0:00:04 > 0:00:06Today, Scotland stands on the edge
0:00:06 > 0:00:11of the most important event in her history for 300 years -
0:00:11 > 0:00:14the vote on whether to end her union
0:00:14 > 0:00:18with the rest of the United Kingdom and become once again independent.
0:00:21 > 0:00:25Through the centuries of the Union, Scotland has produced
0:00:25 > 0:00:30many great writers and in these programmes I'm looking at how
0:00:30 > 0:00:33they dealt with questions of identity and loyalty
0:00:33 > 0:00:36which confront today's Scots.
0:00:38 > 0:00:41It's not difficult to imagine where the subject of this film
0:00:41 > 0:00:43would place his cross.
0:00:43 > 0:00:46A prolific novelist and political fixer,
0:00:46 > 0:00:48he believed in a proud Scotland
0:00:48 > 0:00:50inside the United Kingdom.
0:00:51 > 0:00:55He was a literary superstar, known throughout the world
0:00:55 > 0:00:58as one of the most brilliant writers of his time,
0:00:58 > 0:01:03who through novel after novel reinvented Scotland
0:01:03 > 0:01:05as a tartan North Britain.
0:01:06 > 0:01:09But he paid a heavy price.
0:01:09 > 0:01:12His name is Walter Scott.
0:01:13 > 0:01:16At the time of the wars against Napoleon,
0:01:16 > 0:01:19the beginning of the 19th century, the Scots were firmly
0:01:19 > 0:01:22tied into their union with the English -
0:01:22 > 0:01:25firmly but not entirely happily.
0:01:25 > 0:01:28That old question, "Who are we, really?" -
0:01:28 > 0:01:31highlanders or lowlanders, city folk or Borderers,
0:01:31 > 0:01:34loyalists, and to whom?
0:01:34 > 0:01:37Or rebels - and against what? -
0:01:37 > 0:01:39tormented the writers of the time,
0:01:39 > 0:01:42few of them greater than the man whose home this was,
0:01:42 > 0:01:46the man who first promoted the idea of the Scotland of misty glens
0:01:46 > 0:01:50and unlikely castles - the wizard of the north,
0:01:50 > 0:01:51Walt before Disney.
0:02:19 > 0:02:23I was brought up with the most Scottish Nationalist literature
0:02:23 > 0:02:24you can imagine.
0:02:24 > 0:02:26Tiny little ladybird books
0:02:26 > 0:02:29about William Wallace and Robert The Bruce hammering the English.
0:02:29 > 0:02:31I used to draw lots of pictures of little Scottish people
0:02:31 > 0:02:33beating up little English people.
0:02:33 > 0:02:36And then I moved on to Walter Scott.
0:02:37 > 0:02:39And I don't think you can be a great writer
0:02:39 > 0:02:44if you don't listen to the voices and the language
0:02:44 > 0:02:46and the instincts of the people of your country.
0:02:48 > 0:02:52If you want to know how the Scots of the 1700s and 1800s
0:02:52 > 0:02:57talk and thought and spoke, then Scott is absolutely your man.
0:03:02 > 0:03:06At one time, it seemed a Scott could be found on every
0:03:06 > 0:03:09book shelf in every home in the country.
0:03:09 > 0:03:12Swashbuckling adventures, bringing the tumultuous history
0:03:12 > 0:03:15of Scotland - and of England - to life.
0:03:20 > 0:03:24His legacy is so vast it practically pokes visitors
0:03:24 > 0:03:26to Scotland in the eye.
0:03:27 > 0:03:34ANNOUNCER: Platform 15 for the 12:35 First ScotRail service to Perth,
0:03:34 > 0:03:36calling at Haymarket...
0:03:36 > 0:03:40Waverley station in Edinburgh, the only railway station,
0:03:40 > 0:03:43anywhere in the world, named after a novel.
0:03:45 > 0:03:51Waverley was published in 1814 and instantly recognised as a cracker.
0:03:51 > 0:03:53And there's a huge monument to the man who wrote it,
0:03:53 > 0:03:56Walter Scott, looming over the station.
0:03:56 > 0:03:59In many ways it's a ridiculous monument, it looks like
0:03:59 > 0:04:02a Thunderbirds statue, built by monks.
0:04:02 > 0:04:06But it's not only the largest statue erected to a writer in Scotland
0:04:06 > 0:04:10or in Britain - that is the largest statue ever built
0:04:10 > 0:04:13to a writer anywhere in the world.
0:04:13 > 0:04:15Down south, Nelson's column,
0:04:15 > 0:04:19erected to England's great hero, is 40ft shorter.
0:04:27 > 0:04:28During his lifetime,
0:04:28 > 0:04:34Walter Scott was perhaps the first global literary superstar.
0:04:34 > 0:04:38His novels provided the librettos for more than 90 operas.
0:04:38 > 0:04:45He was Byron's hero, spoken of alongside Shakespeare and Homer.
0:04:45 > 0:04:49Two centuries ago he wrote his first hit, Waverley.
0:04:51 > 0:04:54And in it, and other novels, he sold Scotland as a place
0:04:54 > 0:04:57of romantic myths,
0:04:57 > 0:05:01tartan-clad heroes and tragic choices.
0:05:01 > 0:05:05But if you want a taster, a flavour of his craft, how about this
0:05:05 > 0:05:11English jousting scene from Ivanhoe, the novel he wrote in 1819.
0:05:12 > 0:05:14The scene he paints is so vivid,
0:05:14 > 0:05:17that he's done the film director's job for him, and better.
0:05:20 > 0:05:22"The splendid armour of the combatants
0:05:22 > 0:05:26"was now defaced with dust and blood,
0:05:26 > 0:05:30"and gave way at every stroke of the sword and battle-axe.
0:05:32 > 0:05:34"The gay plumage, shorn from the crests,
0:05:34 > 0:05:37"drifted upon the breeze like snowflakes.
0:05:39 > 0:05:41"All that was beautiful
0:05:41 > 0:05:45"and graceful in the martial array had disappeared,
0:05:45 > 0:05:47"and what was now visible
0:05:47 > 0:05:50"was only calculated to awake terror or compassion."
0:05:54 > 0:05:55These days, however,
0:05:55 > 0:06:01it's Robert Burns who's absolutely the poet of choice for most Scots.
0:06:01 > 0:06:05It wasn't always so. He doesn't have a great stone rocket.
0:06:05 > 0:06:07He doesn't have a railway station.
0:06:10 > 0:06:13This is what they did for Robert Burns.
0:06:13 > 0:06:16It's tucked away about a quarter of a mile behind a hill.
0:06:17 > 0:06:21And it's perfectly nice, it's kind of good, but it's not,
0:06:21 > 0:06:25in terms of competitive statutory, quite the full shazam.
0:06:27 > 0:06:28So is there a competition
0:06:28 > 0:06:31between Walter Scott, the conservative novelist,
0:06:31 > 0:06:35and Robert Burns, the patriotic songwriter and poet?
0:06:35 > 0:06:37In a way there is.
0:06:37 > 0:06:39Very, very different sensibilities,
0:06:39 > 0:06:41very, very different attitudes to Scotland
0:06:41 > 0:06:44and it is something that carries on today.
0:06:44 > 0:06:46This morning, I was reading in the paper that,
0:06:46 > 0:06:48round the corner at the Scottish Parliament,
0:06:48 > 0:06:50nationalists are debating whether
0:06:50 > 0:06:55to rename Prestwick airport the Robert Burns International Airport.
0:06:55 > 0:06:59A competition back then and certainly, a competition right now.
0:07:06 > 0:07:09Burns' reputation as the voice of Scottish nationalism,
0:07:09 > 0:07:13the darling of defiance against England is safe.
0:07:14 > 0:07:18Not surprisingly, he is Alex Salmond's favourite and will
0:07:18 > 0:07:19no doubt be quoted liberally
0:07:19 > 0:07:22should the Yes campaign triumph in September.
