Early in the morning of 4 December, Overland lost a great friend and guide when John McLaren died. John was associate editor of Overland from 1966–1993, editor from 1993–1996, and a board member until 2014, when he stood down for health reasons to become, instead, an official Overland patron.

Certainly, this entrenched and institutionalised sexism has contributed to Owens’ absence from Scottish literary studies. But there’s another reason, too. When trying to have Gentlemen of the West published, Owens recalls one publisher telling her that ‘people didn’t want that kind of writing ... about poor people’.

On a Tuesday evening in February this year I received a call from a mutual friend, Damien Williams, to let me know that David Wolstencroft had died tragically that day.