Transcript of the National Library of Scotland's Treasures podcast, episode 2:
Julia Sutherland: Hello and thanks for downloading National Treasures, a podcast from the National Library of Scotland. Treasures Gallery is a new exhibition where over the next five years, you can see a rotating collection of amazing and inspiring items from the library's collections. I'm Julia Sutherland and I'm here with three real life national treasures who are going to try and convince me that they have found the most interesting artefact, and I have the privilege of being able to award a Pick of the Podcast prize to my most persuasive guest, but which one will it be? Well, today I am delighted to introduce writer, author, and host of his own literary salon, it's Damian Barr; Poet, play write, and former Makar of Scotland, it's Liz Lochhead; and assistant coach and player at Motherwell and former Scottish international midfielder, it's Leanne Crichton! Hello everyone!
Leanne Crichton: Hi.
Liz Lochhead: Hello.
Damian Barr: Hiya.
Julia: Well, I've introduced you all with two words today, national treasures, which is what we're here to talk about but what two words would you use to describe yourself. Damian, let me start with you.
Damian: Well, that's very hard. I will go for open book.
Julia: Ah, very good and an excellent selection for a library podcast. Liz, what about you?
Liz: Today, it would probably be fat and past it.
Group: [Laughter].
Liz: Is past it all one word? But that's just the way I feel today [laughter]. That's only the way I feel today. Normally, I feel pretty good. I'm just a bit tired today but I'm sure once I start arguing with all these guys trying to convince you, Julia, to pick my thing then I'm sure I'll wake up a bit [laughter].
Julia: Indeed. Nothing more invigorating than a good debate. Leanne, what about you? What two words are you going to use to describe yourself?
Leanne: I've thought long and hard about this. I can't get away from the fact that I'm definitely competitive and probably a little bit pragmatic.
Julia: Alright. Well, you have all had a chance to browse and inspect some of the amazing things that are on display in the treasures gallery. There's handwritten manuscripts and letters from people like Robert Burns, Charles Darwin, and even Mary Queen of Scots. There's first editions and iconic books, comics, and so many different and surprising things that help us to understand Scotland's story and our relationship with the rest of the world. There's also a sound archive, a collection of moving images, maps, leaflets, programmes, the list goes on. But I've asked all three of you to look through some of the items that are coming up on display and pick a couple of things that caught your attention. So, Damian, you kick us off, tell me what caught your eye?
Damian: Well, straight away, I was drawn to the atlases, the Blaeu Atlas which is in something like ten or eleven volumes and it was published in the 17th century and it's just absolutely massive. I mean, I think if you put all the pages together, they would cover the world. It's just this huge thing and it's so exciting to look at and as a writer, I love maps because I always think about all the stories that … I love books with maps at the front as well, like I love books with family trees. So, I was very drawn to that but I thought, well, you know, I couldn't carry it so I'll go for something that's more portable, a more portable magic, and I went for 'Bantam', a collection of poems by Jackie Kay, which she did when she was the Makar and I just absolutely love this collection and I love that it's there in digital form. She plays a lot not just with language but with the way words are laid out on the page and she takes you on a journey through a poem but through the whole collection. I love Jackie and I love this collection and I love that it's classified as a treasure. I think it says all good things.
Julia: Yeah, the first e-book to be displayed in the treasures gallery represented in the library's of course growing digital archive. Liz, what about you? What two things have you picked?
Liz: Well, I found it very hard to pick because I knew I wanted something of Burns. I mean, I grew up with … you know, Robert Burns was just almost force fed to me through primary school and at home as well actually but … and I couldn't decide between the manuscript of 'Holy Willie's Prayer' which is probably the funniest and most wicked and most dramatic monologue in verse form that anybody has ever written. Burns's great satirical, dramatic piece.
Julia: Mhm, and what was the second one?
