1 00:00:04,480 --> 00:00:06,640 Today, Scotland stands on the edge 2 00:00:06,640 --> 00:00:11,080 of the most important event in her history for 300 years - 3 00:00:11,080 --> 00:00:14,240 the vote on whether to end her union 4 00:00:14,240 --> 00:00:18,760 with the rest of the United Kingdom and become once again independent. 5 00:00:21,960 --> 00:00:25,440 Through the centuries of the Union, Scotland has produced 6 00:00:25,440 --> 00:00:30,400 many great writers and in these programmes I'm looking at how 7 00:00:30,400 --> 00:00:33,960 they dealt with questions of identity and loyalty 8 00:00:33,960 --> 00:00:36,240 which confront today's Scots. 9 00:00:38,280 --> 00:00:41,560 It's not difficult to imagine where the subject of this film 10 00:00:41,560 --> 00:00:43,240 would place his cross. 11 00:00:43,240 --> 00:00:46,160 A prolific novelist and political fixer, 12 00:00:46,160 --> 00:00:48,720 he believed in a proud Scotland 13 00:00:48,720 --> 00:00:50,760 inside the United Kingdom. 14 00:00:51,960 --> 00:00:55,800 He was a literary superstar, known throughout the world 15 00:00:55,800 --> 00:00:58,360 as one of the most brilliant writers of his time, 16 00:00:58,360 --> 00:01:03,600 who through novel after novel reinvented Scotland 17 00:01:03,600 --> 00:01:05,640 as a tartan North Britain. 18 00:01:06,640 --> 00:01:09,160 But he paid a heavy price. 19 00:01:09,160 --> 00:01:12,000 His name is Walter Scott. 20 00:01:13,840 --> 00:01:16,480 At the time of the wars against Napoleon, 21 00:01:16,480 --> 00:01:19,760 the beginning of the 19th century, the Scots were firmly 22 00:01:19,760 --> 00:01:22,320 tied into their union with the English - 23 00:01:22,320 --> 00:01:25,280 firmly but not entirely happily. 24 00:01:25,280 --> 00:01:28,360 That old question, "Who are we, really?" - 25 00:01:28,360 --> 00:01:31,840 highlanders or lowlanders, city folk or Borderers, 26 00:01:31,840 --> 00:01:34,480 loyalists, and to whom? 27 00:01:34,480 --> 00:01:37,120 Or rebels - and against what? - 28 00:01:37,120 --> 00:01:39,360 tormented the writers of the time, 29 00:01:39,360 --> 00:01:42,720 few of them greater than the man whose home this was, 30 00:01:42,720 --> 00:01:46,600 the man who first promoted the idea of the Scotland of misty glens 31 00:01:46,600 --> 00:01:50,360 and unlikely castles - the wizard of the north, 32 00:01:50,360 --> 00:01:51,880 Walt before Disney. 33 00:02:19,000 --> 00:02:23,440 I was brought up with the most Scottish Nationalist literature 34 00:02:23,440 --> 00:02:24,680 you can imagine. 35 00:02:24,680 --> 00:02:26,120 Tiny little ladybird books 36 00:02:26,120 --> 00:02:29,080 about William Wallace and Robert The Bruce hammering the English. 37 00:02:29,080 --> 00:02:31,520 I used to draw lots of pictures of little Scottish people 38 00:02:31,520 --> 00:02:33,440 beating up little English people. 39 00:02:33,440 --> 00:02:36,360 And then I moved on to Walter Scott. 40 00:02:37,480 --> 00:02:39,920 And I don't think you can be a great writer 41 00:02:39,920 --> 00:02:44,040 if you don't listen to the voices and the language 42 00:02:44,040 --> 00:02:46,920 and the instincts of the people of your country. 43 00:02:48,320 --> 00:02:52,480 If you want to know how the Scots of the 1700s and 1800s 44 00:02:52,480 --> 00:02:57,000 talk and thought and spoke, then Scott is absolutely your man. 45 00:03:02,480 --> 00:03:06,040 At one time, it seemed a Scott could be found on every 46 00:03:06,040 --> 00:03:09,160 book shelf in every home in the country. 47 00:03:09,160 --> 00:03:12,520 Swashbuckling adventures, bringing the tumultuous history 48 00:03:12,520 --> 00:03:15,080 of Scotland - and of England - to life. 49 00:03:20,000 --> 00:03:24,760 His legacy is so vast it practically pokes visitors 50 00:03:24,760 --> 00:03:26,280 to Scotland in the eye. 51 00:03:27,840 --> 00:03:34,600 ANNOUNCER: Platform 15 for the 12:35 First ScotRail service to Perth, 52 00:03:34,600 --> 00:03:36,720 calling at Haymarket... 53 00:03:36,720 --> 00:03:40,720 Waverley station in Edinburgh, the only railway station, 54 00:03:40,720 --> 00:03:43,840 anywhere in the world, named after a novel. 55 00:03:45,040 --> 00:03:51,000 Waverley was published in 1814 and instantly recognised as a cracker. 56 00:03:51,000 --> 00:03:53,560 And there's a huge monument to the man who wrote it, 57 00:03:53,560 --> 00:03:56,600 Walter Scott, looming over the station. 58 00:03:56,600 --> 00:03:59,360 In many ways it's a ridiculous monument, it looks like 59 00:03:59,360 --> 00:04:02,360 a Thunderbirds statue, built by monks. 60 00:04:02,360 --> 00:04:06,480 But it's not only the largest statue erected to a writer in Scotland 61 00:04:06,480 --> 00:04:10,120 or in Britain - that is the largest statue ever built 62 00:04:10,120 --> 00:04:13,280 to a writer anywhere in the world. 63 00:04:13,280 --> 00:04:15,320 Down south, Nelson's column, 64 00:04:15,320 --> 00:04:19,960 erected to England's great hero, is 40ft shorter. 65 00:04:27,320 --> 00:04:28,640 During his lifetime, 66 00:04:28,640 --> 00:04:34,320 Walter Scott was perhaps the first global literary superstar. 67 00:04:34,320 --> 00:04:38,960 His novels provided the librettos for more than 90 operas. 68 00:04:38,960 --> 00:04:45,560 He was Byron's hero, spoken of alongside Shakespeare and Homer. 69 00:04:45,560 --> 00:04:49,480 Two centuries ago he wrote his first hit, Waverley. 70 00:04:51,120 --> 00:04:54,360 And in it, and other novels, he sold Scotland as a place 71 00:04:54,360 --> 00:04:57,120 of romantic myths, 72 00:04:57,120 --> 00:05:01,600 tartan-clad heroes and tragic choices. 73 00:05:01,600 --> 00:05:05,520 But if you want a taster, a flavour of his craft, how about this 74 00:05:05,520 --> 00:05:11,000 English jousting scene from Ivanhoe, the novel he wrote in 1819. 75 00:05:12,320 --> 00:05:14,600 The scene he paints is so vivid, 76 00:05:14,600 --> 00:05:17,800 that he's done the film director's job for him, and better. 77 00:05:20,320 --> 00:05:22,960 "The splendid armour of the combatants 78 00:05:22,960 --> 00:05:26,680 "was now defaced with dust and blood, 79 00:05:26,680 --> 00:05:30,440 "and gave way at every stroke of the sword and battle-axe. 80 00:05:32,120 --> 00:05:34,960 "The gay plumage, shorn from the crests, 81 00:05:34,960 --> 00:05:37,960 "drifted upon the breeze like snowflakes. 82 00:05:39,640 --> 00:05:41,200 "All that was beautiful 83 00:05:41,200 --> 00:05:45,560 "and graceful in the martial array had disappeared, 84 00:05:45,560 --> 00:05:47,160 "and what was now visible 85 00:05:47,160 --> 00:05:50,480 "was only calculated to awake terror or compassion." 86 00:05:54,240 --> 00:05:55,960 These days, however, 87 00:05:55,960 --> 00:06:01,640 it's Robert Burns who's absolutely the poet of choice for most Scots. 88 00:06:01,640 --> 00:06:05,400 It wasn't always so. He doesn't have a great stone rocket. 89 00:06:05,400 --> 00:06:07,200 He doesn't have a railway station. 90 00:06:10,800 --> 00:06:13,240 This is what they did for Robert Burns. 91 00:06:13,240 --> 00:06:16,320 It's tucked away about a quarter of a mile behind a hill. 92 00:06:17,960 --> 00:06:21,120 And it's perfectly nice, it's kind of good, but it's not, 93 00:06:21,120 --> 00:06:25,520 in terms of competitive statutory, quite the full shazam. 94 00:06:27,480 --> 00:06:28,760 So is there a competition 95 00:06:28,760 --> 00:06:31,920 between Walter Scott, the conservative novelist, 96 00:06:31,920 --> 00:06:35,680 and Robert Burns, the patriotic songwriter and poet? 97 00:06:35,680 --> 00:06:37,000 In a way there is. 98 00:06:37,000 --> 00:06:39,120 Very, very different sensibilities, 99 00:06:39,120 --> 00:06:41,360 very, very different attitudes to Scotland 100 00:06:41,360 --> 00:06:44,320 and it is something that carries on today. 101 00:06:44,320 --> 00:06:46,480 This morning, I was reading in the paper that, 102 00:06:46,480 --> 00:06:48,680 round the corner at the Scottish Parliament, 103 00:06:48,680 --> 00:06:50,440 nationalists are debating whether 104 00:06:50,440 --> 00:06:55,480 to rename Prestwick airport the Robert Burns International Airport. 105 00:06:55,480 --> 00:06:59,480 A competition back then and certainly, a competition right now. 106 00:07:06,040 --> 00:07:09,840 Burns' reputation as the voice of Scottish nationalism, 107 00:07:09,840 --> 00:07:13,520 the darling of defiance against England is safe. 108 00:07:14,600 --> 00:07:18,000 Not surprisingly, he is Alex Salmond's favourite and will 109 00:07:18,000 --> 00:07:19,680 no doubt be quoted liberally 110 00:07:19,680 --> 00:07:22,560 should the Yes campaign triumph in September. 111 00:07:25,320 --> 00:07:27,960 Burns is a much more lovable character 112 00:07:27,960 --> 00:07:31,680 and his faults and contradictions have been largely forgotten. 