Watch Out

The historian Tom Devine dubs the tendency sartorial nationalism: “In the late 18th and early 19th century the Highlands came to represent the whole of Scotland, not just here but abroad. There was a need to maintain a kind of Scottish identity, but not a Scottish identity which would be threatening to the Union. That’s why I call it sartorial nationalism, not political nationalism, but a nationalism of dress. And it has been extraordinarily successful. A Scotsman dressed that way today is immediately recognisable as a Scot, but of course it is an invention.”

Concomitant with this tendency is a secondary phenomenon. We might call it Rowling Syndrome, as in the Gloucestershire-born but forcibly-repatriated author of the Harry Potter novels. It’s the habit that appropriates for the nation those with only the most tenuous connection to it.

In some cases this is not entirely Scotland’s fault. Those who are canvassed for their opinions frequently know they’ll receive more favourable coverage if they tailor their remarks to the regionality of those who’ll consume them. The late comedian Frankie Howerd, for instance, once regaled me with tales of his childhood in Kilmarnock, seemingly ignorant of the fact that he actually spent it in York. The actor David Niven, most Scots will tell you, hailed from Kirriemuir, though this was a lie that Niven himself, born in London, initiated. As noted in Edwin Moore’s book, Scotland: 1,000 Things You Need To Know, Niven’s portrayal of Bonnie Prince Charlie in the 1948 movie is “truly odd”.

On the whole, though, Scotland does tend to practice its own tortuous blend of genealogy and eugenics, an ingenious, convoluted witchcraft that detects Scottishness in the unlikeliest of contexts. The sine qua non of this has to be ye ancient folk myth that Pontius Pilate was born in Aberdeenshire, the son of a Roman soldier stationed at Fortingall. The myth is vitiated somewhat by the reality that the Romans arrived in Scotland 40 years after Pilate’s death.

There are modern equivalents, too. The Beatles are, perhaps, the most frequent. Admittedly an early member of the band, Stuart Sutcliffe, was born in Edinburgh, though he left before the hits and died young. Yes, Paul McCartney did buy a farm near Campbeltown, though principally because in more built-up areas there were thousands of young girls who wished to pull his hair out. John Lennon took childhood holidays in Durness, Sutherland and 20 years later crashed his car near Golspie while on a driving holiday. In the main, though, the connections were no more plentiful than those of most Britons who grew up in the era before foreign holidays. This, however, didn’t prevent the publication last year of a 328-page book titled, The Beatles in Scotland.

Others find themselves attached to the inventory of Scottish creatives through only the most spurious accidents of birth, such as David Byrne of Talking Heads who departed Dumbarton aged two, Mark Knopfler, who left Glasgow for Newcastle at seven, Donovan who split Maryhill aged ten, and, of course, Rod Stewart who has only a patrilineal connection to Scotland.

As for thespians, there’s Emma Thompson (born in Paddington to a Glaswegian mother), Mike Myers (raised in Canada with a Scottish grandparent) and Jonny Lee Miller who has made a career playing Caledonians despite hailing from Kingston-upon-Thames. Famously the Vincente Minnelli movie Brigadoon was filmed in Hollywood because Scotland was deemed insufficiently Scottish-looking. A large part of Mel Gibson’s Braveheart was shot in Ireland.

Strangely, though, we rarely hear much about Birth of a Nation, an early cinema classic whose Caledonian connections are overlooked, perhaps on account of a speech given during the launch of the Ku Klux Klan: “Here,” says the white-hooded baddie, “I raise the ancient symbol of an unconquered race of men, the fiery cross of old Scotland’s hills. . .”

Meanwhile, in a 2003 episode of his quiz show QI, Stephen Fry remarked with amazement on the things Scotland did discover or invent but for which it rarely claimed credit. The list included adhesive stamps, the Australian national anthem, the decimal point, the Encyclopædia Britannica, hypnosis, the United States Navy, insulin, the hypodermic syringe and Bovril. It also includes the Bank of England. But somehow that wouldn’t look quite right on the tea-towel.

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