Liz: Well, the next thing, when I actually got to see the exhibition, in the exhibition this year, they've got an actual letter from 1791 of the manuscript written in his own hand of 'Ae Fond Kiss', probably the most romantic song ever written and anybody that's ever been in love cries about that poem. It's just the most wonderful song. So, when I saw this very interesting poem put there, I just had to have it. 'Ae Fond Kiss', the manuscript, in his own spidery, beautiful handwriting.
Julia: It is quite a beautiful thing, and Leanne, what about you? What are your two picks?
Leanne: Yeah, well initially without sounding too predictable of course, the one that jumped out to me was Scottish Football through the Ages which for me as a young person growing up, as a footballer now, certainly a woman working within the media as well and all the stories that we cover, there really are some significant moments wrapped up within that, you know, moments in football, significant anniversaries, programmes going back, you know, back to the early 1920s and whatnot. So, there's so much that you can go through, so many things that you unearth that you perhaps would never have known because we have got a real thing about us just now that we live in the moment at times and we only remember the things that happen before us but to go back as far as that was quite incredible. The other one for me was the Women's Suffrage collection. I just thought it was such a powerful collection. Again, so many significant stories, memories documenting just really momentous days and looking back at what some of those powerful women certainly went through. So, those are the two that I picked.
Julia: Excellent picks all round and it is your jobs to convince me that one of these treasures that you've chosen is worthy of being Pick of the Podcast. Oh, I'm going to have a tough job this week [laughter]. Let's start with you, Damian. For your two picks, you've gone for Timothy Pont's map. He was a pioneering mapmaker from the 1500s whose maps became the primary source material for Scotland's first atlas and the other one is the e-book of Jackie Kay's 'Bantam' which is the first e-book in the collection which represents the growing digital archive at the National Library. Tell us a little bit more about what appealed to you about maps?
Damian: Well, I just … I think I love maps because they tell a story and it's not conventional prose or poetry. It's a story of a place, a story of a people, and it's also what you want people to think about that place. So, those early maps of Scotland, they don't correspond with the Scotland that we know now. There are new places, there are places that have disappeared and of course I looked for where I'm from, I looked for Newarthill. Sadly, it wasn't on the map [laughter] but it's on the map now! It's on the map now [laughter]. But I do love maps generally and the other map that's in the … the other atlas rather that's in the collection is the Blaeu Atlas which was published in 1662 I think and it's in eleven volumes and it has a volume dedicated to Scotland and Ireland which takes … you know, builds on the stuff that's in the Pont maps, but it's incredibly colourful, incredibly beautiful. It was the most expensive book in the world at the time and it's just incredibly detailed, really vivid, really … almost looks like a work of the imagination. I suppose it is the work of the imagination but it almost looks like a sort of fiction but it's hugely detailed. Apparently, it took seven years to do the typesetting for it so …
Julia: Wow. I have to say that's one of the things that I always loved about books as a child was when there was a map at the beginning of the story which drew you in to create a sense of place.
Damian: That's how Robert Louis Stevenson came up with 'Treasure Island'. He didn't have the story. He drew the map and then he imagined the story of the island and what happened to the people in this place and who ended up in it. So, maps can be a beginning and I think that's exciting.
Julia: Absolutely, and what's your other choice?