0:07:25 > 0:07:27Burns is a much more lovable character
0:07:27 > 0:07:31and his faults and contradictions have been largely forgotten.
0:07:35 > 0:07:39But Scott's political impact was unarguably greater.
0:07:39 > 0:07:43He was just as concerned with Scotland's heritage and its history
0:07:43 > 0:07:48as Burns, and his work isn't exactly short of tartan-clad heroes.
0:07:48 > 0:07:52But in turbulent times, Scott believed that Scotland,
0:07:52 > 0:07:57in its wealth and security, was better off in the union with England
0:07:57 > 0:08:01so long as it was a union of equally respected countries.
0:08:01 > 0:08:05Despite his huge international fame and the spotlight he brought
0:08:05 > 0:08:09onto Scotland, he has not always been fondly regarded by Scots.
0:08:15 > 0:08:19Walter Scott was born in Edinburgh in 1771,
0:08:19 > 0:08:21the ninth child of a wealthy lawyer.
0:08:23 > 0:08:26This was the age when Edinburgh called herself
0:08:26 > 0:08:31the Athens Of The North - a city of rational thinkers, practical scientists,
0:08:31 > 0:08:36and freethinking inventors admired across the rest of Europe.
0:08:38 > 0:08:43People brimming with ambition who spoke and wrote in English
0:08:43 > 0:08:47and who called themselves not Scots, but North British.
0:08:52 > 0:08:55This was all about order and cleanliness.
0:08:55 > 0:08:59Rational, hardworking, Protestant people who would, in time,
0:08:59 > 0:09:01help to build the British Empire.
0:09:01 > 0:09:06And it came about just before the building of Edinburgh's New Town itself.
0:09:06 > 0:09:11A grid system built to the north of the old, crammed, chaotic, squalid,
0:09:11 > 0:09:14but democratic Old Town.
0:09:14 > 0:09:17A rational town for a reasonable people.
0:09:25 > 0:09:28Now, if he'd stayed here throughout the rest of his childhood,
0:09:28 > 0:09:31Walter Scott would probably have been a reasonably standard product
0:09:31 > 0:09:35of this rational, civilised world.
0:09:35 > 0:09:37A lawyer, like his father.
0:09:37 > 0:09:40But sickness intervened.
0:09:42 > 0:09:46Five of his siblings had already died in infancy.
0:09:46 > 0:09:49Little Walter contracted polio and to give him
0:09:49 > 0:09:53a chance of survival, he was sent to live at his grandfather's home
0:09:53 > 0:09:55in the Borders near Melrose.
0:10:00 > 0:10:03His parents hoped plain country food,
0:10:03 > 0:10:07fresh air and exercise would save him.
0:10:07 > 0:10:08And it did -
0:10:08 > 0:10:12although he would walk with a limp for the rest of his life.
0:10:13 > 0:10:16And if it transformed his body,
0:10:16 > 0:10:21the Borders transformed the way he thought as well.
0:10:21 > 0:10:23The three-year-old Scott found himself here,
0:10:23 > 0:10:27the only child in a world of old people
0:10:27 > 0:10:31and it was here that his imagination really caught fire.
0:10:31 > 0:10:35The house didn't have much in the way of an extensive library,
0:10:35 > 0:10:37but what it did have was romance.
0:10:37 > 0:10:41Tales of the old Border Reivers - of Wat Of Harden,
0:10:41 > 0:10:43of Wight Willie Of Aikwood,
0:10:43 > 0:10:48of Jamie Telfer Of The Fair Dodhead and other local heroes.
0:10:48 > 0:10:53And Scott developed an uncanny ear for the voices of real Scotland.
0:10:54 > 0:10:58# I ride on my fleet-footed grey My sword hangin' doon by ma knee
0:10:58 > 0:11:02# My name is little Jock Elliot Oh wha daur meddle wi' me?
0:11:02 > 0:11:07# Wha daur meddle wi' me? Wha daur meddle wi' me?
0:11:07 > 0:11:11# Oh, my name is little Jock Elliot Oh, wha daur meddle wi' me?
0:11:11 > 0:11:15# I vanquished the Queen's lieutenant And garr'd her troopers tae flee
0:11:15 > 0:11:19# My name is little Jock Elliot Oh wha daur meddle wi' me?
0:11:19 > 0:11:23# Wha daur meddle wi' me? Wha daur meddle wi' me?
0:11:23 > 0:11:28#Oh, my name is little Jock Elliot An' wha daur meddle wi' me? #
0:11:30 > 0:11:32That's wonderful, thank you very much for that.
0:11:32 > 0:11:34So Scott was brought up in... presumably, in his day,
0:11:34 > 0:11:36this was still a fairly wild area,
0:11:36 > 0:11:39not lawless any more, but the old songs and the old stories
0:11:39 > 0:11:41would be very much in front of his eyes and ears?
0:11:41 > 0:11:43That's right. That's right. Yes.
0:11:43 > 0:11:46He spent a lot of his time here with his grandfather and his aunt,
0:11:46 > 0:11:49and with a cowherd called Ormiston.
0:11:49 > 0:11:53And they fired his imagination for Border culture.
0:11:53 > 0:11:55I think he played a massive part
0:11:55 > 0:11:59in preserving these ancient ballads and songs.
0:11:59 > 0:12:02Had it not been for him, I think they would have went into obscurity.
0:12:06 > 0:12:10This dramatic stone tower, known as Smailholm,
0:12:10 > 0:12:16a classic 15th-century relic of the Borders' violent and lawless past,
0:12:16 > 0:12:18loomed over the young Walter Scott as he walked
0:12:18 > 0:12:20the hills beside the farm.
0:12:22 > 0:12:27He'd celebrate this scene from his boyish years later in Marmion,
0:12:27 > 0:12:31a poem about one of the greatest disasters in Scottish history,
0:12:31 > 0:12:33the Battle of Flodden Field.
0:12:37 > 0:12:40Thus while I ape the measure wild
0:12:40 > 0:12:43Of tales that charmed me yet a child,
0:12:43 > 0:12:46Rude though they be, still with the chime
0:12:46 > 0:12:49Return the thoughts of early time
0:12:49 > 0:12:51And feelings, roused in life's first day,
0:12:51 > 0:12:55Glow in the line and prompt the lay
0:12:55 > 0:12:58Then rise those crags, that mountain tower,
0:12:58 > 0:13:01Which charm'd my fancy's wakening hour.
0:13:09 > 0:13:12On fine days, a shepherd would carry the young Walter
0:13:12 > 0:13:15on his shoulders up to these crags and here
0:13:15 > 0:13:20he learnt to walk using a stick made for him by his grandfather.
0:13:21 > 0:13:27And he was told, "Every field has its battle and every rivulet its song."
0:13:32 > 0:13:37The Battle of Philiphaugh remembers one such fight in 1645,
0:13:37 > 0:13:41when the Royalists were shattered by an army of Covenanters -
0:13:41 > 0:13:44Scottish Protestant religious zealots.
0:13:48 > 0:13:52On Philiphaugh a fray began, At Hairhead Wood, it ended
0:13:52 > 0:13:55The Scots out o'er the Graemes they ran,
0:13:55 > 0:13:57Sae merrily they bended
0:13:57 > 0:13:59Sir David frae the border came,
0:13:59 > 0:14:01Wi' heart an' hand came he
0:14:01 > 0:14:05Wi' him 3,000 bonny Scots, to bear him company
0:14:05 > 0:14:09Wi' him 3,000 valiant men, A noble sight to see!
0:14:09 > 0:14:12A cloud o' mist them weel concealed, as close as e'er might be.
0:14:23 > 0:14:29Walter Scott returned to Edinburgh strong enough to attend school in 1778 -
0:14:29 > 0:14:35aged seven, with his head stuffed and ringing with poetry and history.
0:14:35 > 0:14:37His father had other ideas for him, though.
0:14:37 > 0:14:40He wanted his son to grow up to be modern -
0:14:40 > 0:14:43to be a Georgian and a British gentleman.
