50 People Who Screwed Up Scotland

To be Scottish is to have a lot to live down, and as Allan Brown shows, this lot do the job superbly.

Whether it be Robert Burns, indecipherable bard of rustic gibberish or Sean Connery, die-hard advocate of a country he refuses to live in.

Or, Alex Salmond, the chortling bullfrog of separatism or Tommy Sheridan, the sexy socialist hardliner. They re all here, and many others; a veritable embassy of bad ambassadors.

50 People Who Screwed Up Scotland is a humorous and chronologically-sequential series of essays, histories and anecdotes that consider those episodes and occurrences in Scotland's political, cultural and social story where, against all odds, defeat was plucked from the jaws of victory.

“A brilliant cast of villains... I was disappointed not to be on the list myself”

For more than fifteen years, Allan Brown, 44, was chief writer on the Scottish edition of The Sunday Times, and its restaurant critic. A former Journalist of the Year in the Scottish Press Awards, he is the author of Inside The Wicker Man (Sidgwick and Jackson, 2000/Polygon 2010), and Nileism: The Strange Course of The Blue Nile (Polygon 2010). He lives in Glasgow.

To be Scottish is to hear repeatedly, in history, culture and society, the phrase 'And then it got worse.' Here, failure is a cosmic inevitability . . . Is Scotland, as its nationalist cheer-leaders insist, truly the greatest small nation on earth? Or something else entirely? Is it a cursed realm peopled with drunks screaming at fish suppers; of public buildings that resemble architectural suicide notes; of sporting catastrophe and political low-comedy? Of nursed grievance, cosmic misfortune and loom-woven disappointment? Mainly the former, argues Allan Brown throughout these superb comic portraits of the fifty most malignant numpties in the nation's history. 'Tetchy and hysterical' Guardian 'Funny and dark...one of Scotland's best writers at the top of his game' Literary Dundee 'I laughed. Winced. Then laughed again.' Professor Adam Tomkins, The Smith Commission on Scottish Constitutional Reform

To be Scottish is to have a lot to live down, and as Allan Brown shows, this lot do the job superbly. Whether it be Robert Burns, indecipherable bard of rustic gibberish or Sean Connery, die-hard advocate of a country he refuses to live in.Or, Alex Salmond, the chortling bullfrog of separatism or Tommy Sheridan, the sexy socialist hardliner. They re all here, and many others; a veritable embassy of bad ambassadors. 50 People Who Screwed Up Scotland is a humorous and chronologically-sequential series of essays, histories and anecdotes that consider those episodes and occurrences in Scotland's political, cultural and social story where, against all odds, defeat was plucked from the jaws of victory.

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