Damian: So, like Jackie Kay is one of those poets. I wish that I'd had her when I was at school. I wish that we'd been taught her there and then. I was always a bit intimidated by poetry. I could get more into plays and I could get into books but poetry I always felt was a bit posh and a bit somehow beyond me but when I picked up 'Bantam', it just … it felt like it was somebody I knew talking to me about things that I knew about and there's so many lines in it that speak to me. So, in the poem 'Vault', she talks about … she's talking about somebody going over the top in the war but what she says is 'the past is a leap in the dark' and I just think that's a line that everybody can relate to because we've all got a past and some of us want stuff to stay in the past and stay in the dark but sometimes we need to go into that dark to move forward in our lives. So, you know, she writes these lines like that that are just almost throwaway but they just stop and take … take the breath out of me and she's also … she's very romantic. She's good on love and I don't just mean like love like Valentine's Day love, love between mothers and daughter and fathers and sons and, you know, she says … I think it's in 'A Lang Promise', she says, 'I'll take your trusty haun and lead you hame', and there's something comforting in that and I feel often very comforted by her poems and even when she's being angry like even when she does the brilliant poem 'Planet Farage', I mean … you know, she cannot stand this man and everything that he stands for and she's furious about Brexit and she's furious about the closing of borders and the refusing of love and help to refugees, and all of these … the sexism, the racism, the homophobia, the transphobia. All these things, she's absolutely livid about all of it but yet there's something comforting that here's somebody that shares my rage. It's not just me that feels this way [laughter] and the best poetry makes you feel less alone. So, I think she does that in all of her poems whether she's writing something that's comic, whether she's writing something that's angry, whether she's taking us into her personal family history, or, you know … or something that's more about the present. I just … I think she's a poet that should be prescribed and I know that she followed Liz in the order of Makars …
Liz: Yes.
Damian: So, she deserves to have been a Makar and I think that, you know … I think she should … yeah, I think she should be on prescription.
Julia: [Laughter] well, absolutely and as you say, being forward looking and of course her collection 'Bantam' has been chosen as the first e-book display in the treasures gallery which is a really interesting element of this collection because of course legal deposit is the lifeblood of the National Library. It can request and collect a copy of any work that's published in the UK or Ireland and that was extended to include electronic publications just in 2013 and this is … like that's a massive change when you think about how much is out there rather than just the printed word.
Damian: Well, it's really important because …
Julia: Yeah.
Damian: … some people produce essays or poems or fiction as an e-book because they can't afford to do a paper print on.
Julia: Yeah, it's democratising, isn't it?
Damian: Yeah, and so it's more … it's more accessible which I think is good. People … I love books. I'm sitting here, I've just moved house, I'm sitting in a room surrounded by books so I actually slightly hate books right now [laughter] because I've had to humph about 5,000 boxes of them all over the place but people get really snobby about e-books and I just think I don't care. I don't care how people engage with stories whether it's … they're watching a brilliant series on Netflix or whether they're reading an e-book or whether they're reading a book on their phone or whatever it is. I don't think the fact that it's an e-book means that it's less special so … and I think it's very classically Jackie that it would be an e-book that would go in for her because it is … her work is about being accessible and inviting people in so, yeah, I don't get the snobbery around e-books. I really don't get it at all.
Julia: Yeah. I think the thing is that with treasures, sometimes you do tend to think of something that's tangible and physical but the fact that the library collects everything is … because we don't know what's going to be important in the future, do we? We don't know what the future treasures are going to be.
Liz: Absolutely, and Jackie's poems exist in the voice. They are sound.
Julia: Yeah.
Liz: So, for them to exist in electronic form, electronic digital form is really the right … a right extension to what should be happening. Nothing will ever take over from a book. There's something lovely about a book. I think of books, books of poetry as a box of sound actually, you know, because … but Jackie's particularly a poet of the voice, the human voice out loud. So, it's going to be hard to beat you, Damian [laughter] in what you've picked. I'm trying not to … but I'm thrilled for Jackie. I'll be talking to … I'm going to give her a wee bell tonight and tell her how you've done her proud.
Julia: And of course, Leanne, we were talking about the reasons why everyone's picked their … made their choices today. Is poetry something that resonates with you?
Leanne: Yeah. I actually enjoyed it when I was at school. I would need to say that I probably am guilty of not doing enough reading now but certainly in the moments that I do find myself whether I've got spare time and you try and reach out for something, I love the passion that people can express and the way that they can articulate it. So, I've probably got a real admiration for poetry and for what that looks like and how it sounds and as Damian and Liz have both described, but I think what you said as well, Julia, we don't know when we collect things, we don't know what will be a treasure in the future so it's really interesting that these are the ones that Damian has picked as well because looking back to when it all began and where it is now, it's just fascinating.