0:14:43 > 0:14:49"Forget this ballad nonsense, boy," he said, "and become a lawyer."
0:14:49 > 0:14:53A gentleman's place was at his desk in town,
0:14:53 > 0:14:58not roaming castle walls and gallivanting around the countryside.
0:14:58 > 0:15:00So poor old dutiful Walter
0:15:00 > 0:15:03took an apprenticeship in his father's office.
0:15:04 > 0:15:08His new home was a different world to the Borders where people
0:15:08 > 0:15:11had revered Scotland's medieval culture and folklore.
0:15:11 > 0:15:16But not even Edinburgh was entirely defended from romance and poetry.
0:15:19 > 0:15:24In the winter of 1786, Walter Scott got a glimpse of a future
0:15:24 > 0:15:26rather more interesting than the law.
0:15:26 > 0:15:32The pale, lame boy was invited to the house of the philosopher Adam Fergusson.
0:15:35 > 0:15:39There, he'd be confronted by a stocky 28-year-old man
0:15:39 > 0:15:43whose future work would often be contrasted to his,
0:15:43 > 0:15:46even though they were very, very different writers.
0:15:48 > 0:15:51To understand Walter Scott you have to understand
0:15:51 > 0:15:56the vast role played in Scottish psyche played by one Robert Burns.
0:15:58 > 0:16:02Burns was handsome, self-taught, self-made.
0:16:02 > 0:16:04And his poems, which would include
0:16:04 > 0:16:08Holy Willy's Prayer, Tam O'Shanter, Scots Wha Hae
0:16:08 > 0:16:11and of course Auld Lang Syne,
0:16:11 > 0:16:15are still a living, breathing part of Scottish culture.
0:16:15 > 0:16:19Scott might have his railway station but Burns has an evening once a year
0:16:19 > 0:16:23devoted entirely to him when we have a small drink
0:16:23 > 0:16:27and celebrate the "great chieftain o' the puddin'-race."
0:16:27 > 0:16:30Burns was both the darling of high society
0:16:30 > 0:16:33and the champion of the people,
0:16:33 > 0:16:36who spoke to them in their own language, Scots.
0:16:41 > 0:16:46He found poetry and meaning in the most unlikely places.
0:16:47 > 0:16:52In To A Louse, he comically chides the crawling, creeping insect
0:16:52 > 0:16:55for appearing on the hat of a beautiful woman in church,
0:16:55 > 0:16:59who has no idea why the congregation are all staring at her.
0:17:01 > 0:17:02Ha!
0:17:02 > 0:17:05Whaur ye gaun, ye crowlin' ferlie?
0:17:06 > 0:17:09Your impudence protects you sairly
0:17:09 > 0:17:11I canna say but ye strunt rarely,
0:17:11 > 0:17:14Owre gauze and lace
0:17:14 > 0:17:16But, faith!
0:17:16 > 0:17:18I fear ye dine but sparely
0:17:18 > 0:17:19On sic a place
0:17:21 > 0:17:24Ye ugly, creepin', blastit wonner
0:17:24 > 0:17:28Detested, shunn'd by saunt an' sinner,
0:17:28 > 0:17:32How daur ye place your fit upon her - sae fine a lady?
0:17:32 > 0:17:36Gae somewhere else and seek your dinner on some poor body.
0:17:43 > 0:17:45And he concludes, devastatingly:
0:17:45 > 0:17:48"Oh, would some power the giftie gie us,
0:17:48 > 0:17:51"to see ourselves as ithers see us."
0:17:52 > 0:17:57A universal message from a dirty little Scottish Kirk -
0:17:57 > 0:17:59but the tenor of much of Burns' poetry
0:17:59 > 0:18:01was more political than that
0:18:01 > 0:18:06and took him down a very different path to the young Tory Walter Scott.
0:18:08 > 0:18:11Burns' politics were complicated -
0:18:11 > 0:18:13he was the natural rebel
0:18:13 > 0:18:17who can often sound like a proto-Scottish Nationalist,
0:18:17 > 0:18:22often writing songs and poems about Scotland's early battles for independence
0:18:22 > 0:18:26and sounding, in many moods, like a Jacobite.
0:18:26 > 0:18:31And yet he was also a Government employee, a tax-gatherer no less,
0:18:31 > 0:18:36who also wrote a fervent patriotic song against the French.
0:18:36 > 0:18:39And yet, in the end, what is essential
0:18:39 > 0:18:41about this man of many political moods
0:18:41 > 0:18:45is that he is a lifelong supporter of the bottom dog,
0:18:45 > 0:18:48an instinctive scourge of the snooty,
0:18:48 > 0:18:51the patron poet of democracy.
0:19:00 > 0:19:03And these were wild times.
0:19:03 > 0:19:06Rebellion was in the air when a radical supporter
0:19:06 > 0:19:10of the French Revolution, Thomas Muir, was arrested
0:19:10 > 0:19:14on his return from Paris to Scotland and taken to Edinburgh in chains.
0:19:17 > 0:19:22Burns saw the man who's been described as the founding father of Scottish democracy,
0:19:22 > 0:19:27bound and desperate, as Muir was led off to be tried for sedition.
0:19:29 > 0:19:32He faced a show trial in Edinburgh
0:19:32 > 0:19:36and was banished to the penal colony of Australia from where,
0:19:36 > 0:19:41remarkably, he escaped, made it to California and then to Mexico -
0:19:41 > 0:19:43arrested again, sent to Spain,
0:19:43 > 0:19:47escaped again and ended his days in Paris.
0:19:47 > 0:19:49In Scotland, he has always been remembered
0:19:49 > 0:19:52as one of the earliest heroes of Liberty.
0:19:52 > 0:19:56Not every monument in Edinburgh commemorates the rich and the powerful.
0:19:56 > 0:20:02This magnificent stick of liquorice stands for democracy's martyrs.
0:20:08 > 0:20:11There's no record of what Walter Scott made of Muir,
0:20:11 > 0:20:16the dangerous rebel, but Robert Burns simmered with fury.
0:20:19 > 0:20:25In 1793, it was simply too dangerous, even for Robert Burns,
0:20:25 > 0:20:29to write a poem or a song in praise of this political prisoner.
0:20:29 > 0:20:34Instead, he wrote his freedom song, but about William Wallace,
0:20:34 > 0:20:38the medieval Scottish hero who had become, even in England,
0:20:38 > 0:20:41a symbol of the...
0:20:41 > 0:20:43spirit of liberty.
0:20:48 > 0:20:51# Wha will be a traitor-knave
0:20:51 > 0:20:55# Wha can fill a coward's grave
0:20:55 > 0:20:58# Wha sae base as be a slave
0:20:58 > 0:21:03# Let him turn and flee
0:21:03 > 0:21:07# Scots, wha hae wi' Wallace bled
0:21:07 > 0:21:10# Scots, wham Bruce have often led
0:21:10 > 0:21:14# Welcome tae your gory bed
0:21:14 > 0:21:19# Or tae victory! #
0:21:28 > 0:21:32Scots Wha Hae takes the heroes of the Scottish independence wars,
0:21:32 > 0:21:36Bruce and Wallace, and identifies them with the contemporary struggle
0:21:36 > 0:21:40for liberty against the oppression of the British state.
0:21:40 > 0:21:45So the English King Edward is identified with chains and slavery.
0:21:45 > 0:21:48"There's liberty in every blow, Let's do or die!"
0:21:51 > 0:21:54Now, Walter Scott's response to the turmoil
0:21:54 > 0:21:57could not have been more different.
0:21:57 > 0:22:01The following year he chose to watch the execution of Robert Watt,
0:22:01 > 0:22:05another reformer, and when a group of rebel Irish students
0:22:05 > 0:22:10disrupted the singing of God Save The Queen at a theatre,
0:22:10 > 0:22:12he waded in with his fists in anger.
