As Scotland stands on the brink of a momentous decision, Andrew Marr explores the writers who have reflected, defined and challenged Scottish national identity over the last three hundred years. He begins with an unlikely literary hero, James Boswell, a man torn between his patriotic duty at home and his desire for fame and adventure elsewhere. It is his colourful life and work that captures so vividly the uneasy relationship between England and Scotland in the century that followed the Act of Union.
As Scotland stands on the brink of a momentous decision, Andrew Marr explores the writers who have reflected, defined and challenged Scottish national identity over the last three hundred years. Andrew examines the life of Walter Scott, a prolific novelist and poet who wrote swashbuckling tales of romance and derring-do, which sold by the bucket load, both north and south of the border. But he is less well known as a political fixer who believed in a proud Scotland inside the United Kingdom. He brought King George IV to Scotland and swathed him in tartan, helping to create an enduring myth of Scotland as a land of romance populated by a brave race doing brave deeds, all clad in the kilt. An image that centuries later, Scotland is still trying to shake.
Andrew Marr looks into the life of Scotland's most bothersome poet, Hugh MacDiarmid. MacDiarmid reinvented Scots as a language for serious writing, at various times called for a Scottish fascism, tried to create an independent Scottish communist utopia, and was under surveillance by MI5 for many years. During his life he was involved in plots to capture Edinburgh Castle and steal the Stone of Destiny, but he also found time for a literary life in which he would write the most powerful poetry in Scots since the days of Robert Burns and to start a Scottish renaissance that goes on to this day.
