I'm a boomer and the changes to Scotland over 75 years are staggering

Former director of Edinburgh Festival Fringe documents “staggering pace of change” over his lifetime

As he approaches his 75th birthday, author Alistair Moffat is feeling reflective.

Looking down the lens of his own life, he encounters memories and chapters of his years, from his milk round as a young boy in the Borders to his time as director of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

What has struck him most, perhaps, is the “staggering pace of change” that has zipped through his years as Scotland around him evolved at rapid pace.

Mr Moffat’s new book, To See Ourselves, is a history of modern Scotland and the starting point to many of the shifts and changes he documents is a history of self.

Alistair Moffat on the cusp of his adult life , which was forged amid rapid social changes in Scotland and beyond. PIC: Alistair Moffat. | Alistair Moffat

From housing to shopping, education, socialising, religion, music and the rush of technology that has come to define our lives and habits, the wider transformations in society have been rooted in a very personal narrative.

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At the foundation of the book sits a package of recollections from the young boy born into a prefab in Kelso following the end of World War Two. While his life was rooted in rural Scotland, it was shaped by the incoming forces of modernity and liberalisation.

As the potent energy of The Beatles, miniskirts and university funding changed the game, suddenly no one looked - or thought - like their parents any more.

The Beatles play Liverpool in 1962 - the year the band "exploded" for Alistair Moffat and people everywhere. PIC: (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images) | Getty Images

Mr Moffat said: “The book is to do with the speed of change. It is the pace and since 1950 it has been accelerating.

“When I look back now , the changes have been just staggering.

He added: “If we were living in 1825 or 1925 instead of 2025, we wouldn’t have seen anything like the pace of change that we have.”

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Mr Moffat, a former director of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, director of programmes at Scottish Television and author of at least 40 books on Scottish history, said he wanted to tell the story of modern Scotland through the filter of personal experience for it to ‘hit home’ with the reader. The book starts with the basics, with shelter.

There are four particularly precious photographs in Mr Moffat’s life. Taken between July 1950 and July 1952, they are of family days of high summer at home in the prefabs built at Inchmyre on the outskirts of Kelso in probably 1945, the year that a “better future began”.

Dubbed ‘New Jerusalem, prefab life is recalled as one of shining white walls, climbing roses and shared community by Mr Moffat.

His own memories are set within the broader narrative of the post-war mission to create 300,000 homes for returning soldiers and their families and offer a fresh start in new accommodation, most of which had a little garden for vegetables and climbing roses.

David Steel, the MP for Roxburgh, Selkirk and Peebles, in September 1965, the year he was elected. He went on to introduce the Abortion Bill - a "brave" move recalled by Alistair Moffat that defined a major shift for society as it faced a new path. (Photo by Roger Jackson/Central Press/Hulton Archive/Getty Images) | Getty Images

The post-war baby boy of the house would remember those warm days - and the smell of the climbing roses - and use them as a starting point for To See Ourselves, which he described as being written “in the winter of my own life.”

Everyday acts become agents of change in the book, such as shopping - a "core activity "and a task which was usually undertaken by women.

In 1955, each house made an average of 7.6 trips to the shops a week, with the patterns altering with the arrival of affordable fridges and second-hand motor cars.

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To See Ourselves, by Alistair Moffat, charts decades of rapid social change in Scotland over his lifetime. Pictured is a family in their new flat in Glasgow in the 1960s, a time when new affordable household goods redefined home life and how we spent our time. PIC: Albert McCabe/Hulton Archive/Getty Images | Albert McCabe/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

His own memories extend to a little herd of Ayrshire cattle behind his house in Kelso, which he used to watch being taken to the dairy and milked by a chap called Sandy and his daughter. Later, Mr Moffat would deliver the bottles door-to-door.

“Of course, that has now all gone. I don’t even know where you can buy milk like that any more,” Mr Moffat said.

While still on food, the topic of Empire comes into play and his recollections of large deliveries of goods from the Commonwealth being divided up at the Tweedale Co-operative Society.

He said: “Eveything came from the Commonwealth - Anchor butter from New Zealand, Demerara sugar from Guyana, tea from Ceylon, as it was called.

“One of my jobs was to break open these big tea boxes and decant them into packets and then chop up the huge blocks of cheddar cheese. God, it stank to high heaven. We would take it on the country round to sell.

“That was the British Empire - and the British Empire just disappeared in my lifetime. It just went.”

The coalman does his round by horse and cart in Glasgow around 1960 as modernity waits in the wings. PIC: Getty. | Getty Images

Times were changing in 1967 as fashion took hold - and people didn't look like their parents anymore. PIC: Getty. | Getty Images

Jobs at the Co-op supported Mr Moffat as he navigated life as a teenager in a world rocked by The Beatles, fashion and the sexual revolution.

“I bought Please, Please Me before I even had a record player. I just wanted to be part of it.

“Before that, we used to listen to Burl Ives' Ugly Bug Ball and all these terrible radio programmes.

“Then the explosion of The Beatles happened in 1962 and that literally changed the world.

“My parents looked like their parents but we didn’t look like our parents because we began to buy Levi jeans, we began to buy Ben Sherman shirts. And then there was the miniskirt...”

He also pointed to the 1965 by-election win of David Steele, who joined the House of Commons as Liberal MP for Roxburgh, Selkirk and Peebles just before his 27th Birthday. One of the first things the son of a Church of Scotland minister did was introduce the Abortion Bill.

“That was an immensely brave thing to do. He was suddenly part of the future, “ Mr Moffat said.

University reforms of the 1960s, particularly the Anderson report, which proposed that British residents on first degree courses should be entitled to public funds for living support and tuition fees, perhaps had the biggest influence on the direction of Mr Moffat's life.

The changes were a “turning point for many thousands of young Scots”, including himself and his sister Barbara. Their father, an electrician, originally didn’t want her to take her place at Edinburgh University, given the expectation she would live at home before getting married and starting her own family, while paying part of a weekly pay packet for bed and board at her parents’ house.

After a “titanic struggle”, their father relented. Barbara became the second person in her street to matriculate at university, with her brother later graduating from St Andrews. He was voted in as rector there in 2011.

He added: “The doors swung open for children who had ability and not just money. For the council estate where we lived, that was extremely unusual,” Mr Moffat said.

As he takes a deep dive into his own timeline, a greater story has been told.

-To See Ourselves, a Personal History of Scotland since 1950, by Alistair Moffat, is published by Birlinn and due out on June 12, priced £18.99.