While I was riding on the bus to Dundee and back for my weekly harp class this afternoon, I listened to Professor Tom Devine on the death and reinvention of Scotland – not of the actual place or people of course, but of the idea of the nation.
This was a lecture that was given at my old college last June. Devine spoke mostly about 18th and 19th century history, and I found a number of his points were very pertinent to the current groundswell and shifts in the constitutional settlement. Ideas about the pace of change in Scottish society, the enlightenment, the relationship between the Central Belt and the rest of the country. The way in which the Scottish settlement was seen as different from the Irish.
Worth listening to if you have 50 minutes! Download as video or audio from Oxford Podcasts.