113 00:07:35,080 --> 00:07:39,360 But Scott's political impact was unarguably greater. 114 00:07:39,360 --> 00:07:43,880 He was just as concerned with Scotland's heritage and its history 115 00:07:43,880 --> 00:07:48,880 as Burns, and his work isn't exactly short of tartan-clad heroes. 116 00:07:48,880 --> 00:07:52,680 But in turbulent times, Scott believed that Scotland, 117 00:07:52,680 --> 00:07:57,200 in its wealth and security, was better off in the union with England 118 00:07:57,200 --> 00:08:01,520 so long as it was a union of equally respected countries. 119 00:08:01,520 --> 00:08:05,760 Despite his huge international fame and the spotlight he brought 120 00:08:05,760 --> 00:08:09,560 onto Scotland, he has not always been fondly regarded by Scots. 121 00:08:15,040 --> 00:08:19,200 Walter Scott was born in Edinburgh in 1771, 122 00:08:19,200 --> 00:08:21,400 the ninth child of a wealthy lawyer. 123 00:08:23,800 --> 00:08:26,600 This was the age when Edinburgh called herself 124 00:08:26,600 --> 00:08:31,880 the Athens Of The North - a city of rational thinkers, practical scientists, 125 00:08:31,880 --> 00:08:36,080 and freethinking inventors admired across the rest of Europe. 126 00:08:38,240 --> 00:08:43,160 People brimming with ambition who spoke and wrote in English 127 00:08:43,160 --> 00:08:47,680 and who called themselves not Scots, but North British. 128 00:08:52,280 --> 00:08:55,720 This was all about order and cleanliness. 129 00:08:55,720 --> 00:08:59,680 Rational, hardworking, Protestant people who would, in time, 130 00:08:59,680 --> 00:09:01,440 help to build the British Empire. 131 00:09:01,440 --> 00:09:06,200 And it came about just before the building of Edinburgh's New Town itself. 132 00:09:06,200 --> 00:09:11,720 A grid system built to the north of the old, crammed, chaotic, squalid, 133 00:09:11,720 --> 00:09:14,800 but democratic Old Town. 134 00:09:14,800 --> 00:09:17,520 A rational town for a reasonable people. 135 00:09:25,240 --> 00:09:28,320 Now, if he'd stayed here throughout the rest of his childhood, 136 00:09:28,320 --> 00:09:31,480 Walter Scott would probably have been a reasonably standard product 137 00:09:31,480 --> 00:09:35,240 of this rational, civilised world. 138 00:09:35,240 --> 00:09:37,960 A lawyer, like his father. 139 00:09:37,960 --> 00:09:40,560 But sickness intervened. 140 00:09:42,200 --> 00:09:46,040 Five of his siblings had already died in infancy. 141 00:09:46,040 --> 00:09:49,280 Little Walter contracted polio and to give him 142 00:09:49,280 --> 00:09:53,080 a chance of survival, he was sent to live at his grandfather's home 143 00:09:53,080 --> 00:09:55,440 in the Borders near Melrose. 144 00:10:00,520 --> 00:10:03,720 His parents hoped plain country food, 145 00:10:03,720 --> 00:10:07,320 fresh air and exercise would save him. 146 00:10:07,320 --> 00:10:08,880 And it did - 147 00:10:08,880 --> 00:10:12,160 although he would walk with a limp for the rest of his life. 148 00:10:13,680 --> 00:10:16,200 And if it transformed his body, 149 00:10:16,200 --> 00:10:21,040 the Borders transformed the way he thought as well. 150 00:10:21,040 --> 00:10:23,920 The three-year-old Scott found himself here, 151 00:10:23,920 --> 00:10:27,040 the only child in a world of old people 152 00:10:27,040 --> 00:10:31,520 and it was here that his imagination really caught fire. 153 00:10:31,520 --> 00:10:35,040 The house didn't have much in the way of an extensive library, 154 00:10:35,040 --> 00:10:37,400 but what it did have was romance. 155 00:10:37,400 --> 00:10:41,320 Tales of the old Border Reivers - of Wat Of Harden, 156 00:10:41,320 --> 00:10:43,440 of Wight Willie Of Aikwood, 157 00:10:43,440 --> 00:10:48,320 of Jamie Telfer Of The Fair Dodhead and other local heroes. 158 00:10:48,320 --> 00:10:53,240 And Scott developed an uncanny ear for the voices of real Scotland. 159 00:10:54,520 --> 00:10:58,840 # I ride on my fleet-footed grey My sword hangin' doon by ma knee 160 00:10:58,840 --> 00:11:02,880 # My name is little Jock Elliot Oh wha daur meddle wi' me? 161 00:11:02,880 --> 00:11:07,280 # Wha daur meddle wi' me? Wha daur meddle wi' me? 162 00:11:07,280 --> 00:11:11,720 # Oh, my name is little Jock Elliot Oh, wha daur meddle wi' me? 163 00:11:11,720 --> 00:11:15,600 # I vanquished the Queen's lieutenant And garr'd her troopers tae flee 164 00:11:15,600 --> 00:11:19,120 # My name is little Jock Elliot Oh wha daur meddle wi' me? 165 00:11:19,120 --> 00:11:23,480 # Wha daur meddle wi' me? Wha daur meddle wi' me? 166 00:11:23,480 --> 00:11:28,560 #Oh, my name is little Jock Elliot An' wha daur meddle wi' me? # 167 00:11:30,160 --> 00:11:32,320 That's wonderful, thank you very much for that. 168 00:11:32,320 --> 00:11:34,760 So Scott was brought up in... presumably, in his day, 169 00:11:34,760 --> 00:11:36,280 this was still a fairly wild area, 170 00:11:36,280 --> 00:11:39,160 not lawless any more, but the old songs and the old stories 171 00:11:39,160 --> 00:11:41,320 would be very much in front of his eyes and ears? 172 00:11:41,320 --> 00:11:43,000 That's right. That's right. Yes. 173 00:11:43,000 --> 00:11:46,360 He spent a lot of his time here with his grandfather and his aunt, 174 00:11:46,360 --> 00:11:49,000 and with a cowherd called Ormiston. 175 00:11:49,000 --> 00:11:53,760 And they fired his imagination for Border culture. 176 00:11:53,760 --> 00:11:55,120 I think he played a massive part 177 00:11:55,120 --> 00:11:59,080 in preserving these ancient ballads and songs. 178 00:11:59,080 --> 00:12:02,160 Had it not been for him, I think they would have went into obscurity. 179 00:12:06,160 --> 00:12:10,400 This dramatic stone tower, known as Smailholm, 180 00:12:10,400 --> 00:12:16,240 a classic 15th-century relic of the Borders' violent and lawless past, 181 00:12:16,240 --> 00:12:18,720 loomed over the young Walter Scott as he walked 182 00:12:18,720 --> 00:12:20,280 the hills beside the farm. 183 00:12:22,840 --> 00:12:27,520 He'd celebrate this scene from his boyish years later in Marmion, 184 00:12:27,520 --> 00:12:31,280 a poem about one of the greatest disasters in Scottish history, 185 00:12:31,280 --> 00:12:33,400 the Battle of Flodden Field. 186 00:12:37,960 --> 00:12:40,480 Thus while I ape the measure wild 187 00:12:40,480 --> 00:12:43,720 Of tales that charmed me yet a child, 188 00:12:43,720 --> 00:12:46,440 Rude though they be, still with the chime 189 00:12:46,440 --> 00:12:49,240 Return the thoughts of early time 190 00:12:49,240 --> 00:12:51,960 And feelings, roused in life's first day, 191 00:12:51,960 --> 00:12:55,080 Glow in the line and prompt the lay 192 00:12:55,080 --> 00:12:58,480 Then rise those crags, that mountain tower, 193 00:12:58,480 --> 00:13:01,160 Which charm'd my fancy's wakening hour. 194 00:13:09,480 --> 00:13:12,320 On fine days, a shepherd would carry the young Walter 195 00:13:12,320 --> 00:13:15,760 on his shoulders up to these crags and here 196 00:13:15,760 --> 00:13:20,160 he learnt to walk using a stick made for him by his grandfather. 197 00:13:21,440 --> 00:13:27,320 And he was told, "Every field has its battle and every rivulet its song." 198 00:13:32,920 --> 00:13:37,760 The Battle of Philiphaugh remembers one such fight in 1645, 199 00:13:37,760 --> 00:13:41,800 when the Royalists were shattered by an army of Covenanters - 200 00:13:41,800 --> 00:13:44,560 Scottish Protestant religious zealots. 201 00:13:48,440 --> 00:13:52,560 On Philiphaugh a fray began, At Hairhead Wood, it ended 202 00:13:52,560 --> 00:13:55,200 The Scots out o'er the Graemes they ran, 203 00:13:55,200 --> 00:13:57,320 Sae merrily they bended 204 00:13:57,320 --> 00:13:59,680 Sir David frae the border came, 205 00:13:59,680 --> 00:14:01,640 Wi' heart an' hand came he 206 00:14:01,640 --> 00:14:05,600 Wi' him 3,000 bonny Scots, to bear him company 207 00:14:05,600 --> 00:14:09,160 Wi' him 3,000 valiant men, A noble sight to see! 208 00:14:09,160 --> 00:14:12,880 A cloud o' mist them weel concealed, as close as e'er might be. 209 00:14:23,680 --> 00:14:29,440 Walter Scott returned to Edinburgh strong enough to attend school in 1778 - 210 00:14:29,440 --> 00:14:35,000 aged seven, with his head stuffed and ringing with poetry and history. 211 00:14:35,000 --> 00:14:37,560 His father had other ideas for him, though. 212 00:14:37,560 --> 00:14:40,160 He wanted his son to grow up to be modern - 213 00:14:40,160 --> 00:14:43,920 to be a Georgian and a British gentleman. 214 00:14:43,920 --> 00:14:49,920 "Forget this ballad nonsense, boy," he said, "and become a lawyer." 215 00:14:49,920 --> 00:14:53,760 A gentleman's place was at his desk in town, 216 00:14:53,760 --> 00:14:58,000 not roaming castle walls and gallivanting around the countryside. 