History Cafe
History Cafe
Jon Rosebank, Penelope Middelboe
#32 The curious case of inventing Scottishness
35 minutes Posted Dec 29, 2021 at 10:18 am.
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Show notes
Hogmanay Special.
Synopsis: In 1983 Professor Hugh Trevor Roper wrote a famous paper that claimed that Scottishness had been invented. Actually, what the Professor meant by ‘Scottishness’ was mainly just Scottish highland dress – tartan kilts. We enjoyably demolish Trevor Roper’s theory and reveal that the commercialisation of romantic Scottishness in the nineteenth century had far deeper and darker roots than the manufacture of tartan and romantic fiction.