Radio Listener by Jim Gilchrist

Jim recommends two political journeys, one Spanish, one Scottish and also a rare interview with JK Rowling this week.

As the countdown to a referendum on Scotland’s constitutional future intensifies, people’s historian Billy Kay looks back at the figures and events which have led up to these momentous times in THE CAUSE: A HISTORY OF SCOTTISH NATIONALISM.

The five-part series goes as far back as Scotland’s Wars of Independence, but also charts the emergence of the SNP, from the days when a desire for Scottish self-rule were seen as eccentric if not downright seditious, to the present SNP-led Scottish Parliament. Monday’s first episode examines cultural identity, while historian Fiona Watson pays tribute to one of the great unsung heroines, Isabella, Countess of Buchan, who lost everything in championing Robert the Bruce.

The series also features key and sometimes flamboyant figures, from Robert Burns to Robert “Don Roberto” Cunninghame Graham and Oliver Brown, as well as interviews with activists within the movement. It recalls the clandestine pirate radio station Radio Free Scotland, reveals the abuse to which Winnie Ewing was subjected at Westminster after her landmark victory at the Hamilton by-election in 1967, and tells such piquant anecdotes as Douglas Henderson being lent a Ferrari by a Doric-speaking Italian from Peterhead during his election campaign.

Non-political wizardry from Scotland features in Thursday’s FRONT ROW on Radio 4, when Mark Lawson conducts a lengthy interview with Harry Potter creator JK Rowling, who talks about the phenomenal success of the boy wizard and whether he will ever reappear, and about her newly published first non-Potter novel, The Casual Vacancy.

The quirkier side of international politics emerges as Matthew Parris delves into THE SPANISH AMBASSADOR’S SUITCASE: STORIES FROM THE DIPLOMATIC BAG, which reveals memorable and downright bizarre dispatches home from British diplomats. Sifting through these reports, Parris reveals the strange case of John Major’s horse, a fraught dispatch from Peter Penfold, sent when he was British High Commissioner to war-torn Sierra Leone, and, yes, what exactly it was about the Spanish 
ambassador’s oddly large suitcase.

The Cause

Monday, Radio Scotland, 2:05pm

Front Row

Thursday, Radio 4, 7:15pm

The Spanish 
Ambassador’s Suitcase

Monday, Radio 4, 11am