There Shall Be An Independent Scotland: British And Scottish Nationalism After The 2014 #Indyref

Scottish independence is one of the most significant political debates that has taken place within the UK nation's three hundred year history.

There shall be an independent Scotland, one day.

In all the talk of the 'dust settling' on the issue following the result of the #Indyref in September 2014, it is in fact clear that there is no settled will, and that after the referendum things in Scotland will never be the same again. Everything is still up for grabs, and Malory Nye's prediction is that the issue of independence will be resolved at some point. The real question is whether it will be sooner or later: it may take twenty to thirty years or it may come sooner.

This book is a collection of Nye's thoughts and writings around this topic — including a number of previously published blog posts from the Huffington Post and Medium — in which he tries to find his own way through the entanglements and representations of national identity. Much of this has focused on the 'rise' of Scottish nationalism, whilst quietly ignoring that other nationalism, the love that dares not speak its own name.

That is, the elephant in the room of British nationalism.

Using various examples from the London Olympics, Downton Abbey, Wolf Hall, the First Continental (US) Congress, and more, Nye takes us through some of the muddy waters of the contemporary United Kingdom. A unity of nationalisms that needs to find new ways of living at ease with itself. For Nye, this will inevitably lead to a British regionalism that enables Scots and other Brits to be independent on their own terms.