Ian Baillie Memorial Event: Rizzio and Three Fires with Denise Mina

In two brilliant short novels Rizzio and Three Fires, Denise Mina explores events that still resonate with our times.

In Rizzio Denise portrays the murder of David Rizzio, Mary Queens of Scots friend and secretary, by her husband Lord Darnley. Darnley wants Mary to witness the murder. Denise Mina brilliantly portrays the sexual dynamics and politics of power – between men and women, monarch and subjects, master and servants. This breathtakingly tense work is a tale of sex, secrets and lies, one that explores the lengths that men – and women – will go to in the search for love and power.

In Three Fires Denise looks at Girolamo Savonarola who was a Dominican friar living in Florence at the latter part of the fifteenth century. He was an anti-corruption campaigner and he preached against luxuries which tempted people towards sin. His sermons culminated in the infamous ‘Bonfire of the Vanities’ in which a wide range of possessions such as extravagant clothing, mirrors and make-up were burned in public bonfires. He railed against the sins and greed of the ruling Medici family, and played a key role in their removal from power becoming for a time the leader of Florence. He turned against the Catholic Church and was to be excommunicated and then executed.

Denise teases out the contemporary parallels between the febrile atmosphere of medieval Florence and the culture wars of the present day. In dramatising the life and last days of Savonarola she explores the downfall of the original architect of cancel culture and in the process explores the never-ending tensions between wealth, inequality, and freedom of speech that so dominate our modern world.

This event is being held in memory of Ian Baillie, a much-loved former colleague, who passed away two years ago. Ian worked as a librarian for 40 years and was a very highly regarded and well-known figure in the community. He made a considerable impact on the cultural life of West Dunbartonshire creating the Booked! Literature Festival, setting reading groups up across the authority and helping to form the Lennox Literary Society. He wrote for the Clydebank Post, the Lennox Herald and the County Reporter. His writing about books was very popular and helped shape many people’s reading habits.