217 00:14:58,000 --> 00:15:00,200 So poor old dutiful Walter 218 00:15:00,200 --> 00:15:03,240 took an apprenticeship in his father's office. 219 00:15:04,920 --> 00:15:08,360 His new home was a different world to the Borders where people 220 00:15:08,360 --> 00:15:11,960 had revered Scotland's medieval culture and folklore. 221 00:15:11,960 --> 00:15:16,960 But not even Edinburgh was entirely defended from romance and poetry. 222 00:15:19,400 --> 00:15:24,360 In the winter of 1786, Walter Scott got a glimpse of a future 223 00:15:24,360 --> 00:15:26,920 rather more interesting than the law. 224 00:15:26,920 --> 00:15:32,880 The pale, lame boy was invited to the house of the philosopher Adam Fergusson. 225 00:15:35,600 --> 00:15:39,800 There, he'd be confronted by a stocky 28-year-old man 226 00:15:39,800 --> 00:15:43,840 whose future work would often be contrasted to his, 227 00:15:43,840 --> 00:15:46,640 even though they were very, very different writers. 228 00:15:48,720 --> 00:15:51,960 To understand Walter Scott you have to understand 229 00:15:51,960 --> 00:15:56,760 the vast role played in Scottish psyche played by one Robert Burns. 230 00:15:58,480 --> 00:16:02,920 Burns was handsome, self-taught, self-made. 231 00:16:02,920 --> 00:16:04,960 And his poems, which would include 232 00:16:04,960 --> 00:16:08,640 Holy Willy's Prayer, Tam O'Shanter, Scots Wha Hae 233 00:16:08,640 --> 00:16:11,040 and of course Auld Lang Syne, 234 00:16:11,040 --> 00:16:15,200 are still a living, breathing part of Scottish culture. 235 00:16:15,200 --> 00:16:19,720 Scott might have his railway station but Burns has an evening once a year 236 00:16:19,720 --> 00:16:23,200 devoted entirely to him when we have a small drink 237 00:16:23,200 --> 00:16:27,520 and celebrate the "great chieftain o' the puddin'-race." 238 00:16:27,520 --> 00:16:30,800 Burns was both the darling of high society 239 00:16:30,800 --> 00:16:33,000 and the champion of the people, 240 00:16:33,000 --> 00:16:36,400 who spoke to them in their own language, Scots. 241 00:16:41,960 --> 00:16:46,120 He found poetry and meaning in the most unlikely places. 242 00:16:47,360 --> 00:16:52,120 In To A Louse, he comically chides the crawling, creeping insect 243 00:16:52,120 --> 00:16:55,240 for appearing on the hat of a beautiful woman in church, 244 00:16:55,240 --> 00:16:59,040 who has no idea why the congregation are all staring at her. 245 00:17:01,640 --> 00:17:02,920 Ha! 246 00:17:02,920 --> 00:17:05,880 Whaur ye gaun, ye crowlin' ferlie? 247 00:17:06,920 --> 00:17:09,760 Your impudence protects you sairly 248 00:17:09,760 --> 00:17:11,960 I canna say but ye strunt rarely, 249 00:17:11,960 --> 00:17:14,520 Owre gauze and lace 250 00:17:14,520 --> 00:17:16,160 But, faith! 251 00:17:16,160 --> 00:17:18,320 I fear ye dine but sparely 252 00:17:18,320 --> 00:17:19,560 On sic a place 253 00:17:21,080 --> 00:17:24,960 Ye ugly, creepin', blastit wonner 254 00:17:24,960 --> 00:17:28,320 Detested, shunn'd by saunt an' sinner, 255 00:17:28,320 --> 00:17:32,720 How daur ye place your fit upon her - sae fine a lady? 256 00:17:32,720 --> 00:17:36,400 Gae somewhere else and seek your dinner on some poor body. 257 00:17:43,200 --> 00:17:45,760 And he concludes, devastatingly: 258 00:17:45,760 --> 00:17:48,680 "Oh, would some power the giftie gie us, 259 00:17:48,680 --> 00:17:51,640 "to see ourselves as ithers see us." 260 00:17:52,640 --> 00:17:57,280 A universal message from a dirty little Scottish Kirk - 261 00:17:57,280 --> 00:17:59,720 but the tenor of much of Burns' poetry 262 00:17:59,720 --> 00:18:01,920 was more political than that 263 00:18:01,920 --> 00:18:06,760 and took him down a very different path to the young Tory Walter Scott. 264 00:18:08,640 --> 00:18:11,720 Burns' politics were complicated - 265 00:18:11,720 --> 00:18:13,520 he was the natural rebel 266 00:18:13,520 --> 00:18:17,680 who can often sound like a proto-Scottish Nationalist, 267 00:18:17,680 --> 00:18:22,800 often writing songs and poems about Scotland's early battles for independence 268 00:18:22,800 --> 00:18:26,280 and sounding, in many moods, like a Jacobite. 269 00:18:26,280 --> 00:18:31,160 And yet he was also a Government employee, a tax-gatherer no less, 270 00:18:31,160 --> 00:18:36,280 who also wrote a fervent patriotic song against the French. 271 00:18:36,280 --> 00:18:39,080 And yet, in the end, what is essential 272 00:18:39,080 --> 00:18:41,920 about this man of many political moods 273 00:18:41,920 --> 00:18:45,800 is that he is a lifelong supporter of the bottom dog, 274 00:18:45,800 --> 00:18:48,760 an instinctive scourge of the snooty, 275 00:18:48,760 --> 00:18:51,520 the patron poet of democracy. 276 00:19:00,600 --> 00:19:03,760 And these were wild times. 277 00:19:03,760 --> 00:19:06,840 Rebellion was in the air when a radical supporter 278 00:19:06,840 --> 00:19:10,360 of the French Revolution, Thomas Muir, was arrested 279 00:19:10,360 --> 00:19:14,920 on his return from Paris to Scotland and taken to Edinburgh in chains. 280 00:19:17,160 --> 00:19:22,760 Burns saw the man who's been described as the founding father of Scottish democracy, 281 00:19:22,760 --> 00:19:27,480 bound and desperate, as Muir was led off to be tried for sedition. 282 00:19:29,840 --> 00:19:32,320 He faced a show trial in Edinburgh 283 00:19:32,320 --> 00:19:36,560 and was banished to the penal colony of Australia from where, 284 00:19:36,560 --> 00:19:41,280 remarkably, he escaped, made it to California and then to Mexico - 285 00:19:41,280 --> 00:19:43,560 arrested again, sent to Spain, 286 00:19:43,560 --> 00:19:47,200 escaped again and ended his days in Paris. 287 00:19:47,200 --> 00:19:49,960 In Scotland, he has always been remembered 288 00:19:49,960 --> 00:19:52,600 as one of the earliest heroes of Liberty. 289 00:19:52,600 --> 00:19:56,920 Not every monument in Edinburgh commemorates the rich and the powerful. 290 00:19:56,920 --> 00:20:02,800 This magnificent stick of liquorice stands for democracy's martyrs. 291 00:20:08,880 --> 00:20:11,840 There's no record of what Walter Scott made of Muir, 292 00:20:11,840 --> 00:20:16,160 the dangerous rebel, but Robert Burns simmered with fury. 293 00:20:19,760 --> 00:20:25,160 In 1793, it was simply too dangerous, even for Robert Burns, 294 00:20:25,160 --> 00:20:29,560 to write a poem or a song in praise of this political prisoner. 295 00:20:29,560 --> 00:20:34,200 Instead, he wrote his freedom song, but about William Wallace, 296 00:20:34,200 --> 00:20:38,440 the medieval Scottish hero who had become, even in England, 297 00:20:38,440 --> 00:20:41,240 a symbol of the... 298 00:20:41,240 --> 00:20:43,560 spirit of liberty. 299 00:20:48,480 --> 00:20:51,480 # Wha will be a traitor-knave 300 00:20:51,480 --> 00:20:55,200 # Wha can fill a coward's grave 301 00:20:55,200 --> 00:20:58,880 # Wha sae base as be a slave 302 00:20:58,880 --> 00:21:03,360 # Let him turn and flee 303 00:21:03,360 --> 00:21:07,320 # Scots, wha hae wi' Wallace bled 304 00:21:07,320 --> 00:21:10,960 # Scots, wham Bruce have often led 305 00:21:10,960 --> 00:21:14,560 # Welcome tae your gory bed 306 00:21:14,560 --> 00:21:19,440 # Or tae victory! # 307 00:21:28,480 --> 00:21:32,360 Scots Wha Hae takes the heroes of the Scottish independence wars, 308 00:21:32,360 --> 00:21:36,800 Bruce and Wallace, and identifies them with the contemporary struggle 309 00:21:36,800 --> 00:21:40,400 for liberty against the oppression of the British state. 310 00:21:40,400 --> 00:21:45,160 So the English King Edward is identified with chains and slavery. 311 00:21:45,160 --> 00:21:48,600 "There's liberty in every blow, Let's do or die!" 312 00:21:51,680 --> 00:21:54,680 Now, Walter Scott's response to the turmoil 313 00:21:54,680 --> 00:21:57,120 could not have been more different. 314 00:21:57,120 --> 00:22:01,920 The following year he chose to watch the execution of Robert Watt, 315 00:22:01,920 --> 00:22:05,960 another reformer, and when a group of rebel Irish students 316 00:22:05,960 --> 00:22:10,000 disrupted the singing of God Save The Queen at a theatre, 317 00:22:10,000 --> 00:22:12,560 he waded in with his fists in anger. 318 00:22:15,400 --> 00:22:19,640 It could almost have been Walter Scott that Burns was referring to 319 00:22:19,640 --> 00:22:22,400 when he wrote of strutting lords 320 00:22:22,400 --> 00:22:27,080 in arguably his most revolutionary work, A Man's A Man. 321 00:22:27,080 --> 00:22:31,240 A "birkie" just means a young man, and a "coof" is an idiot. 