How does a Scot come to write books on English grammar?

Nobody has asked that question yet, but I'll be ready when they do.  The simple answer has to do with the value the Scots have traditionally placed on education and the democratic escape-route it provided from the harshness of life; in my case, the work of a mining community chipping out the black stuff underneath the grey waters of the Firth of Forth.  Perhaps associated with that is the no-frills, spare rationality of thought associated with Presbyterianism.  Rules are meant to be followed.  Then there is my academic background: the no-nonsense rigours of Kirkcaldy High School, where you were expected to knuckle down and learn given truths rather than develop questioning skills: grammar over creativity.

There are also more personal reasons for my interest in language, how users select and put chunks of it together, and, as importantly, how it is an expression of who you are and how you are valued in society.

I don't know how it happened, but from a very early age, I learnt to feel ashamed of how I spoke.  I should put it more strongly.  I was taught to feel ashamed of how I spoke.  Part of that feeling came with the territory.  Something to do with poverty.  There were the physical aspect of life.  The unfurnished bedroom, the scruffy, collapsing armchairs, the fraying, hand-me-down clothes meant home life couldn't be a sanctuary. The opposite was the case.  I was happier out in the street with childhood friends where those things didn't matter.  But there was something more insidious that affected lots of us where I lived.  School.  It was there in a primary school, staffed with kindly teachers, that I learnt that the remnants of my local dialect - the words that peppered a more standard English and passed on from my parents' generation - were in some way wrong.  The teachers didn't do this deliberately or knowingly.  They simply used a 'better' form of English.

This might not sound like a big deal, but it had two consequences.  One, it was easier and preferable not to speak at all, rather than expose myself to ridicule I imagined would happen.  And, two, I felt embarrassed to be part of my community, to have the parents I had, and to be me.