Ian Spring

“However harmful the kailyard tradition was to Scottish literature and the perception of Scotland, it invariably portrayed village or small town life in Scotland as harmonious and not umpleasant. At the beginning of the twentieth century, an anti-kailyard tradition of Scottish literature developed, most markedly represented by two novels: George Douglas Brown, 'The House with the Green Shutters (1901), and John MacDougall Hay, Gillespie (1914). Both were based on the authors' own experience of Scottish villages (Ochiltree and Tarbert respectively). Both display the unsavoury and tragic side of parochial life.

Could we view The Little White Town of Never Weary as a sort of riposte to this tradition? It certainly emphasises the more idyllic traditional life of rural market town and burgh.”
― Ian Spring, The Little White Town of Never Weary