Julia: Yeah, absolutely, and Jackie's work is so beautiful and so personal as well as political and there's a line that really appeals to me as an utter narcissist that she wrote about the novelist Julia Darling in 'Hereafter Julia' and includes the line 'Why even dead, Julia, you're still the life and soul', and I just live for someone eventually describing me in that way [laughter]. I think it's so beautiful.
Damian: Hopefully you're a long way off that [laughter].
Julia: I know! But I love the idea of being the life and soul even in death. That's how I want to be remembered. Well, Damian, your pick of the e-book of 'Bantam' by Jackie Kay is clearly something you're passionate about but can Liz and Leanne be more persuasive? Hm, I don't know. Liz, you've chosen two poems from the treasures gallery from the same poet, difficult to …
Liz: It was hard, very, very hard, I must say. I mean, 'Holy Willie's Prayer' is just something that's … that I've thought about all my life. It's a dramatic monologue in the voice of Holy Willie that's so funny, scurrilous, acute …
Julia: Satirical.
Liz: … and satirical and absolutely spot on but when I saw … when I saw in his own handwriting, you know, and it's sort of sepia coloured, the lyrics of 'ae fond kiss and then we sever, ae fareweel and then forever, deep in heart-wrung tears I'll pledge thee, warring sighs and groans I'll wage thee', and then later on he says, 'I'll ne'er blame my partial fancy, naething could resist my Nancy, but to see her was to love her, love but her and love forever'. Well, Nancy was of course Agnes Maclehose, Nancy being another name that Scots … many Agnes's … my aunt Agnes used to get called Nancy sometimes.
Julia: Ah!
Liz: Uh huh, yes, it's a …
Julia: I didn't know that.
Liz: Yeah. Yes, it's the same name. So, his Nancy Maclehose, Agnes Maclehose who was married and who he never probably consummated. Well, it's pretty well known that he didn't really consummate his relationship with her but probably all the more passionate for that. He went to Edinburgh 18 … 1785-86 just when he had got out his Kilmarnock edition of poems and it's interesting because it's called Poems Chiefly in the Scots Dialect. He was admitting right away there and then. Some of you Edinburgh people won't understand some of these West of Scotland words. He didn't write like that because he spoke like that. He was using it as a literary language, you know, the Scots dialect, and his poetry in the Scots dialect is the most vigorous and the most wonderful stuff that he wrote. But then when he was in Edinburgh, he was inventing himself as a poet. He was handsome, he was in his late 20s, and he cut quite a swathe through the ladies there and he did love Agnes Maclehose very much indeed. They had this very camp kind of love affair where he was called Sylvander and she was called Clarinda and it was a sort of courtly love thing, a kind of … not a Courtney Love thing [laughter], a courtly love thing that they were doing between each other and I mean it was very passionate, but he also managed to get her made pregnant at the same time. So, you know … and he did leave … when he left Edinburgh, not … I suppose he didn't think he was going for good but when he got home, there's a very famous letter he wrote to some chaps in Edinburgh after that about how he met Jean Armour who he had been going with quite a lot while he was over in Ayrshire and she had already given birth to one set of twins. She was heavily pregnant with a second set of twins and he wrote a letter to all his pals about how when he saw her, seeing a bunch of horse litter in the corner, had made good use of it and given her such a resounding scalade as did melt the marrow of her bones [laughter]. Now, I mean she was just about to give birth to a second set of twins. I don't know how much she enjoyed this occasion [laughter] but … so, after that and when he actually wrote Ae Fond Kiss, Agnes Maclehose had stopped … because he quite quickly married … not long after he was back in Ayrshire, he did marry. After the resounding scalade episode, he did quite quickly marry Jean Armour and give her title to his name and his rest of his life in a way, you know. They never parted from each other although it didn't stop his extreme philandering for the rest of his life [laughter].
Julia: No, 13 children by five women [laughter].
