Scott-land: How a Writer Invented a Nation

His name and image are everywhere – from Bank of Scotland fivers to the bizarre monument in Edinburgh’s city centre. Scott-land presumes that the reader will have only a hazy awareness of Sir Walter Scott, and, although Stuart Kelly will offer insights into Scott’s works and build up the detail of his biography, it is emphatically not a conventional literary biography, nor is it a critical study. It is partly a surreptitious autobiography – Stuart Kelly was born near Abbotsford – and his examination of Scott’s legacy, oeuvre and character come to change his own thoughts on writing, reviewing, being Scottish, and being human.