Obituary: Inverness’s Rab MacWilliam who built a life in publishing
By Mike Clark
Rab spent his childhood years in Inverness.
He was Dux at the Crown School. At Inverness Royal Academy, he was part of their most-successful football team. He was a bass singer in the Sine Nomine Choir.
He was a bit of a hell-raiser in his early years, getting into all sorts of scrapes and shenanigans.
After getting enough Higher grades to get into university, he was involved in an escapade on the school roof and was “invited” to leave. That kind of sums up his eclectic lifestyle.
He embraced the folk revival in the 60s and 70s and was a keen guitar player. He was never happier than when juggling an acoustic guitar, a fag and a drink at a party.
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He was the eldest son of Dan MacWilliam, the Inverness businessman who owned Torvean quarry. Had he stayed in Inverness he would have been pigeon-holed as Dan MacWilliam’s boy.
So, like many Highlanders he headed south seeking fame and fortune.
He went to Edinburgh University and the University of Essex. For the past 50 years he has lived in north London where he carved out a successful career in publishing with Penguin, Hutchison and Hamlyn Books before becoming a freelance author specialising in sports books.
He also founded and edited N16, the magazine for Hackney and Stoke Newington.
Rab loved Stoke Newington – it is considered the most multi-cultural burgh in the most multi-cultural city in the world. The Stokey Fringe Festival was one of his creations. It was the only fringe without a festival and he organised it for many years. He was terribly proud to have presented many of his folk heroes such as Martin Carthy, Martin Simpson, and Mike Heron of the Incredible String Band.
In recent years, his rendition of ‘Tam O’Shanter’ was very popular in Stoke Newington venues on Burns Night.
In 2002 he wrote ‘An Illustrated History of Glasgow Rangers’. He took a taxi to Ibrox Stadium and got chatting to the driver who turned out to be a Celtic supporter. The meter stood at £16.90, the date of the Battle of the Boyne. The driver refused to let Rab out and drove forward a few more yards until the meter clicked over.
In 2014 Rab was part of an email group with some old friends from Inverness. There was some banter about what would be in a Merkinch dictionary. This quickly grew into a book called ‘Snow on the Ben’, a very funny guide to the Inverness dialect. To get his book published, the group founded Kessock Books which had the stated aim of publishing books about the Highlands and Islands by local authors. ‘Snow on the Ben’ quickly became a best seller at Waterstones in Inverness.
Rab edited and oversaw the publishing of a range of titles by local authors including ‘Highland Survivor: The Story of the Far North Line’ by renowned railway buff David Spaven and ‘The Road Home – My American Journey in Search of Inverness’ by STV Presenter Mike Edwards. He co-wrote the entertaining Highland travelogue ‘Where Seagulls Dare’ with Iain MacDonald, the weil-kent BBC reporter. These books are now published by Lomond Books.
His philosophy of life could be best described as socialist hedonism. His working-class upbringing forged his socialist views.
The Scottish drinking culture meant he was imbued with a tendency to imbibe. We would settle down in a nice pub with good beer and good craic. We would have wide-ranging discussions about sport, politics, Arsenal, Clach, the Highlands, Arsenal, music and occasionally Arsenal. After a short time, he would get restless and say, ‘Let’s go somewhere else’. He was a man in search of the perfect pub.
The lifestyle took its toll, and he developed emphysema and COPD.
About 14 years ago he gave up drinking completely and remarkably never touched another drop. His younger brother George died in 2023, and Rab was perplexed that he had somehow managed to outlive his more sensible sibling. He had a major heart attack in December and passed away on January 8.
Someone once described Keith Richards as the most elegantly wasted man on the planet. Rab was probably the second most-elegantly wasted man. He is survived by his wife Beech, son Nick and sister Margaret.
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