These essays, first published in The Scottish Educational Journal between 1925 and 1927, caused a furore, proposing as they do a radical overhaul and a new construction of Scotland's cultural identity. MacDiarmid focuses not only on poetry and the novel (backing Edwin Muir and Neil Gunn, just then embarking on their careers), but also on theatre, art, music, history and education, and writing by women in Scotland. His criticism of conventional attitudes is balanced by a cogent appraisal of the possibilities in Scotland for a renaissance in the arts and a reassertion of national cultural and political identity. Contemporary Scottish Studies is a crucial work in modern Scottish literature -- which is to say that it is also essential to our understanding of the larger British dimension. Alasdair Steven was a bookseller and more.