322 00:22:34,000 --> 00:22:36,800 Ye see yon birkie, ca'd a lord, 323 00:22:36,800 --> 00:22:40,160 Wha struts, an' stares, an' a' that, 324 00:22:41,320 --> 00:22:43,520 Tho' hundreds worship at his word, 325 00:22:43,520 --> 00:22:47,040 He's but a coof for a' that. 326 00:22:47,040 --> 00:22:51,160 For a' that, an' a' that, 327 00:22:51,160 --> 00:22:55,280 # His ribband, star an' a' that. 328 00:22:56,560 --> 00:23:02,640 # A man o' independent mind 329 00:23:02,640 --> 00:23:07,120 # He looks an' laughs at a' that. # 330 00:23:13,240 --> 00:23:20,000 Burns died on the 21st of July 1796. He was 37 years old, 331 00:23:20,000 --> 00:23:23,640 worn out by hardship and by hard living. 332 00:23:23,640 --> 00:23:26,600 And what of his legacy? This man of the people, 333 00:23:26,600 --> 00:23:28,160 this natural democrat, 334 00:23:28,160 --> 00:23:31,880 one time supporter of the French Revolution, who could never 335 00:23:31,880 --> 00:23:35,760 quite speak out for fear of losing his government job 336 00:23:35,760 --> 00:23:37,880 as an excise man. He even wore 337 00:23:37,880 --> 00:23:41,040 the King's uniform as a Dumfries Volunteer. 338 00:23:41,040 --> 00:23:43,600 These contradictions meant that after his death, 339 00:23:43,600 --> 00:23:47,400 it was all too easy to rub off Burns' rough edges. 340 00:23:47,400 --> 00:23:52,400 He became the object of a self-satisfied, rather smug, 341 00:23:52,400 --> 00:23:54,440 sentimental cult. 342 00:23:54,440 --> 00:23:57,920 This extraordinary, turbulent, passionate man 343 00:23:57,920 --> 00:24:00,760 was defanged by his admirers. 344 00:24:05,160 --> 00:24:08,680 One of his chief admirers was Walter Scott, 345 00:24:08,680 --> 00:24:12,560 now married with children, settled down, and about to embark 346 00:24:12,560 --> 00:24:16,920 on his own literary career, which would draw on Burns' romantic vision 347 00:24:16,920 --> 00:24:20,680 of Scotland, without, of course, the revolutionary politics. 348 00:24:28,360 --> 00:24:30,720 He published his first significant work, 349 00:24:30,720 --> 00:24:35,840 The Minstrelsy Of The Scottish Border, in 1802. 350 00:24:35,840 --> 00:24:40,680 In it, he gathers and reworks traditional poems and ballads, 351 00:24:40,680 --> 00:24:45,160 many of which he will first have heard as a child at Sandyknowe. 352 00:24:49,680 --> 00:24:51,640 These are rooted in folklore. 353 00:24:51,640 --> 00:24:55,320 There is no hint of politics, 354 00:24:55,320 --> 00:24:59,840 even in the famous grizzly ballad about two crows, or "corbies", 355 00:24:59,840 --> 00:25:03,280 picking at the flesh of the body of a dead knight. 356 00:25:07,040 --> 00:25:09,320 As I was walking all alane, 357 00:25:09,320 --> 00:25:12,240 I heard twa corbies making a mane. 358 00:25:12,240 --> 00:25:16,560 The tane unto t'other say, "Where sall we gang and dine to-day?" 359 00:25:16,560 --> 00:25:21,880 "In behint yon auld fail dyke, I wot there lies a new slain knight, 360 00:25:21,880 --> 00:25:24,120 "And naebody kens that he lies there, 361 00:25:24,120 --> 00:25:26,560 "But his hawk, his hound, and lady fair." 362 00:25:35,920 --> 00:25:39,640 This was essentially an affectionate collection 363 00:25:39,640 --> 00:25:41,120 written mostly in Border Scots, 364 00:25:41,120 --> 00:25:45,120 but it is interesting that even at this point, Scott is looking beyond 365 00:25:45,120 --> 00:25:49,120 for an English speaking, middle class audience, because these simple 366 00:25:49,120 --> 00:25:53,560 ballads are completely surrounded by explanations and notes. 367 00:25:53,560 --> 00:25:56,480 And when he goes on to write his own poetry, 368 00:25:56,480 --> 00:25:59,680 Scott takes the single most important decision 369 00:25:59,680 --> 00:26:05,200 in his literary life, because he writes not in Scots but in English. 370 00:26:07,640 --> 00:26:11,560 The most famous of these poems was The Lay Of The Last Minstrel, 371 00:26:11,560 --> 00:26:15,240 a ballad peopled by goblins, a magic book 372 00:26:15,240 --> 00:26:18,720 and a terrifying strongman called Lord Dacre. 373 00:26:20,000 --> 00:26:23,120 It was reprinted six times in three years. 374 00:26:23,120 --> 00:26:27,480 It brought fame to Walter Scott and tourists in their thousands 375 00:26:27,480 --> 00:26:30,280 to Melrose Abbey, where it was partly set. 376 00:26:32,880 --> 00:26:35,320 And yes, it is patriotic. 377 00:26:35,320 --> 00:26:39,200 In the following glowing lines, Scott's heart broods over 378 00:26:39,200 --> 00:26:42,720 the rugged charms of his Caledonia, his Scotland. 379 00:26:45,720 --> 00:26:49,320 Breathes there the man, with soul so dead, 380 00:26:49,320 --> 00:26:52,240 Who never to himself hath said, 381 00:26:52,240 --> 00:26:55,120 This is my own, my native land! 382 00:26:56,200 --> 00:26:59,120 O Caledonia! Stern and wild, 383 00:26:59,120 --> 00:27:02,160 Meet nurse for a poetic child! 384 00:27:02,160 --> 00:27:04,480 Land of brown heath and shaggy wood, 385 00:27:04,480 --> 00:27:07,240 Land of the mountain and the flood, 386 00:27:07,240 --> 00:27:09,520 Land of my sires! 387 00:27:09,520 --> 00:27:11,160 What mortal hand 388 00:27:11,160 --> 00:27:13,600 Can e'er untie the filial band 389 00:27:13,600 --> 00:27:17,200 That knits me to thy rugged strand! 390 00:27:22,520 --> 00:27:26,720 William Pitt, the Tory Prime Minister, was a big fan of The Lay. 391 00:27:26,720 --> 00:27:29,920 More classic poems including The Lady Of The Lake 392 00:27:29,920 --> 00:27:33,040 and Rokeby followed in the next ten years. 393 00:27:34,680 --> 00:27:38,280 But then with the arrival on the literary scene of that 394 00:27:38,280 --> 00:27:43,000 devastatingly talented and wicked rival, Lord Byron, 395 00:27:43,000 --> 00:27:46,880 Scott sensed a declining appetite for his verses. 396 00:27:46,880 --> 00:27:49,000 Years later, he told his biographer, 397 00:27:49,000 --> 00:27:52,640 "Byron beat me out of the field." 398 00:27:57,560 --> 00:28:01,920 The poems had brought him fame, but now Scott needed a bigger stage, 399 00:28:01,920 --> 00:28:07,400 one which could encompass the politics as well as the history of modern Scotland. 400 00:28:07,400 --> 00:28:11,960 And so he made a second dramatic move that was to prove 401 00:28:11,960 --> 00:28:15,800 even more successful than his decision to drop the Scots language. 402 00:28:19,840 --> 00:28:25,600 His first novel, Waverley, was published in 1814, 200 years ago. 403 00:28:26,880 --> 00:28:30,480 There was a long tradition of gentlemen writing poems, 404 00:28:30,480 --> 00:28:33,440 but not of gentlemen writing novels. 405 00:28:33,440 --> 00:28:37,360 This cautious lawyer didn't even want his name on the cover, 406 00:28:37,360 --> 00:28:39,480 just in case things went wrong. 407 00:28:40,960 --> 00:28:44,880 This was an exciting new idea in the history of the novel - 408 00:28:44,880 --> 00:28:51,000 fictional characters rubbing shoulders with real characters inside real events. 409 00:28:51,000 --> 00:28:55,240 Walter Scott virtually invented the historical novel, 410 00:28:55,240 --> 00:28:58,920 and sometimes it seems, aspects of our own history too. 411 00:28:58,920 --> 00:29:02,400 "The Wars of the Roses" was a Walter Scott phrase, 412 00:29:02,400 --> 00:29:05,760 and you know that scene in the Disney film where Robin Hood's arrow 413 00:29:05,760 --> 00:29:09,120 splits the Sherriff of Nottingham's arrow in mid air? 414 00:29:09,120 --> 00:29:10,480 Walter Scott. 415 00:29:13,200 --> 00:29:16,400 James Robertson is a modern historical novelist. 416 00:29:16,400 --> 00:29:19,400 His characters live through World Cups and the rise 417 00:29:19,400 --> 00:29:23,640 of the Scottish National Party. Very different times, but in a way, 418 00:29:23,640 --> 00:29:27,120 his approach to history is similar to Walter Scott's. 419 00:29:27,120 --> 00:29:29,920 The historical novel is a massive genre these days, 420 00:29:29,920 --> 00:29:32,920 can we actually credit that to Walter Scott, do you think? 421 00:29:32,920 --> 00:29:34,840 Yeah, I think we can. 422 00:29:34,840 --> 00:29:38,800 I think Scott probably more than anybody, shapes what we now think of 423 00:29:38,800 --> 00:29:42,120 as a historical novel in the early 19th century. 424 00:29:42,120 --> 00:29:46,400 He does this thing that nobody has really done before which is 425 00:29:46,400 --> 00:29:48,880 to populate his stories set in the past 426 00:29:48,880 --> 00:29:53,280 with people who are recognisably the same kind of people as his readers, 427 00:29:53,280 --> 00:29:55,760 the people in the present in other words, 428 00:29:55,760 --> 00:30:00,280 and he mixes those ordinary people up with historical figures, 429 00:30:00,280 --> 00:30:02,400 kings, queens, soldiers, etc, 430 00:30:02,400 --> 00:30:06,080 and that's a kind of new thing that he is doing. 