Scotland and the First World War: Myth, Memory, and the Legacy of Bannockburn

What did war look like in the cultural imagination of 1914? Why did men in Scotland sign up to fight in unprecedented numbers? What were the martial myths shaping Scottish identity from the aftermath of Bannockburn to the close of the nineteenth century, and what did the Scottish soldiers of the First World War think they were fighting for? Scotland and the First World War: Myth, Memory and the Legacy of Bannockburn is a collection of new interdisciplinary essays interrogating the trans-historical myths of nation, belonging and martial identity that shaped Scotland’s encounter with the First World War. In a series of thematically linked essays, experts from the fields of literature, history and cultural studies examine how Scotland remembers war, and how remembering war has shaped Scotland.

Michael Brown is Music Curator at the Alexander Turnbull Library, part of the National Library of New Zealand Te Puna Matauranga o Aotearoa. He has written widely about New Zealand music and co-edited the book Searches for Tradition: Essays on New Zealand Music, Past and Present (2017). He lives in Lower Hutt with his family.

Robert Crawford is the author of Young Eliot: From St. Louis to “The Waste Land”. He is also the author of Scotland’s Books and the coeditor of The Penguin Book of Scottish Verse. A fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, of the British Academy, and of the Royal Society of Literature, he is an emeritus professor of modern Scottish literature at the University of St. Andrews. The Bard, his biography of Robert Burns, was named the Saltire Society Scottish Book of the Year in 2009. Crawford’s poetry collections include Testament and Full Volume, the latter of which was short-listed for the T. S. Eliot Prize. He lives in Scotland.

Stefan Goebel is Reader in History at the University of Kent, UK.

Carol Symes is Associate Professor of History, Theatre, and Medieval Studies at the University of Illinois, USA. She is the author of A Common Stage: Theatre and Public Life in Medieval Arras (2007), the co-editor, with Caroline C. Goodson and Anne E. Lester, of Cities, Texts, and Social Networks: Experiences and Perceptions of Medieval Urban Space, 400–1500 (2010); co-author of a bestselling college textbook, Western Civilizations; and founding executive editor of The Medieval Globe, the first academic journal to promote a global approach to medieval studies.