HE will blush to see it in print, but Ken Smith's Tuesday column on our Social page is, in my view, the nearest thing in The Herald these days to the work of columnist William Hunter, arguably the finest stylist this paper has seen. Unfortunately, there is no anthology of Willie Hunter's work, as the peer who undertook that project after his death also passed away before he had completed the task. Although modern journalism is less ephemeral than was once the case, thanks to the world wide web (and I commend Ken Smith's excellent piece from last Tuesday on Glasgow Jazz Festival on heraldscotland.com), there is still something about the permanence of collecting newspaper pieces between hard covers that understandably appeals to all writers. This week specialist theatrical publisher Nick Hern Books put out just such a collection under the title Theatre in Scotland: A Field of Dreams, reviews of work on the stages of Scotland from 1982 to this year by Joyce McMillan.

McMillan's career as a theatre critic began on The Herald's short-lived sister paper the Sunday Standard, a title that is very fondly remembered for its remarkable list of contributors across all areas of journalistic activity, a pay-roll that almost certainly contained the seeds of its swift demise. She has since contributed her trenchant criticism to The Guardian (for decade from 1984), Scotland on Sunday, very briefly for The Herald (in 1997) and then for The Scotsman from 1998 to the present day. That makes her collected opinions a very valuable resource indeed. The book has been co-edited by Philip Howard, artistic director at the Traverse and Dundee Rep, and his appreciative Foreword is preceded by a briefer word of praise by the founding director of the National Theatre of Scotland, Vicky Featherstone. Those contributions to the book are significant reminders of the importance of critics to the world of theatre. It is the artform in which, even in the days of the internet and greater interaction with the public, there is the most important traffic between the creators and the critic, a job of mediation that seems particularly vibrant in Scotland, where Joyce McMillan is one of the most significant figures. So this is a rather important book, as well as an invaluable reference work and a jolly good read. As Howard writes: "She has, to my knowledge, an almost unblemished record in never having failed to spot a great new play; and, rare among critics, she the ability to watch an unsuccessful new play and detect whether it's the playwright or director at fault." Winningly, he quotes from one of his own critical notices to illustrate the point.

If the book has a flaw, it is in its selectivity. If I was to publish a book of my own criticism – an exceedingly unlikely event – I would of course be just as picky, but the difficulty with McMillan choosing the work she feels is worth re-presenting is that her long career and the chronological structure of the book draws attention to the omissions. So her devastating, and absolutely spot-on, critique of Bill Bryden's WWI epic The Big Picnic at the Harland and Wolff engine shed in Govan in 1994 of course references its predecessor The Ship, but you will look in vain for a review of that, presumably because McMillan doe snot believe it has stood the test of time. You can't help wondering if she is necessarily the best judge of that, even if all her work suggests that is exactly what she is.

Theatre in Scotland – A Field of Dreams is published by Nick Hern Books at £14.99