Liz: Yes, well I mean he was a great … he says what a great lover he was but it was only … he only wrote his own reviews, you know [laughter]. We don't get Jean Armour's point of view of the resounding scalade thing although she was very happy to marry him and they did have a long life, but certainly 'Ae Fond Kiss', however Burns … I'm not saying he was insincere about it but people don't write love poems because they love sincerely, they write love poems and I know this as a love poet myself, you write poems because you've got a good idea for the poem [laughter].
Julia: Right [laughter].
Liz: You definitely do and I couldn't … I couldn't not have some of the Burns treasures of the National Library, but also the wonderful thing is that this piece, it's a great exhibition. People shouldn't think that you only go into the National Library to do research upstairs in the reading room but you can go in there and look at beautiful things and this … the treasures that are out at the moment and it's going to roll over the five years. I mean, I think 'Holy Willie's Prayer' will be up maybe in the next trench of treasures that they put up and I'll get to look at that as well but to actually see these things in the handwriting of the person that was doing them, that makes you right in the moment, as Damian was saying.
Julia: Absolutely. There is something that I just think is so human about being so close to the actual piece of paper, parchment or whatever that was written on and seeing the strokes of the pen and seeing the blotting of the ink.
Liz: Absolutely.
Julia: And it makes it so much more real because a lot of the time you learn about these things in school or, you know, you read them in books and you don't necessarily get that same sense of the person and when you actually see the letter right there, it's an incredible connection with the past, isn't it, to see …
Liz: Absolutely.
Julia: … it in front of you and to be so close to it. Damian, are you a fan of Burns?
Damian: I've always been interested in Burns. As much as for what people choose to think he says about Scotland at any given time, the language is there and I love the language and I love the celebrations around it, a day dedicated to the work of a person.
Liz: That's the thing about him. He was such a lively person and he wrote with such great life. There's only a few people that you get to know as people during their work. One of them is John Keats …
Damian: Uh huh.
Liz: … and the other one I would say is Lord Byron, you know, mad, bad, and dangerous to know, and Burns. They come right off the page as people that you might have known.
Leanne: The funny part of it is that being in sport and the amount of players that you come across or players that come to Scotland, different nationalities, they're desperate to celebrate Burns Day and that's always the one day in the calendar that they're so intrigued by haggis, neeps, and tatties, and everybody tries it and everybody gives it a go and the feedback that follows in the coming days is always quite controversial [laughter].
Damian: That's smashing!
Julia: It is a sort of … a gateway, isn't it, to sort of appreciating all things Scottish [laughter].
Leanne: Absolutely.
Julia: … and it's nice to have that one day and inspiring his work even if his philandering ways were perhaps not so inspiring.
Damian: Listen, there's a lot about the past that we can judge.
Liz: It doesn't mean that he didn't love her to bits. I mean, that was the thing about Burns. Nor does it actually detract from the beauty and the purity of that love song as somebody who is missing somebody they love takes it.
Julia: I completely agree with you. I think he was a hopeless, or perhaps a hopeful romantic.
Liz: Absolutely.
Julia: And yes, anyone that's ever been in love or experienced that loss can absolutely straight away identify with what he's describing in that romantic [laughter] piece of work. We're going to have to move on. It's going to be… this is a very tricky one this week. Publishing and modern technology and one of the most famous and influential poets this country has ever produced [laughter]. Leanne, you're going to really have to fight your corner to be Pick of the Podcast this week. Tell us, what you have got? So, there's two things that you chose. What's the first one?
Leanne: Yeah, as I had mentioned, Scottish Football through the Ages, I just found that really fascinating because I think being a footballer just now, you're across only football now. Rarely do you go back over time and really recognise and remember and appreciate all the things that happened early on. So, there was one game that stood out in this and it was the … known as the Wembley Wizards where Scotland triumphed over England 5-1 and I just thought god, if only that could happen some time in the near future, that would be incredible [laughter].
