Institute for Northern Studies lecturer Paul Malgrati’s research on the poet Robert Burns and his influence on Scottish cultural politics will be published in paperback in December 2024. Previously successful in hardback, this book explores Robert Burns’s political legacy in modern Scotland and how successive political parties have used his themes to unite the nation.
Every year, on 25th January, Scottish and not-so-Scottish people throughout the world celebrate the poet on Burns Night. It is a strangely worldwide phenomenon with societies in such diverse places as New York and East Kilbride sitting down to a formal supper of haggis – piped in and addressed as if a living thing – and washed down with gallons of Scottish whisky. Since Burns’s centenary in 1859, Paul asserts that Burns’s memory has become an unofficial representative of a nation – tied to the debate on Scotland’s constitution.
Every hue of political movement has tried to use Burns to influence Scottish public opinion, and as Paul also states, “ Although the poet has become commonplace, his message remains ambiguous….the annual celebration of Burns’s birthday has become an occasion for the nation, as a political entity, to ponder different definitions of itself through contradictory readings of its legendary poet. “
Pauls book, ‘Robert Burns and Scottish Cultural Politics – The Bard of Contention (1914-2014)’ is available to pre-order from Edinburgh University Press.
About the author, Paul Malgrati, BA, MPhil, PhD
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