Iain Banks

Iain’s love of whisky goes back a long way.

In 1986, he and his editor James Hale had a conversation about possible ways to have Consider Phlebas published when his publisher didn’t publish SF. James suggested doing it under a different name might work...

“So my editor said, give me a pseudonym and my first was John B Macallan and my editor said why? Well, it’s my two favourite whiskies – Johnny Walker Black Label, my favourite blend, and Macallan is my favourite malt whisky. Nowadays it’d have to be John B Laphroaig-Macallan. Despite the fact that James was a committed, even enthusiastic whisky drinker, he kept forgetting what this pseudonym was. So we had to drop it.”

Fast forward 17 years and Iain was offered the chance to write a sort-of-autobiography, ostensibly about whisky. Raw Spirit was the result, and it was published in 2003.

Raw Spirit was reissued in 2019 with a brand new introduction by Ian Rankin.