A copy of the Trainspotting script, autographed by Ewan McGregor, a 1973 Hillman Imp Deluxe manufactured at Linwood and video footage of Margaret Thatcher delivering the “Sermon on the Mound” are among hundreds of items from a new exhibition of 20th and 21st-century life that opens today at the National Museum of Scotland, in Edinburgh.

Scotland: A Changing Nation is the first new exhibition to have been installed within the museum since it opened in 1998, and will almost certainly prove to be its most controversial, according to Gordon Rintoul, its director, if only because the exhibition charts events that have taken place within living memory. Beginning in 1914, the displays range over most of the staples of dinner-table or bar-room debate — politics, sport, music, television and work — and two years of debate and discussion were required to work out the storylines and assemble the displays.

Religion is largely absent from the exhibition and reflected only in a campaigning card issued by the anti-sectarian organisation, Nil By Mouth.

Dr Rintoul said the displays focused on the “big stories” that were familiar to millions of people. “Undoubtedly some visitors will think we have left things out that we shouldn't have done, and included things which they'd rather not see. What we wanted to do was stimulate debate and discussion — it is a good outcome if that happens,” he added. The displays feature more than 500 objects spread through a gallery of 460sq ft (43 sq m). Some of the selections are designed to inspire, such as the slab of Aberdeenshire granite, inscribed with a Saltire, which welcomes visitors into the gallery. Others are touching, such as the Victoria Cross awarded to Daniel Laidlaw, who piped his comrades “over the top” at the Battle of Loos in 1915.

Many more play unashamedly on the nostalgia that surrounds film, television and music. A Linn Sondek turntable holds an LP by the Average White Band; another glass case contains a black-and-white stage costume worn by the singer Lulu. With such a wealth of material, in many areas a fundamental problem for curators had been deciding what to leave out.

“It is a thin line between telling the story and presenting different perspectives, to telling the story from one particular viewpoint. We have tried to reflect many different points of view,” Dr Rintoul added.

The result is a remarkably diverse selection, including a machine gun given by Joseph Stalin to Lord Inverchapel, Britain's wartime ambassador to the USSR.

Times Recommends

• DIY video helps the WI get to grips with sex
• Artists urge nation to save Titians
• Go home, Iraqi leader tells Britain