0:22:15 > 0:22:19It could almost have been Walter Scott that Burns was referring to
0:22:19 > 0:22:22when he wrote of strutting lords
0:22:22 > 0:22:27in arguably his most revolutionary work, A Man's A Man.
0:22:27 > 0:22:31A "birkie" just means a young man, and a "coof" is an idiot.
0:22:34 > 0:22:36Ye see yon birkie, ca'd a lord,
0:22:36 > 0:22:40Wha struts, an' stares, an' a' that,
0:22:41 > 0:22:43Tho' hundreds worship at his word,
0:22:43 > 0:22:47He's but a coof for a' that.
0:22:47 > 0:22:51For a' that, an' a' that,
0:22:51 > 0:22:55# His ribband, star an' a' that.
0:22:56 > 0:23:02# A man o' independent mind
0:23:02 > 0:23:07# He looks an' laughs at a' that. #
0:23:13 > 0:23:20Burns died on the 21st of July 1796. He was 37 years old,
0:23:20 > 0:23:23worn out by hardship and by hard living.
0:23:23 > 0:23:26And what of his legacy? This man of the people,
0:23:26 > 0:23:28this natural democrat,
0:23:28 > 0:23:31one time supporter of the French Revolution, who could never
0:23:31 > 0:23:35quite speak out for fear of losing his government job
0:23:35 > 0:23:37as an excise man. He even wore
0:23:37 > 0:23:41the King's uniform as a Dumfries Volunteer.
0:23:41 > 0:23:43These contradictions meant that after his death,
0:23:43 > 0:23:47it was all too easy to rub off Burns' rough edges.
0:23:47 > 0:23:52He became the object of a self-satisfied, rather smug,
0:23:52 > 0:23:54sentimental cult.
0:23:54 > 0:23:57This extraordinary, turbulent, passionate man
0:23:57 > 0:24:00was defanged by his admirers.
0:24:05 > 0:24:08One of his chief admirers was Walter Scott,
0:24:08 > 0:24:12now married with children, settled down, and about to embark
0:24:12 > 0:24:16on his own literary career, which would draw on Burns' romantic vision
0:24:16 > 0:24:20of Scotland, without, of course, the revolutionary politics.
0:24:28 > 0:24:30He published his first significant work,
0:24:30 > 0:24:35The Minstrelsy Of The Scottish Border, in 1802.
0:24:35 > 0:24:40In it, he gathers and reworks traditional poems and ballads,
0:24:40 > 0:24:45many of which he will first have heard as a child at Sandyknowe.
0:24:49 > 0:24:51These are rooted in folklore.
0:24:51 > 0:24:55There is no hint of politics,
0:24:55 > 0:24:59even in the famous grizzly ballad about two crows, or "corbies",
0:24:59 > 0:25:03picking at the flesh of the body of a dead knight.
0:25:07 > 0:25:09As I was walking all alane,
0:25:09 > 0:25:12I heard twa corbies making a mane.
0:25:12 > 0:25:16The tane unto t'other say, "Where sall we gang and dine to-day?"
0:25:16 > 0:25:21"In behint yon auld fail dyke, I wot there lies a new slain knight,
0:25:21 > 0:25:24"And naebody kens that he lies there,
0:25:24 > 0:25:26"But his hawk, his hound, and lady fair."
0:25:35 > 0:25:39This was essentially an affectionate collection
0:25:39 > 0:25:41written mostly in Border Scots,
0:25:41 > 0:25:45but it is interesting that even at this point, Scott is looking beyond
0:25:45 > 0:25:49for an English speaking, middle class audience, because these simple
0:25:49 > 0:25:53ballads are completely surrounded by explanations and notes.
0:25:53 > 0:25:56And when he goes on to write his own poetry,
0:25:56 > 0:25:59Scott takes the single most important decision
0:25:59 > 0:26:05in his literary life, because he writes not in Scots but in English.
0:26:07 > 0:26:11The most famous of these poems was The Lay Of The Last Minstrel,
0:26:11 > 0:26:15a ballad peopled by goblins, a magic book
0:26:15 > 0:26:18and a terrifying strongman called Lord Dacre.
0:26:20 > 0:26:23It was reprinted six times in three years.
0:26:23 > 0:26:27It brought fame to Walter Scott and tourists in their thousands
0:26:27 > 0:26:30to Melrose Abbey, where it was partly set.
0:26:32 > 0:26:35And yes, it is patriotic.
0:26:35 > 0:26:39In the following glowing lines, Scott's heart broods over
0:26:39 > 0:26:42the rugged charms of his Caledonia, his Scotland.
0:26:45 > 0:26:49Breathes there the man, with soul so dead,
0:26:49 > 0:26:52Who never to himself hath said,
0:26:52 > 0:26:55This is my own, my native land!
0:26:56 > 0:26:59O Caledonia! Stern and wild,
0:26:59 > 0:27:02Meet nurse for a poetic child!
0:27:02 > 0:27:04Land of brown heath and shaggy wood,
0:27:04 > 0:27:07Land of the mountain and the flood,
0:27:07 > 0:27:09Land of my sires!
0:27:09 > 0:27:11What mortal hand
0:27:11 > 0:27:13Can e'er untie the filial band
0:27:13 > 0:27:17That knits me to thy rugged strand!
0:27:22 > 0:27:26William Pitt, the Tory Prime Minister, was a big fan of The Lay.
0:27:26 > 0:27:29More classic poems including The Lady Of The Lake
0:27:29 > 0:27:33and Rokeby followed in the next ten years.
0:27:34 > 0:27:38But then with the arrival on the literary scene of that
0:27:38 > 0:27:43devastatingly talented and wicked rival, Lord Byron,
0:27:43 > 0:27:46Scott sensed a declining appetite for his verses.
0:27:46 > 0:27:49Years later, he told his biographer,
0:27:49 > 0:27:52"Byron beat me out of the field."
0:27:57 > 0:28:01The poems had brought him fame, but now Scott needed a bigger stage,
0:28:01 > 0:28:07one which could encompass the politics as well as the history of modern Scotland.
0:28:07 > 0:28:11And so he made a second dramatic move that was to prove
0:28:11 > 0:28:15even more successful than his decision to drop the Scots language.
0:28:19 > 0:28:25His first novel, Waverley, was published in 1814, 200 years ago.
0:28:26 > 0:28:30There was a long tradition of gentlemen writing poems,
0:28:30 > 0:28:33but not of gentlemen writing novels.
0:28:33 > 0:28:37This cautious lawyer didn't even want his name on the cover,
0:28:37 > 0:28:39just in case things went wrong.
0:28:40 > 0:28:44This was an exciting new idea in the history of the novel -
0:28:44 > 0:28:51fictional characters rubbing shoulders with real characters inside real events.
0:28:51 > 0:28:55Walter Scott virtually invented the historical novel,
0:28:55 > 0:28:58and sometimes it seems, aspects of our own history too.
0:28:58 > 0:29:02"The Wars of the Roses" was a Walter Scott phrase,
0:29:02 > 0:29:05and you know that scene in the Disney film where Robin Hood's arrow
0:29:05 > 0:29:09splits the Sherriff of Nottingham's arrow in mid air?
0:29:09 > 0:29:10Walter Scott.
0:29:13 > 0:29:16James Robertson is a modern historical novelist.
0:29:16 > 0:29:19His characters live through World Cups and the rise
0:29:19 > 0:29:23of the Scottish National Party. Very different times, but in a way,
0:29:23 > 0:29:27his approach to history is similar to Walter Scott's.
0:29:27 > 0:29:29The historical novel is a massive genre these days,
0:29:29 > 0:29:32can we actually credit that to Walter Scott, do you think?
0:29:32 > 0:29:34Yeah, I think we can.
0:29:34 > 0:29:38I think Scott probably more than anybody, shapes what we now think of
0:29:38 > 0:29:42as a historical novel in the early 19th century.
