I completely fell in love with the city and I wanted to show that sort of view from Finlay as well. He was this outsider looking in and the city had such a charm and such a novelty to him. “But equally I wanted to present Glasgow authentically. I wanted it to be multicultural and diverse and all of the things that it was to me growing up.” So, we have Glasgow and we have the boys, and Margaret explains: “It’s a novel about two Banjo and Finlay who grew up in the care system and they sort of shared a room for a very brief time and when we meet them, they haven’t spoken for three years. The novel is a journey into why they fell out and also how they come back together.”
And while Glasgow, East Kilbride and Margaret’s own roots in the working class are clearly evident, there is more of Margaret indirectly feeding into the characters and their experiences. The Lockdowns around COVID had a huge impact on Margaret, who needed to shield from her family because she is on immune-suppressive medication for her Crohn’s disease.
She says that even though she was living in her family home, “I shielded for five weeks, I was basically in my bedroom alone for those five weeks. I think I left a couple of times walk down the road and back, but that was as far as I could go. One of the obvious lockdown restrictions for people who were shielding and who were high risk was staying two-meters away from people at all times – including people that you shared a household with. You couldn’t touch anyone and it definitely contributed to my very low mental health at the time.
“Through that I learned about touch starvation, which is a thing that happens when you haven’t been hugged by or touched anyone for a long time. And I realised how important touch is to our wellbeing. When I read up on it, people need about four hugs a day for maintenance. But during childhood, kids need about 12, and obviously this severely and disproportionately impacts kids in care. It really broke my heart when I learned that. Having obviously experienced it, it was something that I wanted to write a novel about and explore through characters who had experienced this touch deprivation.”
Margaret’s partner had also worked in social care settings for many years, so the care system was not an unknown theme for her. However, a commitment to authentic representation of lived experiences saw her turn to sensitivity readers – both for her portrayal of the care system and for Finlay, a second- generation immigrant of Polish descent. Author Ania Bass “gave incredible insight” into that Polish immigrant experience and John Ridoux, a children’s
6 PEN&INC.
© Tom Pilston
© Tom Pilston Margaret with the Carnegies Medal for Writing.
therapist who grew up in the care system and children’s homes, was equally incredible in revealing insights and details.
Margaret praises their input adding: “I would really recommend to anyone who is inspired by lived experiences that aren’t their own and who doesn’t know where to start or how to get it right. Consulting people from that community – getting their advice, opinions and potentially hiring them to read your full novel can definitely help. It can be the difference between representation being authentic or not.”
Lockdown not only provided some of the inspiration for Glasgow Boys, it also offered opportunity. The final months of Margaret’s undergrad degree was affected by lockdowns, leaving her with virtually nothing to do. Planned work in a café wasn’t possible, so “I had absolutely nothing to do and I think I definitely was not doing very well mentally. It was a very tough time for me. I don’t want to glamorise that I managed to write a novel during lockdown as if it was easy. It definitely wasn’t, and I didn’t think that
Glasgow Boys would see the light of day. It was just something for me to channel all of my emotions into.”
Having written an early draft during lockdown, Margaret stepped away from the manuscript for a time when restrictions were lifted. She started a job as a vaccine assistant, where she was working with nurses, which “gave me the insight to pour into Glasgow Boys”. That additional material helped shape the book, with edits taking place through to 2022. “When I was editing it and working on it, the world opened up again and that was one of the main reasons I was able to channel all of my experiences into it. Half of Glasgow Boys was a reflection on my life at the time of lockdown, and then half of it was also born from the experiences that I had after lockdown.”
And while lockdown acted as a catalyst for the success of Glasgow Boys, there had been previous writing highlights coming in the form of fan fiction, which also acted as a catalyst for Margaret’s own reading journey.
“I found reading quite late in terms of the fact that I got into it at high school,
Autumn-Winter 2025
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60
