Mr MacDiarmid in his introduction rightly calls the present republication [of his 1926 Contemporary Scottish Studies] "a sign of the times", but what is interesting is that this is true not merely in the obvious sense that devolution is in the air, but also because much of what the book contains is still surprisingly relevant. The essays are wide-ranging, very confident in tone, and clearly determined to be obstetric as well as obstreperous. A new culture was stirring in Scotland; a "Scottish Renaissance" had been announced in poetry, centring on Hugh MacDiarmid himself…. A parochial, conservative old guard was still very active, all the more so as it experienced the early shocks of modern or modernist change, and Hugh MacDiarmid assiduously provokes the auld dug to growl and shake its fleas over the pages of the journal. Relishing controversy, he delights in watching his opponents splutter, often at considerable...