2011 © Hector MacMillan | Terms & Conditions

Honorary Fellow: Association For Scottish Literary Studies

“If we investigate only by physical and chemical means, we can only get physical and chemical answers.”

Sir Alister Hardy, FRS

Royal Visit

Commissioned and directed by Gordon Emslie, BBC Radio Scotland. Broadcast 1971.

George IV was the first Hanoverian monarch to visit Scotland. For his ludicrously tartanised presentation in Edinburgh, 1822, Sir Walter Scott had written 'Carle, and the King Come' a piece of third-rate sycophantic rhyme. In answer to this, and to the same old Scots air, the Radical poet Sandy Rodger penned a rather different picture. Scott threatened legal action on a charge of Seditious libel if the author could ever be identified.

The play uses the conflict between these two writers to highlight the chasm between privilege and poverty, and in doing so reveals much of the schizophrenic political thinking in Scotland of the time, and since.

'deliberate imbalance did not work - the bias was too obvious' The Scotsman

As had happened with The Rising, this radio version of Royal Visit went on to become the basis of the stage play of the same title, directed by Stephen MacDonald at Dundee Rep in 1974.