These six books of history, politics and literature deal in different ways with the future of Scotland and, by extension, that of the United Kingdom
between Scotland and England in 1707 created the United Kingdom. Since then Scotland has provided prime ministers, such as Gordon Brown, intellectual luminaries like Adam Smith and David Hume and a large proportion of the British who governed India. More recently Scotland, now with 5.5m people, has grown restive as a constituent of a country with a population ten times larger that often votes for policies it doesn’t like.
On May 1st 1707, the day that the Treaty of Union between Scotland and England was enacted, the bells of St Giles Cathedral in Edinburgh are said to have rung to the tune of “Why Should I Be So Sad On My Wedding Day?” At the time, writes Thomas Devine, the union was a “marriage of convenience”, reluctantly accepted by the impoverished Scottish nobility. It grew stronger in later centuries, and was not seriously challenged until the latter half of the 20th century.
, casts the union of 1707 as the engine of the Scottish enlightenment in the 18th century and of the country’s manufacturing boom in the 19th. He counters the argument that Englishness puts the Scots “in a political straitjacket which denies them the possibility of being fully themselves”. He gives short shrift to the notion that the two nations are fundamentally politically different. The difficulties of launching a new state are laid bare.
Why bother reading a book about two former leaders of the SNP? Alex Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon, who were also first ministers of Scotland, may be compelling figures but both have passed their political zenith. This book is about the women who accused Mr Salmond of sexual assault and, in the case of two of them, of attempted rape.
Glasgow, Scotland’s largest city, has often been dismissed as poor, sectarian and crime-ridden. It is much more than that. Gray saw it as a cultural centre on a par with London or Paris. In 2014 it was one of just four local-authority areas to vote for independence. Gray’s novel is a thorny way of getting to know the city, but worth the time it demands.
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