Damian: What century was that in, Leanne?
Liz: Yeah, what year? What year was that?
Damian: What century is that [laughter]?
Leanne: I don't think it was too long ago. I think that was back in the early kind of 1920s but there's so many … there's biographies, like Sir Matt Busby, Sir Alex Ferguson, Jock Stein, just the things that are just so nostalgic about Scottish football and I think for me going back over a lot of that, it makes you go, 'Oh, that's right', and, 'Oh, that must have happened because' as I say, you get caught up in the moment but there's actually a personal moment within that as well and it's the programme, the matchday programme from my 50th cap when I played for Scotland against Republic of Ireland back in 2017 so that was an incredible year for women's football. We had qualified for our first major tournament and we were flying high and that was just a game that all my friends and family were there, I had a presentation before the game, and it's nice that that's actually something that's now part of the collection because in women's football, you know, for a number of years, no one's really been keeping things and as we spoke about earlier on in the podcast, people need to keep things in order for them to be included so it's nice that actually I can look back as a footballer now and the journey that I've come through and that that's actually something that's noted as significant and that it's been kept. That for me is really quite special but no, the football stuff, I could just consume myself with it for hours on end going back over it and the memories and as I say the footballers and the managers that have went before me.
Julia: Well, absolutely, and the largest collection relating to football is the programmes. There's more than 10,000 concerning the professional senior men's game so all sorts of things in there although there are some things missing and this could be a call out for anyone listening that might have collections of programmes from games that aren't currently in the collection to perhaps think about whether they might want to share them.
Leanne: Absolutely, yes.
Julia: Because, you know, despite their best efforts, there's some that are missing not just for the women's game but for the men's game too. I think there's one, a programme for the Rangers famous 1972 victory in Barcelona, they don't have that but maybe somebody listening to this does have that and for these things to be included, they need to be passed on. So, perhaps something to think about for the future and of course fanzines in there as well, a lot of the older ones, some of what we might call puerile humour [laughter] and quite often sexist but, you know, it's interesting and there's really fun … I find the titles of the fanzines really fun. There's one for Dundee that's called 'It's half past four and we're two nil down', which is pretty hilarious [laughter]. So, there's lots of fun things in there as well but as you say, women's football not as represented as comprehensively as we would like, but what's your other choice?
Leanne: Yeah, the second one for me was the Women's Suffrage collection. I just thought as I said at the top, it's really powerful and really significant. There was one bit within it that stood out for me and it was the story of Helen Fraser that really caught my eye. It was a diary entry that she put in. She was basically the daughter of a kind of middle class Glasgow tailor. Basically, her life was transformed after she attended an event back in 1906 where Teresa Billington-Greig, a women's suffrage campaigner, she addressed a Glasgow audience and from that day, that speech that Helen Fraser found herself basically in awe of this woman and she, you know, noted this diary entry and the diary entry itself was incredible because she was so taken by Teresa Billington-Greig not just by what she said but the way she sounded and the way she spoke and how she held the audience. She described her personality as absolutely spontaneous and delightful. We spoke about it earlier in terms of poetry, it's the handwriting, it's the way the note in the diary entry looked. You almost can encapsulate that moment by reading the diary entry. It kind of takes you back to that moment that for Helen Fraser ultimately changed her life because after that, she then went on to fight for women's rights and absolutely everything that she did moving forward was inspired by Teresa Billington-Greig. So, it was really wonderful and there are so many other stories like that and as I say, many moments that make you think of the struggles and the moments and the situations that women have actually had to overcome to get to where we are today and I think if it wasn't for women like Teresa Billington-Greig and Helen Fraser and whatnot. The world wouldn't be the place it is today.
Julia: Yeah, I know we do owe them so much. There's some wonderful, as you say, very personal accounts and diary entries that really bring to life what it must have been like for these women and that sort of transformative power of hearing other women speaking and reframing their own thinking about themselves and their place in the world. There's also … what I absolutely loved was there's a postcard with a photo of the Edinburgh women's pageant on Princes Street.
