Andy Nairn
A.K. Nairn is the pen name of Andy Nairn, who was born and raised in Duns, over in Berwickshire. After studying Law at Edinburgh University, he was attracted by London’s advertising industry and he has gone on to found one of the UK’s most successful ad agencies, Lucky Generals. However, his heart has remained firmly in the Borders and in 2024, he launched The Trail of Blood: a murder mystery, set in the world of the reivers. The sequel, The Dance of Vipers, came out in 2025. A.K’s work has been praised for its blend of historical accuracy and creative story-telling, both of which he hopes to bring to our talk.
The 2026-2027 season of The Dumfriesshire and Galloway Natural History and Antiquarian Society got underway with an interesting and thought-provoking talk entitled 'The Reivers: fact or fiction?'. The speaker was writer, A.K. Nairn, the pen name for writer Andy Nairn. Nairn's works blend historical accuracy with creative storytelling, both of which he was able to bring to his talk in Dumfries.
The wet and windy night set the scene for those who ventured out for the evening to The Bridge to hear tales of the Reivers. The talk became interactive (less so for those observing on Zoom) when Nairn offered seven statements about the Reivers, asking his audience to vote on whether the statement was true or false. Untangling Reiver fact from fiction is difficult from the perspective of 500 to 600 years, and with the storytelling of the Border Ballads and Sir Walter Scott's romanticised version in Victorian times, followed by the emergence of the annual Common Ridings we are familiar with in more recent times, it challenges our understanding of the truth of that period in history.
The first statements were easier to unpick "The Reivers were Scottish Freedom Fighters" and "The Reivers rarely killed people" were shown to be false, whilst the audience agreed that "The Reivers were like gangsters". Nairn showed his audience how the Reivers were not completely lawless, that they were not confined to the borders of Scotland and England, and that their presence was felt long after the Union of the Crowns. Finally, the speaker suggested some redeeming qualities that meant their legacy endured. How would we have behaved if faced with the challenges that they lived with? Reivers were ordinary people living in the places familiar to us and they did extraordinary and terrible things in order for their families to survive - which makes for fascinating characters and storylines, as shown in Nairn's books.
The meeting closed with refreshments, and the opportunity for book signing by the author.