READING TOM NAIRN
Reading Tom Nairn: Writing, Politics, Scotland
I’m currently working on the first book-length study of Tom Nairn, modern Scotland’s most influential and elusive public intellectual.
Tom Nairn (1932-2023) was one of the most consequential Scottish writers of the twentieth century. At the news of his death, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon paid tribute to ‘one of the greatest thinkers, political theorists and intellectuals that Scotland has ever produced’. Though he led no movement or school, and spent nearly all of his working life outside the university system, his fame is unmatched by any Scottish scholar of his generation.
Yet there is no book on Nairn’s achievement, which has been obscured by the range of clashing traditions in which it is recognised. His critical reception has been fragmented across scholarly and political fields – from political philosophy to sociology and cultural studies; from the New Left to Scottish Nationalism – which find Nairn’s influence both undeniable and somewhat awkward. This has inhibited his recognition as a great writer and essayist, the unifying thread of his spirited engagement in each of these worlds.
Nairn’s openness to new ideas has also been costly. He did much of his best work as a ‘co-thinker’, theorising in tandem with figures including Perry Anderson, Ernest Gellner, Stephen Maxwell and Anthony Barnett, and frequently revised his views and prophecies. He cuts a lonely figure in the scholarly literature partly for this reason. Never a line-holding party intellectual, Nairn faced hostility and marginalisation from every tradition in which he made a major contribution. I suggest has more in common with a romantic philosopher-journalist – itinerant, flamboyant, fiercely independent – than the political and cultural leaders he inspired.
From British constitutional history to studies of modern monarchy and the case for Scottish independence, Nairn’s influence is at once pervasive and elusive. But his writing itself is consistently inventive, vitalising and often hilarious. Focused on his prose and drawing on unpublished interviews and archival research, this book has three aims: to illuminate the distinctive qualities of Nairn’s writing, and its guiding sensibility, the better to grasp its importance to his wide and contrary influence; to centre Nairn’s own thinking and sensibility within the various movements in which it made an impact; and to grasp Nairn’s complex political career in the light of his primary talent: that of an essayist and critic.