Books

The Burghs and Parliament in Scotland, c. 1550-1651
Alan MacDonald

This book is the first full-length study of the burghs and parliament in Scotland, which analyses over a one hundred year period the influence of this institution.

Drawing extensively on local and national sources, new light is shed upon the way in which parliament acted as a point of contact, a place where legislative business was done, relationships formed and status affirmed. The interactions between centre and localities, and between urban and rural elites are prominent themes, as is Edinburgh's position as the leading burgh and the host of parliament. The study draws upon existing scholarship to place Scotland within the wider British and European context and argues that the Scottish parliament was a distinctive and effective institution which was responsive to the needs of the burghs both collectively and individually.

Existing studies of early modern Scotland tend to focus on the crown, the nobility and the church. Yet, from the sixteenth century, a unique national representative assembly of the towns, the Convention of Burghs, provides an insight into the activities of another key group in society. Meeting at least once a year, the Convention consisted of representatives from every parliamentary burgh, and was responsible for apportioning taxation, settling disputes between members, regulating weights and measures, negotiating with the crown on issues of concern to the merchant community. The Convention's role in relation to parliament was particularly significant, for it regulated urban representation, admitted new burghs to parliament, and co-ordinated and oversaw the conduct of the burgess estate in parliament.

Auld campaigner: A life of Alexander Scott
David Robb

This is the first major biography of Alexander Scott (1920-89), a hugely influential figure in the Scottish literary scene in the 20th century. It will appeal to students of the Scottish renaissance and lovers of twentieth-century Scots literature.

In his day, he was one of the most prominent of Scotland's poets, renowned for witty, passionate, vigorous poems in both Scots and English - poems embodying his high ideals of poetic craftsmanship and carrying forward MacDiarmid's literary Renaissance into the Sixties. They were also among the most entertaining of their time.

Scott's poetry was the centrepiece of a lifetime's commitment to Scotland's literature and culture. From his appointment in 1948 as Glasgow University's Lecturer in Scottish Literature, Scott took a lead in developing Scottish Literature as a modern subject, laying the foundations for its present prominence in the Scottish academic scene. In 1971, he became the first head of the world's only university department in the subject. In addition, he was a dramatist, actor, anthologist, scholar, critic, editor, broadcaster, columnist and controversialist. He was active, too, in many important and imaginative initiatives following the creation of the Scottish Arts Council in the 1960s.