The Scottish Ambassador

Crawford knows when to be piano and when to ring out the forte… This is an exceptionally fine collection, and a model for how to nuance the stylistic shifts. – Stuart Kelly * Scotsman *
Robert Crawford’s collection [The Scottish Ambassador] is a book of celebrations… The long, unrhymed lines fizz with welcoming particulars and jolly japes. – Peter Scupham * Literary Review *
The book is trying to sing Scotland, but also Scotland as part of a much wider realm… Cultural references range from Madame Butterfly to ancient Assyria. If it’s a vision of Scotland, it’s a complex, expansive one. – Susan Mansfield * Scotsman *
Vivid, nuanced and joyous… [The Scottish Ambassador is] a marvellous and marvelling collection, at once worldly and homely. * Times Literary Supplement *

Robert Crawford is a poet, biographer, critic, and literary historian. He has published eight full collections of poetry and numerous prose books, including two major biographies of T.S. Eliot: Young Eliot and Eliot After The Waste Land.

He is the Emeritus Wardlaw Professor of Poetry at the University of St Andrews and holds fellowships in several prestigious institutions:

• Fellow of the British Academy
• Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh
• Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature
• Foreign Member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters

Crawford’s poetry has been recognized with several accolades, including being shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize. He has also won two Scottish Arts Council Book Awards and the Saltire Scottish Book of the Year Award.

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