• Profile half-length photograph of a man facing to the left wearing a dark jacket and tie, holding a cigarette in his hand, with a white handkerchief in his jacket breast pocket. The man has a prominent straight nose, slicked back hair and his tie forms a slight arch from the knot. In the background, on the left side of the image, there is another half-length frontal portrait of a man. He has white hair, also wears a jacket and tie, is looking to the right, and is smiling.
A close-up photo of a brown desk with a clock, notebook, a satchel and a cup holding a bunch of pencils

Scottish Education and Society Since 1945

by Lindsay Paterson Scottish education has often been celebrated as an international pioneer in many things – the opportunity to provide schooling for everyone in the sixteenth-century Reformation, resulting in widespread literacy that provided the social basis for the eighteenth-century…

A statue of Robert Burns

Robert Burns’s Memory: A Matter of State

by Paul Malgrati Every year, on 25 January, Burns Night offers a remarkable opportunity for Scottish political parties to issue a statement about the Scottish nation, its identity, and its situation. Last year, in 2022, Scotland’s First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon,…

Stands Scottish Literature Where It Did? Revisiting Devolution

It’s been fifteen years since the last fat volume of essays on contemporary Scottish writing. Only a blink of historical time, but it’s been quite an eventful period. When the chapters of Berthold Schoene’s brilliant Edinburgh Companion to Contemporary Scottish Literature were being written, both the country and its debates looked rather different.

Remembering the history of Scottish land reform

By Ewen Cameron I was delighted to publish Freshness, Freedom, and Peace?: Land Settlement in Scotland after the Great War  in Northern Scotland, 2nd series, 11.2 (2020), 161–75. This was a special issue arising from a stimulating conference held at…