Beyond Scotland

Scottish creative writing in the twentieth century was notable for its willingness to explore and absorb the literatures of other times and other nations. From the engagement with Russian literature of Hugh MacDiarmid and Edwin Morgan, through to the interplay with continental literary theory, Scottish writers have proved active participants in a diverse international literary practice. Scottish criticism has, arguably, often been slow in appreciating the full extent of this exchange. Preoccupied with marking out its territory, with identifying an independent and distinctive tradition, Scottish criticism has occasionally blinded itself to the diversity and range of its writers. In stressing the importance of cultural independence, it has tended to overlook the many virtues of interdependence. The essays in this book aim to offer a corrective view. They celebrate the achievement of Scottish writing in the twentieth century by offering a wider basis for appreciation than a narrow idea of 'Scottishness'. Each essay explores an aspect of Scottish writing in an individual foreign perspective; together they provide an enriching account of a national literary practice that has deep, and often surprisingly complex, roots in international culture.

Like so many people who live south of the border in England, Helen thought that she knew all about Scotland. It was a part of Britain after all, a place that was surely more the same than it was different. But then she actually went there – and everything changed...

Edwin Morgan's restless imagination moved easily between multiple worlds, voices and identities. His own life story, told here for the first time, also reveals a range of identities - as academic, cultural activist, radical writer, international traveller, gay man and national poet. These identities were sometimes in conflict, or kept hidden and apart. Beyond the Last Dragon, written with his full support, explores hitherto unknown archive resources and creative work. It recounts an amazing and sometimes troubled career, using the poet's own letters, poems and plays from the 1930s to the present day to uncover the origins of his remarkable - and life-long - inventiveness and flair. All this is set against Edwin Morgan's moving struggle against 'the last dragon' of cancer, and to remain creatively alive in the face of suffering in the final years of his life. This prize-winning biography was published just days after the poet's death. James McGonigal now adds a new chapter to describe subsequent events.

Beyond Decommissioning: The Reuse and Redevelopment of Nuclear Installations presents the most up-to-date research and guidance on the reuse and redevelopment of nuclear plants and sites. Consultant Michele Laraia extensively builds upon experience from the redevelopment of non-nuclear industrial sites, a technical field that has considerably predated nuclear applications, to help the reader gain a very thorough and practical understanding of the redevelopment opportunities for decommissioned nuclear sites. Laraia emphasizes the socioeconomic and financial benefits from very early planning for site reuse, including how to manage the decommissioning transition, anticipate financial issues, and effectively utilize available resources. With an increasing number of decommissioning projects being conducted worldwide, it is critical that knowledge gained by experts with hands-on experience is passed on to the younger generation of nuclear professionals. Besides, this book describes the experiences of non-nuclear organizations that have reutilized the human, financial, and physical site assets, with adaptations, for a new productive mission, making it a key reference for all parties associated with nuclear operation and decommissioning. Those responsible for nuclear operation and decommissioning are encouraged to incorporate site reuse within an integrated, beginning-to-end view of their projects. The book also appeals to nuclear regulators as it highlights more opportunities to complete nuclear decommissioning safely, speedily, and in the best interests of all concerned parties. Includes lessons learned from worldwide case studies of reuse and repurposing of nuclear plants from both the nuclear and non-nuclear industries Provides practical guidance on a broad-spectrum of factors and opportunities for nuclear decommissioning Identifies the roles and responsibilities of parties involved, including nuclear operators, regulators and authorities, land planners and environmentalists

Premodern Scotland: Literature and Governance 1420-1587 brings together original essays by a group of international scholars to offer fresh and ground-breaking research into the 'advice to princes' tradition and related themes of good self- and public governance in Older Scots literature, and in Latin literature composed in Scotland in the fifteenth, sixteenth, and early seventeenth centuries. The volume brings to the fore texts both from and about the royal court in a variety of genres, including satire, tragedy, complaint, dream vision, chronicle, epic, romance, and devotional and didactic treatise, and considers texts composed for noble readers and for a wider readership able to access printed material. The writers and texts studied include Bower's Scotichronicon, Henryson's Testament of Cresseid, and Gavin Douglas's Eneados. Lesser known authors and texts also receive much-needed critical attention, and include Richard Holland's, The Buke of the Howlat, chronicles by Andrew of Wyntoun, Hector Boece, and John Bellenden, and poetry by sixteenth-century writers such as Robert Sempill, John Rolland of Dalkeith, and William Lauder. Non-literary texts, such as the Parliamentary 'Aberdeen Articles' further deepen the discussion of the volume's theme. Writing from south of the Border, which provoked creative responses in Scots authors, and which were themselves inflected by the idea of Scotland and its literature, are also considered and include the Troy Book by John Lydgate, and Malory's Le Morte Darthur. With a focus on historical and material context, contributors explore the ways in which these texts engage with notions of the self and with advisory subjects both specific to particular Stewart monarchs and of more general political applicability in Scotland in the late medieval and early modern periods.

This book provides a pathway for the New Coastal History. Our littorals are all too often the setting for climate change and the political, refugee and migration crises that blight our age. Yet historians have continued, in large part, to ignore the space between the sea and the land. Through a range of conceptual and thematic chapters, this book remedies that. Scotland, a country where one is never more than fifty miles from saltwater, provides a platform as regards the majority of chapters, in accounting for and supporting the clusters of scholarship that have begun to gather around the coast. The book presents a new approach that is distinct from both terrestrial and maritime history, and which helps bring environmental history to the shore. Its cross-disciplinary perspectives will be of appeal to scholars and students in those fields, as well as in the environmental humanities, coastal archaeology, human geography and anthropology.