0:29:42 > 0:29:46He does this thing that nobody has really done before which is
0:29:46 > 0:29:48to populate his stories set in the past
0:29:48 > 0:29:53with people who are recognisably the same kind of people as his readers,
0:29:53 > 0:29:55the people in the present in other words,
0:29:55 > 0:30:00and he mixes those ordinary people up with historical figures,
0:30:00 > 0:30:02kings, queens, soldiers, etc,
0:30:02 > 0:30:06and that's a kind of new thing that he is doing.
0:30:07 > 0:30:11For James Robertson, politically turbulent times today,
0:30:11 > 0:30:14and for Scott, politically turbulent times then.
0:30:14 > 0:30:18In the pages of his first novel, he tries to weave together
0:30:18 > 0:30:21competing strands of Scotland's bloody history
0:30:21 > 0:30:25and he begins crucially with the clans of the Highlands.
0:30:27 > 0:30:32The clans were essentially kinship groups, tribes if you will.
0:30:32 > 0:30:34"Clan" comes from the Gaelic for "children,"
0:30:34 > 0:30:38and they engaged in endless warfare between themselves.
0:30:38 > 0:30:41Each had their own territory and their own leadership,
0:30:41 > 0:30:44and they were involved in almost constant warfare
0:30:44 > 0:30:48between one another, developing a terrifying warrior elite.
0:30:48 > 0:30:50The Scots north of the Highland line
0:30:50 > 0:30:53and the Scots south of the Highland line
0:30:53 > 0:30:57were about as similar to one another as the Cheyenne and the Apache were
0:30:57 > 0:31:00to the doe-faced, God-fearing Burghers of Boston.
0:31:05 > 0:31:10So while in the South, Scotland became a country of landowners,
0:31:10 > 0:31:13settled farmers and small towns,
0:31:13 > 0:31:18with her own radical Protestant church, her own laws,
0:31:18 > 0:31:24and her own traditions of education, Highland Scotland stayed apart,
0:31:24 > 0:31:26a much wilder land,
0:31:26 > 0:31:29barely acknowledging the authority of the Scottish kings.
0:31:38 > 0:31:41The two cultures finally clashed here
0:31:41 > 0:31:44in the tragic Battle of Culloden in 1746,
0:31:44 > 0:31:47the last to be fought on British soil,
0:31:47 > 0:31:52and the culmination of a civil war as brutal as anything
0:31:52 > 0:31:54going on in today's Iraq or Syria.
0:31:58 > 0:32:01A rebellion led by Charles Edward Stuart,
0:32:01 > 0:32:04or Bonnie Prince Charlie as he became known,
0:32:04 > 0:32:08and supported by many highlanders, was defeated by a Government army.
0:32:08 > 0:32:11Slaughter followed.
0:32:11 > 0:32:17This was the stage Walter Scott chose for his fictional characters to walk on.
0:32:22 > 0:32:27The Battle of Culloden left Scotland profoundly divided with a great,
0:32:27 > 0:32:31gaping, bloody wound running across the country.
0:32:31 > 0:32:36On the one side, the defeated, humiliated and retreating
0:32:36 > 0:32:40Gaelic culture of the north, and on the other side,
0:32:40 > 0:32:44the rising, urban, mercantile and slightly smug culture
0:32:44 > 0:32:49of the south, but that Scotland really had no King and no Parliament.
0:32:49 > 0:32:53This was a wound which took generations to even begin to heal.
0:33:00 > 0:33:05It might sound a touch presumptuous, but in writing Waverley,
0:33:05 > 0:33:07and the series of novels that followed it,
0:33:07 > 0:33:12our podgy-faced Edinburgh lawyer-turned-writer set about
0:33:12 > 0:33:16trying to heal those wounds through the pages of adventure stories.
0:33:19 > 0:33:23Waverley's hero, the Englishman Edward Waverley,
0:33:23 > 0:33:27quite literally wavers between opposing ideologies -
0:33:27 > 0:33:33the rebel Jacobites who wanted to restore a Stuart, Catholic king to the throne,
0:33:33 > 0:33:34and the Hanoverians,
0:33:34 > 0:33:38supporters of the ruling Protestant King, George II.
0:33:41 > 0:33:44In the following extract, Edward has switched sides
0:33:44 > 0:33:49and joined the Jacobites well before the disaster of Culloden.
0:33:49 > 0:33:51On the day of the Battle Of Prestonpans,
0:33:51 > 0:33:56a great Jacobite victory, he finds himself standing with
0:33:56 > 0:34:01the highlanders and facing English soldiers he once commanded himself.
0:34:02 > 0:34:06They approached so near that Waverley could plainly
0:34:06 > 0:34:09recognise the standard of the troops he had formerly commanded,
0:34:09 > 0:34:12and hear the trumpets and kettle-drums sound the advance,
0:34:12 > 0:34:15which he had so often obeyed.
0:34:15 > 0:34:19He could hear, too, the well-known word given in the English dialect
0:34:19 > 0:34:23by the equally well-distinguished voice of the commanding officer
0:34:23 > 0:34:26for whom he had once felt so much respect.
0:34:30 > 0:34:34It was at that instant, that looking around him, he saw the wild
0:34:34 > 0:34:38dress and appearance of his Highland associates, heard their whispers
0:34:38 > 0:34:43in an uncouth and unknown language, looked upon his own dress, so unlike
0:34:43 > 0:34:46that which he had worn from his infancy, and wishes to awake from
0:34:46 > 0:34:51what seemed at the moment a dream, strange, horrible, and unnatural.
0:34:53 > 0:34:57"Good God," he thought, "am I then a traitor to my country,
0:34:57 > 0:35:00"a renegade to my standard, and a foe,
0:35:00 > 0:35:05"as that poor dying wretch expressed himself, to my native England!"
0:35:14 > 0:35:18So this is Scott's answer to the problem - acknowledge the hurt
0:35:18 > 0:35:23but forbid the idea of revolt to answer it, because, for Scott,
0:35:23 > 0:35:28revolt, rebellion, revolution are never, ever worth it.
0:35:28 > 0:35:31Scotland can't fight back, not in the here and now,
0:35:31 > 0:35:35and so we have Waverley, a great Scottish novel
0:35:35 > 0:35:37with an English hero.
0:35:37 > 0:35:41And time and time again in the Scottish novels, in Waverley,
0:35:41 > 0:35:44in Rob Roy, in Redgauntlet, we have a Jacobite hero
0:35:44 > 0:35:48or someone who flirts with the romance of the Jacobite cause
0:35:48 > 0:35:53and then turns his back and returns to solid sensible Unionism.
0:35:53 > 0:35:55Politics as usual.
0:35:59 > 0:36:03But it was a union of equals he wanted,
0:36:03 > 0:36:06not a lopsided one dominated by the English.
0:36:06 > 0:36:10Walter Scott would almost certainly have supported devolution and a Scottish Parliament,
0:36:10 > 0:36:12if not independence.
0:36:15 > 0:36:17In novel after novel,
0:36:17 > 0:36:21Walter Scott expresses his dismay about what was lost with
0:36:21 > 0:36:25the Union of 1707, and that includes the Scottish Parliament itself.
0:36:25 > 0:36:28In Heart Of Midlothian, which I think is his best novel,
0:36:28 > 0:36:32one of the characters, an old lady, explains that when the parliament
0:36:32 > 0:36:35met in Edinburgh, if the politicians were doing things the people
0:36:35 > 0:36:38didn't like, "we could aye people them with staines" -
0:36:38 > 0:36:39throw stones at them.
0:36:39 > 0:36:43But of course the stones couldn't reach as far as London any more.
0:36:43 > 0:36:46And in the same novel, when the heroine, Jeanie Deans,
0:36:46 > 0:36:51seeks justice, she can't get it in Edinburgh or in Scotland.
0:36:51 > 0:36:54She has to walk all the way to London.
0:36:54 > 0:36:58Walter Scott believed that the Union had brought Scotland prosperity
0:36:58 > 0:37:02and security, but it came at a hefty democratic price.