431 00:30:07,080 --> 00:30:11,160 For James Robertson, politically turbulent times today, 432 00:30:11,160 --> 00:30:14,960 and for Scott, politically turbulent times then. 433 00:30:14,960 --> 00:30:18,520 In the pages of his first novel, he tries to weave together 434 00:30:18,520 --> 00:30:21,720 competing strands of Scotland's bloody history 435 00:30:21,720 --> 00:30:25,080 and he begins crucially with the clans of the Highlands. 436 00:30:27,480 --> 00:30:32,200 The clans were essentially kinship groups, tribes if you will. 437 00:30:32,200 --> 00:30:34,840 "Clan" comes from the Gaelic for "children," 438 00:30:34,840 --> 00:30:38,160 and they engaged in endless warfare between themselves. 439 00:30:38,160 --> 00:30:41,760 Each had their own territory and their own leadership, 440 00:30:41,760 --> 00:30:44,880 and they were involved in almost constant warfare 441 00:30:44,880 --> 00:30:48,760 between one another, developing a terrifying warrior elite. 442 00:30:48,760 --> 00:30:50,800 The Scots north of the Highland line 443 00:30:50,800 --> 00:30:53,040 and the Scots south of the Highland line 444 00:30:53,040 --> 00:30:57,360 were about as similar to one another as the Cheyenne and the Apache were 445 00:30:57,360 --> 00:31:00,320 to the doe-faced, God-fearing Burghers of Boston. 446 00:31:05,920 --> 00:31:10,480 So while in the South, Scotland became a country of landowners, 447 00:31:10,480 --> 00:31:13,720 settled farmers and small towns, 448 00:31:13,720 --> 00:31:18,040 with her own radical Protestant church, her own laws, 449 00:31:18,040 --> 00:31:24,080 and her own traditions of education, Highland Scotland stayed apart, 450 00:31:24,080 --> 00:31:26,160 a much wilder land, 451 00:31:26,160 --> 00:31:29,760 barely acknowledging the authority of the Scottish kings. 452 00:31:38,040 --> 00:31:41,320 The two cultures finally clashed here 453 00:31:41,320 --> 00:31:44,760 in the tragic Battle of Culloden in 1746, 454 00:31:44,760 --> 00:31:47,840 the last to be fought on British soil, 455 00:31:47,840 --> 00:31:52,080 and the culmination of a civil war as brutal as anything 456 00:31:52,080 --> 00:31:54,800 going on in today's Iraq or Syria. 457 00:31:58,840 --> 00:32:01,400 A rebellion led by Charles Edward Stuart, 458 00:32:01,400 --> 00:32:04,120 or Bonnie Prince Charlie as he became known, 459 00:32:04,120 --> 00:32:08,920 and supported by many highlanders, was defeated by a Government army. 460 00:32:08,920 --> 00:32:11,720 Slaughter followed. 461 00:32:11,720 --> 00:32:17,040 This was the stage Walter Scott chose for his fictional characters to walk on. 462 00:32:22,600 --> 00:32:27,520 The Battle of Culloden left Scotland profoundly divided with a great, 463 00:32:27,520 --> 00:32:31,680 gaping, bloody wound running across the country. 464 00:32:31,680 --> 00:32:36,120 On the one side, the defeated, humiliated and retreating 465 00:32:36,120 --> 00:32:40,000 Gaelic culture of the north, and on the other side, 466 00:32:40,000 --> 00:32:44,640 the rising, urban, mercantile and slightly smug culture 467 00:32:44,640 --> 00:32:49,400 of the south, but that Scotland really had no King and no Parliament. 468 00:32:49,400 --> 00:32:53,360 This was a wound which took generations to even begin to heal. 469 00:33:00,400 --> 00:33:05,280 It might sound a touch presumptuous, but in writing Waverley, 470 00:33:05,280 --> 00:33:07,680 and the series of novels that followed it, 471 00:33:07,680 --> 00:33:12,200 our podgy-faced Edinburgh lawyer-turned-writer set about 472 00:33:12,200 --> 00:33:16,480 trying to heal those wounds through the pages of adventure stories. 473 00:33:19,200 --> 00:33:23,120 Waverley's hero, the Englishman Edward Waverley, 474 00:33:23,120 --> 00:33:27,040 quite literally wavers between opposing ideologies - 475 00:33:27,040 --> 00:33:33,440 the rebel Jacobites who wanted to restore a Stuart, Catholic king to the throne, 476 00:33:33,440 --> 00:33:34,800 and the Hanoverians, 477 00:33:34,800 --> 00:33:38,960 supporters of the ruling Protestant King, George II. 478 00:33:41,280 --> 00:33:44,840 In the following extract, Edward has switched sides 479 00:33:44,840 --> 00:33:49,240 and joined the Jacobites well before the disaster of Culloden. 480 00:33:49,240 --> 00:33:51,920 On the day of the Battle Of Prestonpans, 481 00:33:51,920 --> 00:33:56,000 a great Jacobite victory, he finds himself standing with 482 00:33:56,000 --> 00:34:01,120 the highlanders and facing English soldiers he once commanded himself. 483 00:34:02,800 --> 00:34:06,040 They approached so near that Waverley could plainly 484 00:34:06,040 --> 00:34:09,880 recognise the standard of the troops he had formerly commanded, 485 00:34:09,880 --> 00:34:12,880 and hear the trumpets and kettle-drums sound the advance, 486 00:34:12,880 --> 00:34:15,720 which he had so often obeyed. 487 00:34:15,720 --> 00:34:19,880 He could hear, too, the well-known word given in the English dialect 488 00:34:19,880 --> 00:34:23,880 by the equally well-distinguished voice of the commanding officer 489 00:34:23,880 --> 00:34:26,320 for whom he had once felt so much respect. 490 00:34:30,400 --> 00:34:34,480 It was at that instant, that looking around him, he saw the wild 491 00:34:34,480 --> 00:34:38,240 dress and appearance of his Highland associates, heard their whispers 492 00:34:38,240 --> 00:34:43,360 in an uncouth and unknown language, looked upon his own dress, so unlike 493 00:34:43,360 --> 00:34:46,880 that which he had worn from his infancy, and wishes to awake from 494 00:34:46,880 --> 00:34:51,920 what seemed at the moment a dream, strange, horrible, and unnatural. 495 00:34:53,200 --> 00:34:57,960 "Good God," he thought, "am I then a traitor to my country, 496 00:34:57,960 --> 00:35:00,640 "a renegade to my standard, and a foe, 497 00:35:00,640 --> 00:35:05,680 "as that poor dying wretch expressed himself, to my native England!" 498 00:35:14,120 --> 00:35:18,480 So this is Scott's answer to the problem - acknowledge the hurt 499 00:35:18,480 --> 00:35:23,080 but forbid the idea of revolt to answer it, because, for Scott, 500 00:35:23,080 --> 00:35:28,080 revolt, rebellion, revolution are never, ever worth it. 501 00:35:28,080 --> 00:35:31,400 Scotland can't fight back, not in the here and now, 502 00:35:31,400 --> 00:35:35,600 and so we have Waverley, a great Scottish novel 503 00:35:35,600 --> 00:35:37,600 with an English hero. 504 00:35:37,600 --> 00:35:41,120 And time and time again in the Scottish novels, in Waverley, 505 00:35:41,120 --> 00:35:44,720 in Rob Roy, in Redgauntlet, we have a Jacobite hero 506 00:35:44,720 --> 00:35:48,440 or someone who flirts with the romance of the Jacobite cause 507 00:35:48,440 --> 00:35:53,080 and then turns his back and returns to solid sensible Unionism. 508 00:35:53,080 --> 00:35:55,240 Politics as usual. 509 00:35:59,640 --> 00:36:03,120 But it was a union of equals he wanted, 510 00:36:03,120 --> 00:36:06,440 not a lopsided one dominated by the English. 511 00:36:06,440 --> 00:36:10,640 Walter Scott would almost certainly have supported devolution and a Scottish Parliament, 512 00:36:10,640 --> 00:36:12,200 if not independence. 513 00:36:15,160 --> 00:36:17,080 In novel after novel, 514 00:36:17,080 --> 00:36:21,040 Walter Scott expresses his dismay about what was lost with 515 00:36:21,040 --> 00:36:25,960 the Union of 1707, and that includes the Scottish Parliament itself. 516 00:36:25,960 --> 00:36:28,760 In Heart Of Midlothian, which I think is his best novel, 517 00:36:28,760 --> 00:36:32,080 one of the characters, an old lady, explains that when the parliament 518 00:36:32,080 --> 00:36:35,240 met in Edinburgh, if the politicians were doing things the people 519 00:36:35,240 --> 00:36:38,480 didn't like, "we could aye people them with staines" - 520 00:36:38,480 --> 00:36:39,640 throw stones at them. 521 00:36:39,640 --> 00:36:43,160 But of course the stones couldn't reach as far as London any more. 522 00:36:43,160 --> 00:36:46,680 And in the same novel, when the heroine, Jeanie Deans, 523 00:36:46,680 --> 00:36:51,240 seeks justice, she can't get it in Edinburgh or in Scotland. 524 00:36:51,240 --> 00:36:54,040 She has to walk all the way to London. 525 00:36:54,040 --> 00:36:58,040 Walter Scott believed that the Union had brought Scotland prosperity 526 00:36:58,040 --> 00:37:02,480 and security, but it came at a hefty democratic price. 527 00:37:02,480 --> 00:37:06,480 And Walter Scott, arch-unionist, never forgot it. 528 00:37:06,480 --> 00:37:09,640 One of the things he does, his project, first through 529 00:37:09,640 --> 00:37:12,760 his big epic poems and then thorough the Waverley novels, 530 00:37:12,760 --> 00:37:16,600 is to find a way for Scottish people to be both Scottish and also 531 00:37:16,600 --> 00:37:20,160 part of the new British imperial project that is going on 532 00:37:20,160 --> 00:37:22,720 all around them, of which he is a signed up member. 