Douglas Stewart

There is nowhere to come out to, you know, and what would it do?

And it's a very devout community.

You know, in the novel, the characters are very gentle, community-based characters.

interdependent with their neighbors.

But they believe a very strict path to God, as free Presbyterianism is.

And they believe that the word of scripture is the word of God and it is never wrong.

And at the heart of that is that love and sex is between one man and one woman, between man and wife.

And so there is no, you know, John as the father doesn't even think of himself as gay because gay is a social designation as much as anything else.

It's about community.

And he is just a man who has been in love his whole life with another man.

He is just John as an individual.

So there is no way to express their sexuality.

As a novelist, it was an exercise in dramatic tension.

How can I have father and son who love each other so deeply, who spend every waking hour either working together or at worship or eating together, and yet they cannot say the thing that's on their heart?

That's right.

And how we can feel very isolated from the people we are closest to.

I think I certainly feel that my family knows me best in this world and yet they don't know all of me.

I think we're always managing our own reputations within our families and we're not sharing every part of ourselves.

And for men and within Scottish masculinity, I think that's a very natural place to be.

I think men...