0:37:02 > 0:37:06And Walter Scott, arch-unionist, never forgot it.
0:37:06 > 0:37:09One of the things he does, his project, first through
0:37:09 > 0:37:12his big epic poems and then thorough the Waverley novels,
0:37:12 > 0:37:16is to find a way for Scottish people to be both Scottish and also
0:37:16 > 0:37:20part of the new British imperial project that is going on
0:37:20 > 0:37:22all around them, of which he is a signed up member.
0:37:22 > 0:37:25He's definitely a member of the establishment, or becomes one,
0:37:25 > 0:37:28but he also wants to find a way to be Scottish at the same time.
0:37:28 > 0:37:31So he's a sort of nationalist unionist, in the early part of the 19th century.
0:37:31 > 0:37:34- Yes. So he is a reconciler in a sense?- Yes, he is.
0:37:34 > 0:37:37And also, within Scotland, he does something else
0:37:37 > 0:37:38really interesting as well.
0:37:38 > 0:37:41He reconciles divided bits of Scottish culture.
0:37:41 > 0:37:45You know, highland and lowland culture.
0:37:46 > 0:37:50Waverley was phenomenally successful.
0:37:50 > 0:37:54It sold, both north and south of the border, by the bucket-load,
0:37:54 > 0:37:57and in America too, in pirate editions
0:37:57 > 0:38:02from which Walter Scott never got a penny, which infuriated him.
0:38:02 > 0:38:07But at least at first, the domestic profits were more than enough.
0:38:08 > 0:38:12Scott's novels, including Guy Mannering and later Ivanhoe,
0:38:12 > 0:38:16paid for this, a stately pile in the Borders.
0:38:20 > 0:38:22Abbotsford was soon besieged by visitors from around the world.
0:38:22 > 0:38:26Walter Scott, now rewarded with a knighthood by the king,
0:38:26 > 0:38:28became a tourist attraction in himself.
0:38:31 > 0:38:36But at Abbotsford, nothing is quite what it seems. It looks ancient,
0:38:36 > 0:38:38it's really quite modern.
0:38:38 > 0:38:42Walter Scott was one of the first in the Scotland to convert
0:38:42 > 0:38:47to gas lighting, and the plasterwork and woodwork throughout the house
0:38:47 > 0:38:48were painted to look like oak.
0:38:50 > 0:38:53The art critic Ruskin would write,
0:38:53 > 0:38:57"Scott's romance and antiquarianism, his knighthood and his monkery
0:38:57 > 0:39:01"are all false, and he knows them to be false."
0:39:03 > 0:39:07But Ruskin is profoundly misunderstanding him.
0:39:07 > 0:39:12These are real swords, daggers, pistols, instruments of every kind
0:39:12 > 0:39:15of violent death, even instruments of torture he's got here,
0:39:15 > 0:39:17thumbscrews and so forth.
0:39:17 > 0:39:21What's odd is that Scott's political project was all about peace
0:39:21 > 0:39:25and social harmony, but his imagination was aflame with blood
0:39:25 > 0:39:29and violence and rebellion. There is a profound contradiction.
0:39:29 > 0:39:33It's not false but it's very slightly odd.
0:39:33 > 0:39:36There is an answer to this conundrum, which is that all
0:39:36 > 0:39:39this stuff is absolutely fine, says Scott, in its place,
0:39:39 > 0:39:42which here is firmly nailed to a wall, never actually in
0:39:42 > 0:39:44someone's hand or being used.
0:39:44 > 0:39:47And it's the same with his attitude to Scottish history,
0:39:47 > 0:39:52which is absolutely fine, in its place, which is between the covers
0:39:52 > 0:39:56of his novels and never out dangerously in the world around him.
0:40:02 > 0:40:03And then, suddenly,
0:40:03 > 0:40:07everything Walter Scott believed in was threatened.
0:40:07 > 0:40:11The radical, democratic spirit which had inspired Robert Burns
0:40:11 > 0:40:14returned, stronger than ever.
0:40:14 > 0:40:19Between 1816 and 1819, a mass movement sprang up
0:40:19 > 0:40:21calling for radical reform.
0:40:21 > 0:40:26Once again, Scottish radicals were calling for a Scottish Parliament,
0:40:26 > 0:40:28even for a Scottish republic.
0:40:29 > 0:40:33The long wars against revolutionary and Napoleonic France
0:40:33 > 0:40:37had plunged Scotland into a time of hardship.
0:40:37 > 0:40:42A repressive and unsympathetic Government, high food prices
0:40:42 > 0:40:44and widespread unemployment
0:40:44 > 0:40:47all added to the distress of the common people.
0:40:49 > 0:40:53Like some now, they felt London simply wasn't listening.
0:40:55 > 0:40:59The poet and republican who might have been their champion
0:40:59 > 0:41:01was long dead.
0:41:03 > 0:41:08But the radical spirit of Robert Burns was still very much alive.
0:41:08 > 0:41:13At a protest meeting in Paisley of 16,000 people, the band played
0:41:13 > 0:41:16his Scots Wha Hae to the crowd, and immediately afterwards,
0:41:16 > 0:41:20the entire band were rounded up and charged with sedition,
0:41:20 > 0:41:22a very serious crime.
0:41:26 > 0:41:28The rebels weren't cowed by this.
0:41:28 > 0:41:33In 1820, there was an insurrection in southern Scotland,
0:41:33 > 0:41:36the so-called Radical War.
0:41:36 > 0:41:37# Upon this tree there grows sic fruit
0:41:37 > 0:41:40# It's virtues a' can tell, man
0:41:40 > 0:41:42# It raises man aboon the brute
0:41:42 > 0:41:45# It maks him ken himsel, man. #
0:41:45 > 0:41:4960,000 workers went on strike across central Scotland
0:41:49 > 0:41:53calling for instant parliamentary reform.
0:41:53 > 0:41:56There was unrest as well in many English counties,
0:41:56 > 0:41:58including Northumbria.
0:41:58 > 0:42:02Unionists like Scott
0:42:02 > 0:42:06feared the demands would go well beyond mild reform.
0:42:06 > 0:42:09In the paranoid imagination of the Government,
0:42:09 > 0:42:14these protesting workers merged into a vision of all the histories
0:42:14 > 0:42:15they never wanted repeated.
0:42:15 > 0:42:19They were the soldiers behind Bruce at Bannockburn,
0:42:19 > 0:42:23they were the militant Presbyterian or Covenanter rebels,
0:42:23 > 0:42:26they were they Jacobite army behind Bonnie Prince Charlie,
0:42:26 > 0:42:30and they were the Jacobin rebels in France
0:42:30 > 0:42:32blood-crazed enough to behead a King.
0:42:37 > 0:42:40For Sir Walter, the very existence of the Union,
0:42:40 > 0:42:44and the society of which he was such a prominent and successful member,
0:42:44 > 0:42:46was at stake. What to do?
0:42:48 > 0:42:52First, he suggested trying to divert the disaffected jobless
0:42:52 > 0:42:54from joining the rebels.
0:42:57 > 0:43:01Unemployed weavers from the west of Scotland were put to work
0:43:01 > 0:43:04paving this track around Arthur's Seat,
0:43:04 > 0:43:08the extinct volcano that dominates Edinburgh.
0:43:09 > 0:43:14Today this path is still known as The Radical Road.
0:43:14 > 0:43:19But this bizarre make-work programme wasn't enough to end
0:43:19 > 0:43:21a social emergency.
0:43:21 > 0:43:26Gentry across southern Scotland, fearing revolutionary horrors
0:43:26 > 0:43:28like those in France,
0:43:28 > 0:43:31raised volunteer regiments of foot and horse.
0:43:31 > 0:43:34Scott, in a sudden fervour of warrior zeal
0:43:34 > 0:43:36urged his neighbours to....
0:43:38 > 0:43:41..Appeal at this crisis to the good sense
0:43:41 > 0:43:43and loyalty of the lower orders.
