Paul Malgrati – författare

Explores Robert Burns's political legacy in modern and contemporary ScotlandUses Burns's lens to study radical changes in Scottish cultural politics, from Victorian unionism to contemporary nationalism.Discusses Burns's influence on Scottish unionism, conservativism, nationalism, socialism, fascism, communism, modernism, antiracism, and feminism.Analyses Burns's reception by key Scottish writers, including Hugh MacDiarmid, Edwin Muir, Lewis Grassic Gibbon, Hamish Henderson, Edwin Morgan, and Liz Lochhead.Brings together political history and literary criticism with a wide range of primary sources, including rare television footage and exclusive interviews with poets and politicians.Robert Burns is Scotland's best known and most influential poet; yet his political legacy also ranks amongst the most contentious. His ambiguous verse, oscillating between patriotic odes, egalitarian lines and royalist songs, lends itself to interpretations from across the political divide.Blending political history and literary studies, this book explores this contested legacy of 'Scotland's National Bard'. It follows the transformations of Burns's image throughout the late modern era, as revolutionaries, nationalists and avant-garde writers co-opted Burns's myth to subvert their country's social and constitutional order. From Great War unionism to 1940s socialism and contemporary nationalism, the examination of Burns's tempestuous afterlives sheds light on the ongoing Scottish question. Overall, it reminds us that poetry is shifting ground on which to build a national identity.

Robert Burns is Scotland's best known and most influential poet; yet his political legacy also ranks amongst the most contentious. His ambiguous verse, oscillating between patriotic odes, egalitarian lines and royalist songs, lends itself to interpretations from across the political divide. Blending political history and literary studies, this book explores this contested legacy of 'Scotland's National Bard'. It follows the transformations of Burns's image throughout the late modern era, as revolutionaries, nationalists and avant-garde writers co-opted Burns's myth to subvert their country's social and constitutional order. From Great War unionism to 1940s socialism and contemporary nationalism, the examination of Burns's tempestuous afterlives sheds light on the ongoing Scottish question. Overall, it reminds us that poetry is a very shifting ground on which to build a national identity.

Alan Sharp (1934–2013) is best remembered today as a screenwriter, the author of classic Hollywood movies such as Ulzana’s Raid (1972) and Night Moves (1975), as well as the 1995 film Rob Roy, starring Liam Neeson. But his writing career really began with the publication in 1965 of his award-winning – and taboo-breaking – novel A Green Tree in Gedde.A Green Tree in Gedde is a multilayered, interlinked narrative of the developing lives of three young men and one young woman, all wrestling with the world and their places in it. The novel is a rebellion against the stifling orthodoxy of the so-called “swinging Sixties” as experienced in the west of Scotland, and originally gained notoriety for its frank depictions of sex and sexualities. More recently, critics have looked askance at its treatment of female and gay characters – and yet Sharp’s novel is complex, and there are subtleties here which deserve attention too. A Green Tree in Gedde is a lyrical work in praise of the centrality of the provincial, and the universality of the local. Although it remains controversial, it is nevertheless “a flagship of 1960s Scottish prose”.