For Gray, [Scotland] is as different from England as Faulkner's Mississippi is from the rest of the US. It's a hard place of implacable pieties, rigid class structures, and an undercurrent of resentment of Tories, Toffs, and Thatcherites. But Gray is too much the artist to limit himself to bitter polemics. Humor and empathy are his preferred tools. A remarkably unpretentious mix of wit and wisdom infused with a palpable delight in telling stories that will never turn stale.