To See Ourselves
A Personal History of Scotland Since 1950
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Birlinn General
Published:12th Jun '25
Should be back in stock very soon
Since 1945 the world has changed at breakneck speed, and life in post-war Scotland is now entirely different from what it was like when Alistair Moffat grew up in the quiet Border town of Kelso in the 1950s. At that time the rhythms and practicalities of daily life which had remained constant for many generations were about to change in the most unimaginable ways.
This is a book about these changes – many of which have been dizzying and disorientating – and how they have affected each and every one of us in all parts of the country. The main themes, such as housing, healthcare, sport, the media, the arts and entertainment, urban and country life, our relationship with the environment, politics, religion and education, are all viewed through the lens of personal experience. Alistair’s own recollections of big events and small, together with other eyewitness accounts, bring these decades alive in a way that no ordinary history can with a directness and poignancy that underlines how much has been gained – and how much lost.
'Filtering the last 75 years of Scottish history through the author’s own experiences, this book gets the balance just right between capturing telling details and presenting the bigger picture'
-- Roger Cox * The Scotsman *'A relatable and enjoyable march through the decades, To See Ourselves: A Personal History of Scotland takes in everything from health, housing and education, to religion, sport, media and politics'
-- Sally McDonald * Sunday Post *'[Moffat] writes engagingly and has a nice wry wit which allows him to see the ridiculous to the mundane'
* Scottish Field *'Analytical yet elegiac, objective yet personal... a hard book to categorise but an easy book to love. And while I’d like to see more Scottish history-memoir hybrids, I think I’d be hard pushed to find a more engaging one'
* Books from Scotland *'The gift desired by Robert Burns 'to see ourselves as other see us' is delivered comprehensively in this insightful book... a compelling social history – strongly recommended'
* Country Life *'a wonderful evocation of a changing Scotland over the past 75 years... a potted biography that takes personal events and themes and extends them outwards into the country at large in order to explore wider issues across Scotland'
-- Ken Lussey * Undiscovered ScotlaISBN: 9781780279473
Dimensions: 234mm x 156mm x 20mm
Weight: 481g
272 pages