Leanne: It's amazing, wasn't it?
Julia: Yeah [laughter] from 1909 and the main theme of the event was 'what women have done and can do and will do' [laughter] and it was all these banners and floats carried by women, women playing the bagpipes and it was representatives of all different trades and professions that then were open to women as well as having women dressed up as sort of icons from Scottish national history just to sort of say, 'Look, we can do all these things, so why can't we vote?' and as you say, there's so much in that collection that really brings to life what life was like and how things were changing in that time.
Leanne: I think with that entry as well, Julia, it was probably for Helen Fraser an ordinary day but actually looking back now, it's quite extraordinary to think how it's changed her and how it changed her path in life.
Julia: Yeah, and she devoted herself full time to suffrage campaigning from that moment. She was even arrested later on that year for trying to enter the House of Commons. So, she … yeah, she was … life-changing moment and it was captured in that diary entry and so it just shows you, you know, how treasures can vary. There's papers in there, correspondence from other suffragettes, there's papers for the men's league for women's suffrage which I think is interesting as well to read, newspaper archives, all sort of things, pamphlets and it's those … that sort of ephemera, the pamphlets that were given out and handed out and exchanged with such passion, you know, that really just bring to life that …
Liz: And 100 years ago, there wasn't universal suffrage still. I think it was some time in the 30s, I think it was 1933 that all women whether married or not could actually vote which in terms of history is incredibly recent really, isn't it?
Julia: Yeah.
Liz: Everything that everybody's talked about today, I wouldn't like to be in your shoes, Julia, to choose [laughter].
Julia: No, me either [laughter].
Liz: You don't know what little thing will strike you one day and it would maybe be different things that would strike you another day so it's not an exhibition that I'm going to go and see just once.
Julia: No. No, there's so much in there and it really does highlight just the incredible treasures that exist for us all to enjoy and for future generations as well and absolutely, Leanne, another great pick there and we're just about out of time for today and I need to decide who's been the most convincing and who's going to get this week's Pick of the Podcast. Well, gosh, this is really tricky. Damian, you did really tempt me with Jackie Kay's Bantam not just because of course the importance of what it represents in terms of how we collect the treasures of the future by including digital in the legal deposit scheme but also for the contents of this beautiful, personal, and political collection of poetry, and then Liz of course … ugh, it's hard to resist the irresistible term of Burns, and it is incredible to get so close to that letter. I felt the same way as you did when we saw it for the first time on the opening night and clearly that letter was written from the heart and it is of course Burns's most recorded love song, but I think … ugh, you're going to kill me … I think the Pick of the Podcast this week has to go to Leanne. Leanne, I think …
Damian: Yay!
Liz: Yeah!
Julia: … Your pick from the women's suffrage collection because I think to be honest, it would be hard for me to pick anything else over this. It is an incredible collection …
Liz: Absolutely.
Julia: … which documents just the dedication and passion of women to whom we owe an enormous debt of gratitude and …
Liz: Absolutely.
Julia: … whose shoulders we stand on, Leanne, as you say. So, congratulations Leanne, you've chosen our Pick of the Podcast.
Leanne: Woo, thank you!
Liz: Congratulations, Leanne.
Leanne: Well done you guys.
Julia: And thank you all so much for listening and thanks to Leanne Crichton, Liz Lochhead, and Damian Barr for being such great guests today. We've covered love, religion, the possibility of holding a whole library of books in your hand with digital technology. We have lifechanging events and movements. Some history of football and yet we've still hardly scratched the surface of the treasures that will be displayed at the library over the coming years. For more information and to see some of those maps that Damian was talking about, you can actually see them online. You can visit NLS.uk and find loads more information there. You can follow us on Twitter and Facebook and subscribe to this podcast so you can get the next episode with more national treasures. I was Julia Sutherland and this was National Treasures from the National Library of Scotland.