0:43:43 > 0:43:46All you have to do is sound the men
0:43:46 > 0:43:48and mark down those who seem zealous.
0:43:48 > 0:43:53They will perhaps have to fight the pitmen and colliers of Northumbria
0:43:53 > 0:43:57for defence of their fireside, for those literal blackguards
0:43:57 > 0:44:01are got beyond the management of their own people.
0:44:01 > 0:44:06Then Scott took an even more active, if somewhat fanciful role.
0:44:06 > 0:44:10He too would go into battle, with his loyal soldiers at his back
0:44:10 > 0:44:13and under his standard.
0:44:13 > 0:44:17He designed grey plaids and blue bonnets for his corps,
0:44:17 > 0:44:21which he wanted to call the Buccleuch Legion
0:44:21 > 0:44:23or the Royal Foresters.
0:44:23 > 0:44:25In the end, they were never called upon to fight.
0:44:25 > 0:44:28But Scott, like most other members of the ruling classes,
0:44:28 > 0:44:32was still deeply concerned and absolutely convinced
0:44:32 > 0:44:34that more needed to be done.
0:44:40 > 0:44:43But if the union and the established order survived,
0:44:43 > 0:44:46it still seemed to be in deep trouble.
0:44:46 > 0:44:50And not the least of the problems was that the leader of the union,
0:44:50 > 0:44:54King George IV, was a figure of fun.
0:44:54 > 0:44:57Scotland needed to see him differently,
0:44:57 > 0:45:02and the King and his court needed to take a second look at Scotland.
0:45:02 > 0:45:05So here was an opportunity for Walter Scott,
0:45:05 > 0:45:09the celebrity writer and reconciler of Scotland's tribes,
0:45:09 > 0:45:12not just to write history but to make it.
0:45:14 > 0:45:17George IV was overweight and under-subtle.
0:45:17 > 0:45:21He'd lost control of his waistline and his libido.
0:45:21 > 0:45:25He wasn't considered safe around foreign diplomats.
0:45:25 > 0:45:29Some time in the spring of 1820, the idea emerged of sending him
0:45:29 > 0:45:34on a royal visit to Scotland, partly in order to keep him out of the way
0:45:34 > 0:45:37while his ministers in London get on with the serious business
0:45:37 > 0:45:39of governing the country.
0:45:44 > 0:45:47The visit would be the first time a reigning monarch had come
0:45:47 > 0:45:51north of the border since 1650.
0:45:51 > 0:45:54Someone had to stage manage the whole affair.
0:45:54 > 0:45:56Someone who believed in the monarchy
0:45:56 > 0:46:00but had a keen eye for Scottish tradition and pageantry.
0:46:03 > 0:46:06It was a job made for Sir Walter Scott,
0:46:06 > 0:46:10who seized the opportunity to devise a pageant of reconciliation
0:46:10 > 0:46:13which would bring the Scots closer to their "chief."
0:46:16 > 0:46:17After landing at Leith,
0:46:17 > 0:46:20the King went to the Palace of Holyroodhouse,
0:46:20 > 0:46:24where on the 17th August, he presented himself
0:46:24 > 0:46:26in a belted plaid and tartan hose,
0:46:26 > 0:46:30a velvet jacket and a bonnet pierced by eagle feathers.
0:46:32 > 0:46:34"Over the top?"
0:46:34 > 0:46:37"Yes, Your Majesty. Just a little."
0:46:38 > 0:46:43Highland dress, which had been banned until 1782 as the
0:46:43 > 0:46:45uniform of barbarian rebels,
0:46:45 > 0:46:50was now being proudly worn by a fat Hanoverian king
0:46:50 > 0:46:56who covered his fat Hanoverian legs in bright, silk, pink tights.
0:46:56 > 0:47:00He looked ridiculous, of course.
0:47:05 > 0:47:10The excessive vulgarity of this theatrical costume was seen by some
0:47:10 > 0:47:15as a mockery of the simple belted plaid once worn by the Highlander.
0:47:15 > 0:47:16But not to Sir Walter Scott.
0:47:20 > 0:47:23At the ball held at the Assembly Rooms,
0:47:23 > 0:47:28he insisted that no gentleman was to be allowed to appear in anything
0:47:28 > 0:47:30but the ancient Highland costume.
0:47:36 > 0:47:41Men who had never considered wearing a kilt or trews
0:47:41 > 0:47:44were obliged to swathe themselves in tartan.
0:47:46 > 0:47:51Highland dress became the affectation of Anglicized lairds,
0:47:51 > 0:47:54the uniform of the German king's army,
0:47:54 > 0:47:58and the fancy dress of lowlanders, which it still is.
0:47:59 > 0:48:02A kind of tartan curtain came down across Scotland,
0:48:02 > 0:48:05hiding the contemporary reality of the Highlands,
0:48:05 > 0:48:08which was one of poverty and eviction.
0:48:10 > 0:48:12But it affected all of the country.
0:48:12 > 0:48:16Following Sir Walter, this became a mythic nation
0:48:16 > 0:48:20of pretend Highlanders, fired with enthusiasm
0:48:20 > 0:48:24for a foreign monarchy now prepared to wear the kilt.
0:48:28 > 0:48:32The old clan tartans were commercialised and regimented,
0:48:32 > 0:48:34something now for everyone.
0:48:35 > 0:48:37It wasn't just Walter Scott, of course.
0:48:37 > 0:48:42Politicians and the Highland Society were deeply involved too.
0:48:42 > 0:48:45But he was the great impresario.
0:48:45 > 0:48:48Go up and down Edinburgh's Royal Mile today
0:48:48 > 0:48:53and the distant reverberations of Scott's King's Jaunt,
0:48:53 > 0:48:58as it was mockingly called, can still just about be heard.
0:49:00 > 0:49:02Walter Scott brings George IV to Edinburgh,
0:49:02 > 0:49:04swathes him in tartan and so forth,
0:49:04 > 0:49:08and its thanks to Scott, is it not, that the English upper classes
0:49:08 > 0:49:12learn to love an aspect of Scottishness and sign up to it?
0:49:12 > 0:49:14Yes, there is no question about that,
0:49:14 > 0:49:18and certainly the 1822 royal visit, when you look at that,
0:49:18 > 0:49:20it's so stage managed and it is absolutely about
0:49:20 > 0:49:23reconciling the British establishment to Scotland,
0:49:23 > 0:49:26and he definitely plays a huge part in doing that.
0:49:34 > 0:49:37You might have imagined that the theatrical director,
0:49:37 > 0:49:43the impresario behind it all, would have enjoyed respect and prosperity
0:49:43 > 0:49:46in his sham castle until his dying day.
0:49:46 > 0:49:48But Scott did not.
0:49:49 > 0:49:53He'd become involved in unwise, expensive publishing ventures.
0:49:56 > 0:50:00The sheer cost of transforming Abbotsford into a solid piece
0:50:00 > 0:50:04of impossible history also drained his pockets.
0:50:04 > 0:50:07Bad investments. A rickety bank.
0:50:07 > 0:50:09Where have we heard that before?
0:50:11 > 0:50:15Scott's last years were grimly industrious,
0:50:15 > 0:50:19industrious to the point of being industrial.
0:50:19 > 0:50:21He had always been productive,
0:50:21 > 0:50:25now he became a writing machine as he coped with the death
0:50:25 > 0:50:29of his wife and the constant struggle to make good his debts.
0:50:30 > 0:50:32But now Sir Walter Scott,
0:50:32 > 0:50:36in some ways so easy to dislike and easy to mock,
0:50:36 > 0:50:38becomes a kind of hero.
0:50:38 > 0:50:43Writing had built all of this and he would not give in.
0:50:43 > 0:50:46He was determined to write his way out of debt.
0:50:48 > 0:50:51"My own right hand shall pay," he said.
0:50:51 > 0:50:56"Discharging my duty as a man of honour and honesty.