533 00:37:22,720 --> 00:37:25,440 He's definitely a member of the establishment, or becomes one, 534 00:37:25,440 --> 00:37:28,000 but he also wants to find a way to be Scottish at the same time. 535 00:37:28,000 --> 00:37:31,840 So he's a sort of nationalist unionist, in the early part of the 19th century. 536 00:37:31,840 --> 00:37:34,560 - Yes. So he is a reconciler in a sense? - Yes, he is. 537 00:37:34,560 --> 00:37:37,280 And also, within Scotland, he does something else 538 00:37:37,280 --> 00:37:38,880 really interesting as well. 539 00:37:38,880 --> 00:37:41,880 He reconciles divided bits of Scottish culture. 540 00:37:41,880 --> 00:37:45,120 You know, highland and lowland culture. 541 00:37:46,800 --> 00:37:50,160 Waverley was phenomenally successful. 542 00:37:50,160 --> 00:37:54,600 It sold, both north and south of the border, by the bucket-load, 543 00:37:54,600 --> 00:37:57,640 and in America too, in pirate editions 544 00:37:57,640 --> 00:38:02,560 from which Walter Scott never got a penny, which infuriated him. 545 00:38:02,560 --> 00:38:07,200 But at least at first, the domestic profits were more than enough. 546 00:38:08,760 --> 00:38:12,920 Scott's novels, including Guy Mannering and later Ivanhoe, 547 00:38:12,920 --> 00:38:16,760 paid for this, a stately pile in the Borders. 548 00:38:20,040 --> 00:38:22,880 Abbotsford was soon besieged by visitors from around the world. 549 00:38:22,880 --> 00:38:26,360 Walter Scott, now rewarded with a knighthood by the king, 550 00:38:26,360 --> 00:38:28,960 became a tourist attraction in himself. 551 00:38:31,960 --> 00:38:36,920 But at Abbotsford, nothing is quite what it seems. It looks ancient, 552 00:38:36,920 --> 00:38:38,720 it's really quite modern. 553 00:38:38,720 --> 00:38:42,520 Walter Scott was one of the first in the Scotland to convert 554 00:38:42,520 --> 00:38:47,080 to gas lighting, and the plasterwork and woodwork throughout the house 555 00:38:47,080 --> 00:38:48,960 were painted to look like oak. 556 00:38:50,760 --> 00:38:53,080 The art critic Ruskin would write, 557 00:38:53,080 --> 00:38:57,880 "Scott's romance and antiquarianism, his knighthood and his monkery 558 00:38:57,880 --> 00:39:01,560 "are all false, and he knows them to be false." 559 00:39:03,760 --> 00:39:07,680 But Ruskin is profoundly misunderstanding him. 560 00:39:07,680 --> 00:39:12,520 These are real swords, daggers, pistols, instruments of every kind 561 00:39:12,520 --> 00:39:15,640 of violent death, even instruments of torture he's got here, 562 00:39:15,640 --> 00:39:17,440 thumbscrews and so forth. 563 00:39:17,440 --> 00:39:21,800 What's odd is that Scott's political project was all about peace 564 00:39:21,800 --> 00:39:25,800 and social harmony, but his imagination was aflame with blood 565 00:39:25,800 --> 00:39:29,840 and violence and rebellion. There is a profound contradiction. 566 00:39:29,840 --> 00:39:33,040 It's not false but it's very slightly odd. 567 00:39:33,040 --> 00:39:36,200 There is an answer to this conundrum, which is that all 568 00:39:36,200 --> 00:39:39,440 this stuff is absolutely fine, says Scott, in its place, 569 00:39:39,440 --> 00:39:42,640 which here is firmly nailed to a wall, never actually in 570 00:39:42,640 --> 00:39:44,360 someone's hand or being used. 571 00:39:44,360 --> 00:39:47,880 And it's the same with his attitude to Scottish history, 572 00:39:47,880 --> 00:39:52,480 which is absolutely fine, in its place, which is between the covers 573 00:39:52,480 --> 00:39:56,840 of his novels and never out dangerously in the world around him. 574 00:40:02,080 --> 00:40:03,520 And then, suddenly, 575 00:40:03,520 --> 00:40:07,200 everything Walter Scott believed in was threatened. 576 00:40:07,200 --> 00:40:11,240 The radical, democratic spirit which had inspired Robert Burns 577 00:40:11,240 --> 00:40:14,240 returned, stronger than ever. 578 00:40:14,240 --> 00:40:19,480 Between 1816 and 1819, a mass movement sprang up 579 00:40:19,480 --> 00:40:21,600 calling for radical reform. 580 00:40:21,600 --> 00:40:26,120 Once again, Scottish radicals were calling for a Scottish Parliament, 581 00:40:26,120 --> 00:40:28,080 even for a Scottish republic. 582 00:40:29,880 --> 00:40:33,960 The long wars against revolutionary and Napoleonic France 583 00:40:33,960 --> 00:40:37,840 had plunged Scotland into a time of hardship. 584 00:40:37,840 --> 00:40:42,280 A repressive and unsympathetic Government, high food prices 585 00:40:42,280 --> 00:40:44,400 and widespread unemployment 586 00:40:44,400 --> 00:40:47,760 all added to the distress of the common people. 587 00:40:49,120 --> 00:40:53,680 Like some now, they felt London simply wasn't listening. 588 00:40:55,880 --> 00:40:59,280 The poet and republican who might have been their champion 589 00:40:59,280 --> 00:41:01,040 was long dead. 590 00:41:03,360 --> 00:41:08,120 But the radical spirit of Robert Burns was still very much alive. 591 00:41:08,120 --> 00:41:13,280 At a protest meeting in Paisley of 16,000 people, the band played 592 00:41:13,280 --> 00:41:16,840 his Scots Wha Hae to the crowd, and immediately afterwards, 593 00:41:16,840 --> 00:41:20,640 the entire band were rounded up and charged with sedition, 594 00:41:20,640 --> 00:41:22,080 a very serious crime. 595 00:41:26,200 --> 00:41:28,800 The rebels weren't cowed by this. 596 00:41:28,800 --> 00:41:33,640 In 1820, there was an insurrection in southern Scotland, 597 00:41:33,640 --> 00:41:36,200 the so-called Radical War. 598 00:41:36,200 --> 00:41:37,920 # Upon this tree there grows sic fruit 599 00:41:37,920 --> 00:41:40,360 # It's virtues a' can tell, man 600 00:41:40,360 --> 00:41:42,560 # It raises man aboon the brute 601 00:41:42,560 --> 00:41:45,120 # It maks him ken himsel, man. # 602 00:41:45,120 --> 00:41:49,560 60,000 workers went on strike across central Scotland 603 00:41:49,560 --> 00:41:53,120 calling for instant parliamentary reform. 604 00:41:53,120 --> 00:41:56,760 There was unrest as well in many English counties, 605 00:41:56,760 --> 00:41:58,600 including Northumbria. 606 00:41:58,600 --> 00:42:02,040 Unionists like Scott 607 00:42:02,040 --> 00:42:06,320 feared the demands would go well beyond mild reform. 608 00:42:06,320 --> 00:42:09,360 In the paranoid imagination of the Government, 609 00:42:09,360 --> 00:42:14,040 these protesting workers merged into a vision of all the histories 610 00:42:14,040 --> 00:42:15,840 they never wanted repeated. 611 00:42:15,840 --> 00:42:19,320 They were the soldiers behind Bruce at Bannockburn, 612 00:42:19,320 --> 00:42:23,360 they were the militant Presbyterian or Covenanter rebels, 613 00:42:23,360 --> 00:42:26,960 they were they Jacobite army behind Bonnie Prince Charlie, 614 00:42:26,960 --> 00:42:30,080 and they were the Jacobin rebels in France 615 00:42:30,080 --> 00:42:32,920 blood-crazed enough to behead a King. 616 00:42:37,080 --> 00:42:40,280 For Sir Walter, the very existence of the Union, 617 00:42:40,280 --> 00:42:44,440 and the society of which he was such a prominent and successful member, 618 00:42:44,440 --> 00:42:46,800 was at stake. What to do? 619 00:42:48,200 --> 00:42:52,080 First, he suggested trying to divert the disaffected jobless 620 00:42:52,080 --> 00:42:54,120 from joining the rebels. 621 00:42:57,160 --> 00:43:01,280 Unemployed weavers from the west of Scotland were put to work 622 00:43:01,280 --> 00:43:04,800 paving this track around Arthur's Seat, 623 00:43:04,800 --> 00:43:08,200 the extinct volcano that dominates Edinburgh. 624 00:43:09,640 --> 00:43:14,360 Today this path is still known as The Radical Road. 625 00:43:14,360 --> 00:43:19,040 But this bizarre make-work programme wasn't enough to end 626 00:43:19,040 --> 00:43:21,920 a social emergency. 627 00:43:21,920 --> 00:43:26,800 Gentry across southern Scotland, fearing revolutionary horrors 628 00:43:26,800 --> 00:43:28,400 like those in France, 629 00:43:28,400 --> 00:43:31,840 raised volunteer regiments of foot and horse. 630 00:43:31,840 --> 00:43:34,800 Scott, in a sudden fervour of warrior zeal 631 00:43:34,800 --> 00:43:36,880 urged his neighbours to.... 632 00:43:38,760 --> 00:43:41,360 ..Appeal at this crisis to the good sense 633 00:43:41,360 --> 00:43:43,600 and loyalty of the lower orders. 634 00:43:43,600 --> 00:43:46,000 All you have to do is sound the men 635 00:43:46,000 --> 00:43:48,800 and mark down those who seem zealous. 