My Trip to Scotland

I'm nearing the end of this short trip - I catch the train this afternoon for London where I get to see my grandson for the first time in almost 3 years - and will fly out of Gatwick for Bucharest on Wednesday. It's been a useful, if rather strenuous, trip - with flat viewing in Kirkcaldy the first week and stay in my Edinburgh sister-in-law's house the second. She's guided me to good bookshops and, yesterday, to the Scottish Parliament where I picked up one of four books I've been reading since I got here.

The first was Rory Stewart's "Politics on the Edge" - a devastating picture of the state of the contemporary political system in the UK as seen by a centrist traditional Tory.

The second is Warring Fictions – left populism and its myths by Chris Clarke (2019) who is the son of Charles, a Cabinet Minister in Bliar's government with the book exploring the divisions in the Labour party between the "left populists" and the "left pluralists" - making some very intriguing constrasts.

The third book is by a working class Glaswegian - The Social Distance Between us - how remote politics wrecked Britain which adds the class dimension to Stewart’s picture. It's really challenging and made me realise how predictably bourgeois I am in my perceptions and attitudes.

The final book is by one of Scotland's very rare public intellectuals, Gerry Hassan (Tom Nairn was another and Mark Blyth has the makings of a third) - Scotland Rising (2022) which strikes a rare note of moderation in the bitter divide between nationalists and unionists in the country.