25TH BIRTHDAY DIDN’T THEY DO WELL?
PETER CAPALDI
1986 1988
Although our local hero was riding high after, er, Local Hero (1983), he’s still getting bit parts, like this year in Rab C Nesbitt. Mixed year. Appears in Stephen Frears’ utterly brilliant Dangerous Liaisons and Ken Russell’s utterly abysmal Lair of the White Worm.
1995 Wins BAFTA and the Oscar for Best Short Film, directing the equally lanky
Richard E Grant in Franz Kafka’s It’s a Wonderful Life.
1996
Virtually haunting our screens as ghostly biker hunk Uncle Rory in the excellent adaptation of The Crow Road and Angel Islington in the almost-as- good Neverwhere.
CAROL ANN DUFFY
1985
1986 1993
1999
Standing Female Nude, her first solo collection of poetry, is published, announcing the arrival of a loud, proud feminist voice. Hurrah!
And the Scottish Arts Council Book of the Year Award goes to . . . Carol Ann Duffy, for Standing Female Nude. Having spent the late 80s hoovering up the Dylan Thomas, Somerset Maugham and Cholmondeley Awards, wins a Whitbread for
Mean Time.
Publishes The World’s Wife. After Poet Laureate Ted Hughes’ death in 1998 CAD is one of the favourites to take his job, but it goes to Andrew Motion.
IAN RANKIN
1986 Polygon publish a very limited run of his first novel, coming-of-age yarn The Flood, now a collectors’ item.
1987 With Knots & Crosses, Rankin gives what must have been a rather boozy birth, probably in
the bogs at the Oxford Bar, to Inspector Rebus.
1991 1997
After flirting with other, less thrilling heroes, returns to the winning formula, publishing Rebus books two and three, Hide & Seek and Tooth & Nail
Cocks a snook at never-found Scots serial killer Bible John with the classic Black and Blue and wins CWA’s Gold Dagger (top award) for his pains.
DOUGLAS GORDON
1986 1990
1993
1996
Despite still being a student, and only 20, proves disgustingly precocious with four international solo shows.
Begins the ongoing, lifelong work ‘List of Names’, a list of everyone he’s ever met in his life, one version of which is hanging in Edinburgh’s Gallery of Modern Art.
‘24 Hour Psycho’ is devised for Tramway in Glasgow and brings Gordon widespread recognition: a huge screen on which the Hitchcock First video artist to win the Turner Prize, for ‘Confessions of a Justified Sinner’. Celebrates with ‘Self Portrait as Kurt Cobain, as
classic is slowed down to 24 hours-long. Andy Warhol, as Myra Hindley, as Marilyn Monroe’.
TILDA SWINTON
1986 1992
1995
First collaboration of many with director Derek Jarman in Caravaggio. And, er, The List misspells her name as ‘Tilda Swanton’ in issue 12. Sorry, Tild.
Makes her name, firmly and internationally, with the eponymous role in Sally Potter’s fantastic version of Virginia Woolf’s Orlando. Sleeps for a week in a glass case in the Serpentine Gallery, described as ‘her greatest ever performance’ and establishing her as a
woman who breathes art.
2001 Goes a bit mainstream with a role in Vanilla Sky. Tilda Swinton and Tom Cruise? Never thought we’d say that. Ew.
EDWYN COLLINS
1985 Orange Juice, already reduced to a duo following ‘musical differences’ release final album, the critically ‘meh’-d The Orange Juice and split.
1989 His first solo album, Hope and Despair, is great but kinda
pessimistic. Taking the split hard, fella?
1994 1999
Out of nowhere, Collins releases bubbly joy ‘A Girl Like You’, officially The Catchiest Song of the 1990s. Never has to work again. Probably. Channel 4 pick up his sitcom, the quietly under-rated West Heath Yard. Collins himself stars, with guests including Natalie Imbruglia and Bernard Butler.
JK ROWLING
1990 1996
1997
1999
Harry Potter springs, fully-formed, into her head one day on a train journey. Rowling’s mother dies later that year, an event which she says changed her world and Harry’s forever.
After being turned down by various publishers and agents who have since hurt themselves, Rowling and Potter sign to Bloomsbury in the UK and Scholastic in the US.
Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone becomes a children’s publishing sensation, and wins the Smarties Book Prize.
Everyone’s favourite Potter, The Prisoner of Azkaban, wins Whitbread Children’s Book of the Year, while the just-released Goblet of Fire breaks sales records.
32 THE LIST 23 Sep–7 Oct 2010