636 00:43:48,800 --> 00:43:53,280 They will perhaps have to fight the pitmen and colliers of Northumbria 637 00:43:53,280 --> 00:43:57,680 for defence of their fireside, for those literal blackguards 638 00:43:57,680 --> 00:44:01,360 are got beyond the management of their own people. 639 00:44:01,360 --> 00:44:06,120 Then Scott took an even more active, if somewhat fanciful role. 640 00:44:06,120 --> 00:44:10,680 He too would go into battle, with his loyal soldiers at his back 641 00:44:10,680 --> 00:44:13,560 and under his standard. 642 00:44:13,560 --> 00:44:17,840 He designed grey plaids and blue bonnets for his corps, 643 00:44:17,840 --> 00:44:21,280 which he wanted to call the Buccleuch Legion 644 00:44:21,280 --> 00:44:23,200 or the Royal Foresters. 645 00:44:23,200 --> 00:44:25,800 In the end, they were never called upon to fight. 646 00:44:25,800 --> 00:44:28,720 But Scott, like most other members of the ruling classes, 647 00:44:28,720 --> 00:44:32,280 was still deeply concerned and absolutely convinced 648 00:44:32,280 --> 00:44:34,160 that more needed to be done. 649 00:44:40,200 --> 00:44:43,560 But if the union and the established order survived, 650 00:44:43,560 --> 00:44:46,280 it still seemed to be in deep trouble. 651 00:44:46,280 --> 00:44:50,200 And not the least of the problems was that the leader of the union, 652 00:44:50,200 --> 00:44:54,000 King George IV, was a figure of fun. 653 00:44:54,000 --> 00:44:57,640 Scotland needed to see him differently, 654 00:44:57,640 --> 00:45:02,680 and the King and his court needed to take a second look at Scotland. 655 00:45:02,680 --> 00:45:05,600 So here was an opportunity for Walter Scott, 656 00:45:05,600 --> 00:45:09,920 the celebrity writer and reconciler of Scotland's tribes, 657 00:45:09,920 --> 00:45:12,640 not just to write history but to make it. 658 00:45:14,000 --> 00:45:17,560 George IV was overweight and under-subtle. 659 00:45:17,560 --> 00:45:21,600 He'd lost control of his waistline and his libido. 660 00:45:21,600 --> 00:45:25,600 He wasn't considered safe around foreign diplomats. 661 00:45:25,600 --> 00:45:29,840 Some time in the spring of 1820, the idea emerged of sending him 662 00:45:29,840 --> 00:45:34,280 on a royal visit to Scotland, partly in order to keep him out of the way 663 00:45:34,280 --> 00:45:37,280 while his ministers in London get on with the serious business 664 00:45:37,280 --> 00:45:39,120 of governing the country. 665 00:45:44,840 --> 00:45:47,720 The visit would be the first time a reigning monarch had come 666 00:45:47,720 --> 00:45:51,720 north of the border since 1650. 667 00:45:51,720 --> 00:45:54,520 Someone had to stage manage the whole affair. 668 00:45:54,520 --> 00:45:56,520 Someone who believed in the monarchy 669 00:45:56,520 --> 00:46:00,360 but had a keen eye for Scottish tradition and pageantry. 670 00:46:03,400 --> 00:46:06,280 It was a job made for Sir Walter Scott, 671 00:46:06,280 --> 00:46:10,280 who seized the opportunity to devise a pageant of reconciliation 672 00:46:10,280 --> 00:46:13,520 which would bring the Scots closer to their "chief." 673 00:46:16,440 --> 00:46:17,920 After landing at Leith, 674 00:46:17,920 --> 00:46:20,720 the King went to the Palace of Holyroodhouse, 675 00:46:20,720 --> 00:46:24,040 where on the 17th August, he presented himself 676 00:46:24,040 --> 00:46:26,760 in a belted plaid and tartan hose, 677 00:46:26,760 --> 00:46:30,960 a velvet jacket and a bonnet pierced by eagle feathers. 678 00:46:32,880 --> 00:46:34,200 "Over the top?" 679 00:46:34,200 --> 00:46:37,280 "Yes, Your Majesty. Just a little." 680 00:46:38,800 --> 00:46:43,160 Highland dress, which had been banned until 1782 as the 681 00:46:43,160 --> 00:46:45,760 uniform of barbarian rebels, 682 00:46:45,760 --> 00:46:50,400 was now being proudly worn by a fat Hanoverian king 683 00:46:50,400 --> 00:46:56,720 who covered his fat Hanoverian legs in bright, silk, pink tights. 684 00:46:56,720 --> 00:47:00,320 He looked ridiculous, of course. 685 00:47:05,680 --> 00:47:10,480 The excessive vulgarity of this theatrical costume was seen by some 686 00:47:10,480 --> 00:47:15,320 as a mockery of the simple belted plaid once worn by the Highlander. 687 00:47:15,320 --> 00:47:16,920 But not to Sir Walter Scott. 688 00:47:20,480 --> 00:47:23,040 At the ball held at the Assembly Rooms, 689 00:47:23,040 --> 00:47:28,560 he insisted that no gentleman was to be allowed to appear in anything 690 00:47:28,560 --> 00:47:30,640 but the ancient Highland costume. 691 00:47:36,320 --> 00:47:41,080 Men who had never considered wearing a kilt or trews 692 00:47:41,080 --> 00:47:44,800 were obliged to swathe themselves in tartan. 693 00:47:46,400 --> 00:47:51,160 Highland dress became the affectation of Anglicized lairds, 694 00:47:51,160 --> 00:47:54,760 the uniform of the German king's army, 695 00:47:54,760 --> 00:47:58,640 and the fancy dress of lowlanders, which it still is. 696 00:47:59,920 --> 00:48:02,800 A kind of tartan curtain came down across Scotland, 697 00:48:02,800 --> 00:48:05,880 hiding the contemporary reality of the Highlands, 698 00:48:05,880 --> 00:48:08,240 which was one of poverty and eviction. 699 00:48:10,800 --> 00:48:12,960 But it affected all of the country. 700 00:48:12,960 --> 00:48:16,040 Following Sir Walter, this became a mythic nation 701 00:48:16,040 --> 00:48:20,640 of pretend Highlanders, fired with enthusiasm 702 00:48:20,640 --> 00:48:24,400 for a foreign monarchy now prepared to wear the kilt. 703 00:48:28,760 --> 00:48:32,640 The old clan tartans were commercialised and regimented, 704 00:48:32,640 --> 00:48:34,600 something now for everyone. 705 00:48:35,760 --> 00:48:37,920 It wasn't just Walter Scott, of course. 706 00:48:37,920 --> 00:48:42,120 Politicians and the Highland Society were deeply involved too. 707 00:48:42,120 --> 00:48:45,640 But he was the great impresario. 708 00:48:45,640 --> 00:48:48,760 Go up and down Edinburgh's Royal Mile today 709 00:48:48,760 --> 00:48:53,280 and the distant reverberations of Scott's King's Jaunt, 710 00:48:53,280 --> 00:48:58,600 as it was mockingly called, can still just about be heard. 711 00:49:00,120 --> 00:49:02,600 Walter Scott brings George IV to Edinburgh, 712 00:49:02,600 --> 00:49:04,840 swathes him in tartan and so forth, 713 00:49:04,840 --> 00:49:08,800 and its thanks to Scott, is it not, that the English upper classes 714 00:49:08,800 --> 00:49:12,280 learn to love an aspect of Scottishness and sign up to it? 715 00:49:12,280 --> 00:49:14,440 Yes, there is no question about that, 716 00:49:14,440 --> 00:49:18,160 and certainly the 1822 royal visit, when you look at that, 717 00:49:18,160 --> 00:49:20,920 it's so stage managed and it is absolutely about 718 00:49:20,920 --> 00:49:23,960 reconciling the British establishment to Scotland, 719 00:49:23,960 --> 00:49:26,920 and he definitely plays a huge part in doing that. 720 00:49:34,760 --> 00:49:37,880 You might have imagined that the theatrical director, 721 00:49:37,880 --> 00:49:43,280 the impresario behind it all, would have enjoyed respect and prosperity 722 00:49:43,280 --> 00:49:46,320 in his sham castle until his dying day. 723 00:49:46,320 --> 00:49:48,320 But Scott did not. 724 00:49:49,440 --> 00:49:53,840 He'd become involved in unwise, expensive publishing ventures. 725 00:49:56,320 --> 00:50:00,920 The sheer cost of transforming Abbotsford into a solid piece 726 00:50:00,920 --> 00:50:04,640 of impossible history also drained his pockets. 727 00:50:04,640 --> 00:50:07,760 Bad investments. A rickety bank. 728 00:50:07,760 --> 00:50:09,720 Where have we heard that before? 729 00:50:11,760 --> 00:50:15,400 Scott's last years were grimly industrious, 730 00:50:15,400 --> 00:50:19,200 industrious to the point of being industrial. 731 00:50:19,200 --> 00:50:21,520 He had always been productive, 732 00:50:21,520 --> 00:50:25,200 now he became a writing machine as he coped with the death 733 00:50:25,200 --> 00:50:29,000 of his wife and the constant struggle to make good his debts. 734 00:50:30,080 --> 00:50:32,400 But now Sir Walter Scott, 735 00:50:32,400 --> 00:50:36,280 in some ways so easy to dislike and easy to mock, 736 00:50:36,280 --> 00:50:38,840 becomes a kind of hero. 737 00:50:38,840 --> 00:50:43,080 Writing had built all of this and he would not give in. 738 00:50:43,080 --> 00:50:46,680 He was determined to write his way out of debt. 739 00:50:48,280 --> 00:50:51,440 "My own right hand shall pay," he said. 740 00:50:51,440 --> 00:50:56,200 "Discharging my duty as a man of honour and honesty. 741 00:50:56,200 --> 00:51:02,280 "I see before me a long tedious and dark path 742 00:51:02,280 --> 00:51:07,360 "but it leads to true fame and stainless reputation. 743 00:51:07,360 --> 00:51:11,560 "If I shall die in the harrows, as is very likely, 744 00:51:11,560 --> 00:51:14,120 "I die with honour." 