The laird and his legend

‘Stuart Kelly’ the author’s note declares, ‘was born and brought up in the Scottish Borders.’ Not so, as he tells us; he was born in Falkirk, which is in central Scotland, and came to the Borders as a child.

‘Stuart Kelly’ the author’s note declares, ‘was born and brought up in the Scottish Borders.’ Not so, as he tells us; he was born in Falkirk, which is in central Scotland, and came to the Borders as a child. The publisher’s mistake is appropriate. Kelly’s Walter Scott himself is a man who was never just what he seemed to be, and who invented an idea of a country and nation we can’t escape from. He wore a mask, several masks indeed, throughout his life, and put another mask on the face of Scotland. Many Scots resent it. Nobody has managed to remove it. Some resent Scott himself, as a Tory and a Unionist, a ‘sham bard of a sham nation’, as Edwin Muir put it, though unlike Scott’s critics today, he said the same of Robert Burns.