- Narratives accounts of Scotland, our history, are deemed incomplete, consisting of wilful fragments.
- There is a strong vein of cultural pessimism running through Scottish intellectual life, partly but not entirely driven by political analysis.
- Two cultural formations, kailyard and tartanry, are considered to be especially powerful, and negative, in their effects.
- Nevertheless, there are alternative accounts which argue that social and cultural realities are far more subtle and complex in modern Scotland.
- Scots and Scotland provides a key ‘site of memory’ for many Europeans.