745 00:51:20,800 --> 00:51:24,680 He wrote biographies, short stories, a wonderful journal 746 00:51:24,680 --> 00:51:29,000 and novel after novel of lower and lower quality. 747 00:51:30,680 --> 00:51:35,640 But in less than six years he'd made more than £50,000 for his creditors, 748 00:51:35,640 --> 00:51:39,000 that's more than five million in today's money. 749 00:51:40,240 --> 00:51:42,320 And he was still politically active. 750 00:51:42,320 --> 00:51:46,800 In 1826, the London Government planned to strip private banks 751 00:51:46,800 --> 00:51:50,680 of their right to print banknotes smaller than £5. 752 00:51:50,680 --> 00:51:54,360 This was considered disastrous for the Scottish economy 753 00:51:54,360 --> 00:51:56,560 where small notes were dominant. 754 00:51:56,560 --> 00:51:59,840 A row over currency then as now, 755 00:51:59,840 --> 00:52:04,160 and using the pen name Malachi Malagrowther, Scott hit back. 756 00:52:06,520 --> 00:52:10,520 There has arisen gradually, on the part of England, 757 00:52:10,520 --> 00:52:15,920 a desire of engrossing the exclusive management of Scottish affairs. 758 00:52:15,920 --> 00:52:20,640 If the English statesmen has a point of greater or lesser consequence 759 00:52:20,640 --> 00:52:25,280 to settle with Scotland as a country, we find him and his friends 760 00:52:25,280 --> 00:52:29,240 at once seized with a jealous, tenacious, wrangling, 761 00:52:29,240 --> 00:52:31,120 overbearing humour. 762 00:52:31,120 --> 00:52:35,440 We cease at once to be the Athenians Of The North. 763 00:52:35,440 --> 00:52:40,720 We have become the caterpillars of the island instead of its pillars. 764 00:52:47,760 --> 00:52:51,800 The Government caved in, Scott won, and to this day, 765 00:52:51,800 --> 00:52:55,840 the notes of the Bank Of Scotland carry Sir Walter Scott's portrait 766 00:52:55,840 --> 00:53:00,160 in recognition of his defence of the Scottish banking tradition. 767 00:53:00,160 --> 00:53:02,360 He was an operator, an insider, 768 00:53:02,360 --> 00:53:06,600 a completely different kind of beast to Robert Burns. 769 00:53:06,600 --> 00:53:10,680 Burns represents the rebellious, impulsive, passionate side 770 00:53:10,680 --> 00:53:12,640 of the Scottish temperament. 771 00:53:12,640 --> 00:53:16,400 Walter Scott represents a more timid but perhaps 772 00:53:16,400 --> 00:53:22,480 more practical political tradition, and also, of course, the quiet heroism 773 00:53:22,480 --> 00:53:26,480 of those who take responsibility, and work their way out of trouble. 774 00:53:31,520 --> 00:53:35,080 Abbotsford still maintained a steady flow of visitors 775 00:53:35,080 --> 00:53:38,000 but its glory days were over. 776 00:53:39,240 --> 00:53:43,480 He'd worked harder than he'd ever done in a hard working life 777 00:53:43,480 --> 00:53:45,400 and his health began to fail. 778 00:53:49,440 --> 00:53:54,440 When he died in the September of 1832, there was still money owing. 779 00:53:54,440 --> 00:53:56,680 But then there were still books selling, 780 00:53:56,680 --> 00:53:59,800 and within a few years, the debt on the house was paid. 781 00:54:02,320 --> 00:54:05,880 Today you can go and see it for yourself, it's open to everyone. 782 00:54:07,480 --> 00:54:10,280 So what in the end is Scott's legacy? 783 00:54:10,280 --> 00:54:13,360 In many ways, a legacy of some grandeur. 784 00:54:13,360 --> 00:54:18,480 It's the opposite of what you might call Robert Burns' divine impertinence. 785 00:54:18,480 --> 00:54:21,400 Scott leaves behind him a Scotland whose military 786 00:54:21,400 --> 00:54:24,080 are famous around the world for their valour, 787 00:54:24,080 --> 00:54:27,520 highland regiments and lowland regiments wearing tartan 788 00:54:27,520 --> 00:54:30,360 at the cutting edge of the British Empire, 789 00:54:30,360 --> 00:54:33,360 and at home he leaves behind a people famous 790 00:54:33,360 --> 00:54:37,400 for their hard work and ingenuity in front of an English audience 791 00:54:37,400 --> 00:54:42,040 who can't deny their growing involvement in the project of Britishness. 792 00:54:42,040 --> 00:54:43,680 A funny character, Scott. 793 00:54:43,680 --> 00:54:46,640 You know, the little lame boy, an outsider and all the rest of it. 794 00:54:46,640 --> 00:54:49,160 In the end, a genius? 795 00:54:49,160 --> 00:54:53,160 Yeah, I think so. I think when you look at the totality of what he did. 796 00:54:53,160 --> 00:54:56,960 He's just so eclectic and he can write about anything. He's interested in everything. 797 00:54:56,960 --> 00:54:58,560 When you read his journal, 798 00:54:58,560 --> 00:55:01,680 the great work of the last six years of his life, 799 00:55:01,680 --> 00:55:05,960 you get a real insight into the complicated and often lonely man 800 00:55:05,960 --> 00:55:07,680 who is behind the facade. 801 00:55:07,680 --> 00:55:11,360 What about the polarity between Burns on the one hand, 802 00:55:11,360 --> 00:55:14,720 the democrat, the republican, the rebel, 803 00:55:14,720 --> 00:55:18,120 and Scott the conservative, the unionist, Tory? 804 00:55:18,120 --> 00:55:20,960 I guess that's also why he is not terribly popular at the moment 805 00:55:20,960 --> 00:55:22,400 in this year of the referendum? 806 00:55:22,400 --> 00:55:26,320 Certainly in Scotland, I think that polarity has become a bit fixed. 807 00:55:26,320 --> 00:55:29,920 So Burns is the man of the people, Scott is the Tory. 808 00:55:29,920 --> 00:55:32,720 He's a bit of a toff, or is perceived to be, 809 00:55:32,720 --> 00:55:37,240 although in fact, in reality he was really quite a man of the people 810 00:55:37,240 --> 00:55:39,240 in some respects himself as well. 811 00:55:39,240 --> 00:55:40,800 But, yes, that polarity exists, 812 00:55:40,800 --> 00:55:43,000 and he has fallen out of favour for that reason. 813 00:55:50,960 --> 00:55:54,880 So take another look at the fabulous monument that punches 814 00:55:54,880 --> 00:55:58,560 Edinburgh's grey skies if you alight here for the Festival, 815 00:55:58,560 --> 00:56:02,480 or to walk the Royal Mile or to cast your vote in September. 816 00:56:02,480 --> 00:56:06,680 It is possible to be a unionist and a Scottish patriot. 817 00:56:06,680 --> 00:56:09,040 Walter Scott teaches us that. 818 00:56:09,040 --> 00:56:11,040 He is the great bestrider, 819 00:56:11,040 --> 00:56:13,600 the writer who tries to hold it all together. 820 00:56:15,440 --> 00:56:19,080 He's was a great gatherer together of different cultures 821 00:56:19,080 --> 00:56:23,640 and different societies, and you can see the issue here in stone 822 00:56:23,640 --> 00:56:27,520 in Edinburgh, because Edinburgh is famously not one 823 00:56:27,520 --> 00:56:29,000 but two towns. 824 00:56:29,000 --> 00:56:34,200 Over there, the unionist, pragmatic, rational New Town. 825 00:56:34,200 --> 00:56:39,160 A straw poll suggests to me a bastion of Better Together even now. 826 00:56:39,160 --> 00:56:42,840 On the other side, the romantic, patriotic Old Town, 827 00:56:42,840 --> 00:56:46,040 and again, an unscientific straw poll suggests to me 828 00:56:46,040 --> 00:56:50,560 a bastion of Yes voters. And what's standing between them, 829 00:56:50,560 --> 00:56:54,320 like the spike on a buckle, yes, it's old Walter Scott. 830 00:56:58,600 --> 00:57:03,360 And yet the political sands may be shifting under Walter Scott 831 00:57:03,360 --> 00:57:07,320 as Scots today prepare to vote to keep something 832 00:57:07,320 --> 00:57:12,080 their writer so passionately believed in, or else perhaps 833 00:57:12,080 --> 00:57:13,720 to begin a new adventure, 834 00:57:13,720 --> 00:57:17,280 to stride out into the distance like one of his heroes. 835 00:57:18,600 --> 00:57:23,320 Scott's novels are all about violent revolt and tragic choices 836 00:57:23,320 --> 00:57:28,000 and bloodshed, but politically he was the comforter. 837 00:57:28,000 --> 00:57:31,720 Scott left behind Scots who are more comfortable with their own 838 00:57:31,720 --> 00:57:35,600 romanticised history, and more comfortable as well, 839 00:57:35,600 --> 00:57:39,640 at least for a while, with their place in the British Union. 840 00:57:39,640 --> 00:57:44,680 What perhaps he forgot is that history rarely sleeps securely. 841 00:57:46,920 --> 00:57:50,280 In the next episode, a poet who lived his life 842 00:57:50,280 --> 00:57:53,840 on the political edge and reinvented Scottish literature, 843 00:57:53,840 --> 00:57:55,760 Hugh MacDiarmid. 844 00:57:55,760 --> 00:57:59,520 He dreamed of an independent Scottish Communist utopia, 845 00:57:59,520 --> 00:58:02,400 never got that, and a great cultural revival, 846 00:58:02,400 --> 00:58:04,480 which has now arrived.