Every year we send many thousands of free Songbooks to Scottish societies hosting Burns Suppers all over the world. This year, The Year of Creative Scotland, we have had tremendous support from Creative Scotland, VisitScotland, some classic Scottish brands – and even, we are delighted to say, from the First Minister of Scotland, Alex Salmond himself, who has kindly written the Introduction. We have also engaged the support of loads of Scottish publishing houses with over 100 great books to be sent anywhere in the world to the winners who  enter our After Burns Scottish Book Prize Draw.

So don’t miss out! Download your own interactive Songbook and not only can you enjoy a sing-a-long to over 40 Scottish favourites with lyrics and video links, but you too can have a chance toWIN a great Scottish book or two – or more! Download the 2012 Burns Supper ‘the world o’er’ Songbook today!

Scotland’s Greatest Export is it’s People!

Few nations can make such a claim because Scots have always treated the world as their oyster, travelling to and settling in all corners of the globe since ‘day one’, making their mark in all fields of endeavour. Following the release of the last in his best-selling trilogy on the Scottish Diaspora, To the Ends of the Earth (pub. Allen Lane) Tom Devine gives his expert insights into this phenomenal in the article The Conundrum at the Heart of the Scottish Diaspora - exclusively for A Broad Scot – in which, among other things, he debunks as myth the many popular notions concerning the Highland Clearances!   Don’t miss it! watch this space…

Bloody Scotland by oor anonymous snitch

Early December, 2012, and several people make their disparate ways through Stirling town, some walking up between the tall, black walls of Castle Brae past the old cemetery, others heading up the cobbled streets of Old Town towards the ancient gaol. A cold mist has settled about the edges of the town, and all the trees and housessparkle with rime; all is shrouded and hushed…more


Snuffed Out! Flickering fortunes of Scottish film finance

by Alan Bett
ON JULY 26, 2010 word slipped out that the UK Film Council (UKFC) was to be quite simply shut down, possibly the highest profile quango to be axed by our new UK coalition government. The key shock was that it was not downsized, amended or re-moulded, it was simply given notice that it will be abolished in 2012.  Without the input of UKFC there may have been no recent harvest from world class Scottish filmmakers (or at least filmmakers working here) such as Lynne Ramsay, David MacKenzie of Hallam Foe fame and Andrea Arnold.  Arnold’s Red Road was lauded by critics and she is seen as perhaps a future Ken Loach. Here she gave us a voyeur’s view of the underclass life through a cold camera lens….more