elements of the RCD-Goma opposed to the transitional

government, took control of the city of Bukavu in South Kivu province

in Democratic Republic of Congo? During the terrible days that followed,

these dissident militias subjected the civilian population to systematic

human rights abuse until government troops retook the city. Many of

the guns and bullets they used were undoubtedly supplied illegally.

More than 60 people were killed and more than 100 women and girls

were reportedly raped, including 17 who were aged 13 or younger.


36/42

Some were raped as their parents watched helplessly. One victim was

only three years old. Extensive looting was also commonplace. The

abusive acts became known popularly among the militiamen as

opration TDF operation [mobile] telephones, dollars, daughters

because this is what the soldiers demanded at gunpoint after forcing

their way into civilian homes.

TEXT 4


52

Many of the killings took place during looting, often after the victims

had given all they had or simply because, as one informant told Amnesty

International, they didnt like the look on your face. On more than one

occasion soldiers reportedly levelled their AK-47s at childrens heads to

extort money from householders, demanding dollars for the life of each

child.

The victims included Lambert Mobole Bitorwa, who was shot at home in

front of his children; Jolie Namwezi, reportedly shot in front of her

children after she resisted rape; Murhula Kagezi, a student killed at his

home while his father was in the next room fetching a mobile phone to

give to the soldiers; and 13-year-old Marie Chimbale Tambwe, shot dead

on the balcony of her home apparently because a militiaman believed

she had pulled a face at him while he was looting in the street below.

******

This is the bloody endgame in the story of our 7.6239mm copper-

plated, steel-jacketed bullet. On arrival at its final destination, entering

the tissue of its victim, it usually travels forwards for about 26cm before

beginning to yaw. Ballistics experts and doctors speak then of damage


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patterns a sanitised term for the way the bullet rips through

abdomens, legs, arms or brains, sometimes deflecting off bones before

exiting, leaving a gaping, bloody hole.

If all this is to stop, then tighter global controls are imperative. The

question is whether the political will needed to implement such

legislation exists against the murky backdrop of a lucrative business that

deals in genuine weapons of mass destruction. Just as the profiteering

has become a way of life for the dealers, so it is, too, for those who

dispatch the bullets by pulling the trigger.

Some years ago in Liberia, I met a 14-year-old soldier who called himself

J-Boy. He was sitting on a bridge overlooking the Po River, smoking a

joint and loading some of those familiar copper-coloured cartridges into

his rifle. Had J-Boy himself ever killed anyone, I asked.

Oh sure man, plenty, plenty, he assured me with a smile. With this

good AK and these real fine bullets, its way easy.

(Control Arms (a joint campaign between Amnesty, Oxfam and the

International Action Network on Small Arms) campaigns for tough

controls on the arms trade. See www.controlarms.org)

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From Factory to Firing Line: The Story of One Bullet

Student activities

Activity 1

Which of the following reasons, do you think, sum up the authors

purpose in writing this article? You may choose more than one.

To make us aware of the vast amounts of money made by arms


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traders.

To help promote Nicolas Cages new film, Lord of War.

To express his disapproval of Nicolas Cages new film Lord of War.

To highlight the lack of international controls on arms dealing.

To make readers aware of the atrocities being committed around the

world.

To explain the history of the AK-47 assault rifle.

Activity 2

Which of the following do you think Pratt is trying to suggest in the

opening two paragraphs?

This is going to be an exciting article which will engage the reader.

The article is going to be about a glamorous topic.

Bullets are not glamorous, just deadly.

Films and television glamorise death and violencebut hes not

going to.

People of today are no longer shocked by the spectacle of violent

death.

Activity 3

This article is divided into four sections, (separated by ***).

Briefly, what do we learn about the bullets journey in each section?

How does the idea of a journey contribute to the overall structure of

the article?

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Activity 4

In the first section of the article, Pratt demonstrates the ubiquity of the


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AK-47 rifle.

How does he do this?

How many examples can you find in this section of Pratt

juxtaposing the bullet with the ordinariness of every-day life? What

effect is being created here?

Overall, what is suggested here about attitudes towards the rifle

and the bullet?

Activity 5

(a)

The second, and longest, section of the text deals mainly with

international arms dealers and with Victor Bout in particular. How

is Bout characterised in this section? Is he portrayed as:

heroic

sinister

anonymous

criminal

glamorous

shady

other?

You may choose more than one description but you must be

prepared to justify your opinion by close reference to the article.

(b)

What function do Bout and Leonid Minin fulfil for the author?

Activity 6


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In the second section, Pratt also talks about the making of the film Lord

of War.

(a)

In what ways might it be said that the film seems to step over the

boundaries of fiction and into the real world?

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(b)

Pratt finishes the third paragraph of this section with the sentence,

One can only assume that Niccol was making a political point by

showing just how easy such a transaction is.

How are we meant to interpret the tone of this sentence? Is it:

ironic

serious

questioning

humorous

sarcastic

other?

Activity 6

As ever, the UNs use of earnest rhetoric in pointing out the obvious is

masterful. (Six paragraphs from the end of the second section)

Pratt is clearly being ironic here and criticising the United Nations.

What is the specific basis for his criticism?

What wider issues are reflected here?

Activity 7

The first two sections of the article seem to be quite factual, dealing with


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the cold reality of the bullet.

How, in the third section, does Pratt change the focus of his article?

What emotions does this section provoke in you?

What techniques does Pratt employ to provoke these emotions? (In

answering this question, you should refer to aspects such as use of

language, sentence structure, setting, detail, statistics . . .)

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Activity 8

In the final section, the bullet reaches its destination human fleshand

Pratt paints a vivid description of the damage it inflicts.

What, does he say, do governments need to do to stop the

distribution of arms on such a wide scale and what problems do they

face in trying to implement controls?

How effective do you find the story of J-Boy as a conclusion to the

article as a whole?

Finally

As a serious journalist, Pratt goes to considerable lengths to anchor his

article in reality. He sets out to avoid any accusation of making things

up and makes it clear that, as well as writing from personal experience,

he has engaged in substantial research on his topic.

Work through the article dissecting it and noting how Pratt convinces

the reader that he knows his subject and is dealing in indisputable fact.

You should work under the following headings:

Personal experience

Use of detail


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Use of statistics

Interviews he has conducted

Quotations from other sources

The best way of doing this might be to use different coloured

highlighters for each heading. You would end up with a very colourful

article, clearly identifying all the different sources of evidence David

Pratt uses to ground his article in fact.

List of Literary Non-fiction Texts

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Transcript of List of Literary Non-fiction Texts