0:50:56 > 0:51:02"I see before me a long tedious and dark path
0:51:02 > 0:51:07"but it leads to true fame and stainless reputation.
0:51:07 > 0:51:11"If I shall die in the harrows, as is very likely,
0:51:11 > 0:51:14"I die with honour."
0:51:20 > 0:51:24He wrote biographies, short stories, a wonderful journal
0:51:24 > 0:51:29and novel after novel of lower and lower quality.
0:51:30 > 0:51:35But in less than six years he'd made more than £50,000 for his creditors,
0:51:35 > 0:51:39that's more than five million in today's money.
0:51:40 > 0:51:42And he was still politically active.
0:51:42 > 0:51:46In 1826, the London Government planned to strip private banks
0:51:46 > 0:51:50of their right to print banknotes smaller than £5.
0:51:50 > 0:51:54This was considered disastrous for the Scottish economy
0:51:54 > 0:51:56where small notes were dominant.
0:51:56 > 0:51:59A row over currency then as now,
0:51:59 > 0:52:04and using the pen name Malachi Malagrowther, Scott hit back.
0:52:06 > 0:52:10There has arisen gradually, on the part of England,
0:52:10 > 0:52:15a desire of engrossing the exclusive management of Scottish affairs.
0:52:15 > 0:52:20If the English statesmen has a point of greater or lesser consequence
0:52:20 > 0:52:25to settle with Scotland as a country, we find him and his friends
0:52:25 > 0:52:29at once seized with a jealous, tenacious, wrangling,
0:52:29 > 0:52:31overbearing humour.
0:52:31 > 0:52:35We cease at once to be the Athenians Of The North.
0:52:35 > 0:52:40We have become the caterpillars of the island instead of its pillars.
0:52:47 > 0:52:51The Government caved in, Scott won, and to this day,
0:52:51 > 0:52:55the notes of the Bank Of Scotland carry Sir Walter Scott's portrait
0:52:55 > 0:53:00in recognition of his defence of the Scottish banking tradition.
0:53:00 > 0:53:02He was an operator, an insider,
0:53:02 > 0:53:06a completely different kind of beast to Robert Burns.
0:53:06 > 0:53:10Burns represents the rebellious, impulsive, passionate side
0:53:10 > 0:53:12of the Scottish temperament.
0:53:12 > 0:53:16Walter Scott represents a more timid but perhaps
0:53:16 > 0:53:22more practical political tradition, and also, of course, the quiet heroism
0:53:22 > 0:53:26of those who take responsibility, and work their way out of trouble.
0:53:31 > 0:53:35Abbotsford still maintained a steady flow of visitors
0:53:35 > 0:53:38but its glory days were over.
0:53:39 > 0:53:43He'd worked harder than he'd ever done in a hard working life
0:53:43 > 0:53:45and his health began to fail.
0:53:49 > 0:53:54When he died in the September of 1832, there was still money owing.
0:53:54 > 0:53:56But then there were still books selling,
0:53:56 > 0:53:59and within a few years, the debt on the house was paid.
0:54:02 > 0:54:05Today you can go and see it for yourself, it's open to everyone.
0:54:07 > 0:54:10So what in the end is Scott's legacy?
0:54:10 > 0:54:13In many ways, a legacy of some grandeur.
0:54:13 > 0:54:18It's the opposite of what you might call Robert Burns' divine impertinence.
0:54:18 > 0:54:21Scott leaves behind him a Scotland whose military
0:54:21 > 0:54:24are famous around the world for their valour,
0:54:24 > 0:54:27highland regiments and lowland regiments wearing tartan
0:54:27 > 0:54:30at the cutting edge of the British Empire,
0:54:30 > 0:54:33and at home he leaves behind a people famous
0:54:33 > 0:54:37for their hard work and ingenuity in front of an English audience
0:54:37 > 0:54:42who can't deny their growing involvement in the project of Britishness.
0:54:42 > 0:54:43A funny character, Scott.
0:54:43 > 0:54:46You know, the little lame boy, an outsider and all the rest of it.
0:54:46 > 0:54:49In the end, a genius?
0:54:49 > 0:54:53Yeah, I think so. I think when you look at the totality of what he did.
0:54:53 > 0:54:56He's just so eclectic and he can write about anything. He's interested in everything.
0:54:56 > 0:54:58When you read his journal,
0:54:58 > 0:55:01the great work of the last six years of his life,
0:55:01 > 0:55:05you get a real insight into the complicated and often lonely man
0:55:05 > 0:55:07who is behind the facade.
0:55:07 > 0:55:11What about the polarity between Burns on the one hand,
0:55:11 > 0:55:14the democrat, the republican, the rebel,
0:55:14 > 0:55:18and Scott the conservative, the unionist, Tory?
0:55:18 > 0:55:20I guess that's also why he is not terribly popular at the moment
0:55:20 > 0:55:22in this year of the referendum?
0:55:22 > 0:55:26Certainly in Scotland, I think that polarity has become a bit fixed.
0:55:26 > 0:55:29So Burns is the man of the people, Scott is the Tory.
0:55:29 > 0:55:32He's a bit of a toff, or is perceived to be,
0:55:32 > 0:55:37although in fact, in reality he was really quite a man of the people
0:55:37 > 0:55:39in some respects himself as well.
0:55:39 > 0:55:40But, yes, that polarity exists,
0:55:40 > 0:55:43and he has fallen out of favour for that reason.
0:55:50 > 0:55:54So take another look at the fabulous monument that punches
0:55:54 > 0:55:58Edinburgh's grey skies if you alight here for the Festival,
0:55:58 > 0:56:02or to walk the Royal Mile or to cast your vote in September.
0:56:02 > 0:56:06It is possible to be a unionist and a Scottish patriot.
0:56:06 > 0:56:09Walter Scott teaches us that.
0:56:09 > 0:56:11He is the great bestrider,
0:56:11 > 0:56:13the writer who tries to hold it all together.
0:56:15 > 0:56:19He's was a great gatherer together of different cultures
0:56:19 > 0:56:23and different societies, and you can see the issue here in stone
0:56:23 > 0:56:27in Edinburgh, because Edinburgh is famously not one
0:56:27 > 0:56:29but two towns.
0:56:29 > 0:56:34Over there, the unionist, pragmatic, rational New Town.
0:56:34 > 0:56:39A straw poll suggests to me a bastion of Better Together even now.
0:56:39 > 0:56:42On the other side, the romantic, patriotic Old Town,
0:56:42 > 0:56:46and again, an unscientific straw poll suggests to me
0:56:46 > 0:56:50a bastion of Yes voters. And what's standing between them,
0:56:50 > 0:56:54like the spike on a buckle, yes, it's old Walter Scott.
0:56:58 > 0:57:03And yet the political sands may be shifting under Walter Scott
0:57:03 > 0:57:07as Scots today prepare to vote to keep something
0:57:07 > 0:57:12their writer so passionately believed in, or else perhaps
0:57:12 > 0:57:13to begin a new adventure,
0:57:13 > 0:57:17to stride out into the distance like one of his heroes.
0:57:18 > 0:57:23Scott's novels are all about violent revolt and tragic choices
0:57:23 > 0:57:28and bloodshed, but politically he was the comforter.
0:57:28 > 0:57:31Scott left behind Scots who are more comfortable with their own
0:57:31 > 0:57:35romanticised history, and more comfortable as well,
0:57:35 > 0:57:39at least for a while, with their place in the British Union.
0:57:39 > 0:57:44What perhaps he forgot is that history rarely sleeps securely.
0:57:46 > 0:57:50In the next episode, a poet who lived his life
0:57:50 > 0:57:53on the political edge and reinvented Scottish literature,
0:57:53 > 0:57:55Hugh MacDiarmid.
0:57:55 > 0:57:59He dreamed of an independent Scottish Communist utopia,
0:57:59 > 0:58:02never got that, and a great cultural revival,
0:58:02 > 0:58:04which has now arrived.