Episode 3

Available for over a year

Scotland's historical relationship with France is often termed the Auld Alliance. By 1560 the Auld Alliance was more or less over but it has lingered on in the Scottish sentimental memory. Stuart Kelly argues that the real Auld Alliance was between Scotland and the "various principalities, kingdoms, cantons, duchies and electorates that would eventually comprise Germany and its German-speaking neighbours." In these essays he explores the relationship between Scotland and the German world as it has played out in literature, education, philosophy, the visual arts and historiography. In this essay he explores the career of Willa Muir who translated the work of Kafka, and other key German language writers, into English.