John Scotney - Scotland--Culture Smart!: The Essential Guide to Customs & Culture

First published in Great Britain 2010
by Kuperard, an imprint of Bravo Ltd
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eISBN: 978-1-85733-621-4

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JOHN H. SCOTNEY is a writer, college lecturer, and former BBC producer. He was the BBCs head of drama in Northern Ireland and later head of BBC TVs Drama Script Unit. He has written books and articles about literature and the media, and written and directed numerous programs for the BBC, many on Scottish themes. He is a former chair of the Writers Guild of Great Britain, deputy chair of the National Poetry Society, and a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.

John Scotneys second name, Halcrow, is from the Shetland Islands in the far north, from where everyone else in Britain can be seen as a Sassenach, or southerner. His family is involved in many aspects of Scottish life. His son is head chef for Loch Fyne, the famous fish restaurant group; a cousin in Edinburgh led a team revising the citys transportation system; and the wife of another cousin is a member of the body responsible for the upkeep of remote Iona Abbey, the birthplace of Scots Christianity and the burial place of Scotlands ancient kings.

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The Highlands on a crisp, bright day: the blue deepwater loch, glens, castles, great stags tossing their antlers, heather-clad moors, snow-clad mountains, kilt-clad pipers, eagles high above. For the romantically inclined, such a vision of Scotland may be enoughbut anyone doing business in Scotland or really trying to understand the country soon becomes aware that the true heartland is the central Lowlands. Here the vast majority live, here the people of Scotland have built the cities, the universities, and the factories, here they have fought most of their battles, crowned kings, written poetry, music, novels, tracts, and theses, and made scientific and technological breakthroughs.

Though this book says quite a lot about the Highlands, since they are important to the Scots self-image, it concentrates more on these latter aspects of Scottish life. For it is not so much about the scenery as about the people: it looks at who the Scots really are, how they see life and live it, and how they conduct business.

The cartoon Scotsman is a whisky-swigging, highland-flinging, kilted clansman, so tightfisted he has a padlock on his sporran. And the womenfolk? They stay at home in the croft, salting the porridge and raising the bairns, obeying their menfolk, endlessly weaving cloth in the same changeless clan tartan, a monotony only relieved by gutting the fish when the catch is in. Absurd, of coursebut there are other stereotypes too, more credible, and often accepted. The Lowlanders: honest, thrifty, hardworking, decent people, careful with money; perhaps a little stiff, strict even; grave citizens with the puritan values of Presbyterianism. Glaswegians: wild men, hard-drinking and drunken, cursing and gambling, spendthrift, mad, violenta tartan army spreading mayhem. The Highlander: the craggy, bearded sage in shaggy tweeds, slow and clear of speech, wise in the ways of the tides and rivers, the birds and the fish, and the difficult bunker at the eleventh hole.

If there is a grain of truth in these figures, they are two-dimensional and far from typical. Modern Scotland is home to technicians and technocrats, writers, hoteliers, wind farmers, musicians, bold soldiers, overbold investment bankers, the oil and gas industry, skilled doctors, artists, inventors and learned professors, and women everywhere in every sort of job: in 2008 more than half of the jobs in Scotland were held by women.

This book will show you how the geography of the country, including the Highlands and remote islands, has shaped the Scottish people. It explains why their history is important to them, and gives an insight into their values and attitudes, their home life, their business practices, their faults and virtues, their world view and beliefs. It offers practical advice on what to expect and how to behave in different circumstances, and how, perhaps, to gain their acceptance as a friend and colleague.