Alistair Moffat for To See Ourselves: A Personal History of Scotland Since 1950

Alistair Moffat is a former Director of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Director of Programmes at Scottish Television and founder of the Borders Book Festival. From 2011 he was Rector of the University of St Andrews. He has written more than thirty books on Scottish history, and lives in the Scottish Borders.

Alistair joins us for his new book To See Ourselves: A Personal History of Scotland Since 1950.

Since 1945 the world has changed at breakneck speed, and life in post-war Scotland is now entirely different from what it was like when Alistair grew up in the quiet Border town of Kelso in the 1950s. At that time the rhythms and practicalities of daily life which had remained constant for many generations were about to change in the most unimaginable ways.

This is a book about these changes - many of which have been dizzying and disorientating - and how they have affected each and every one of us in all parts of the country.

The main themes, such as housing, healthcare, sport, the media, the arts and entertainment, urban and country life, our relationship with the environment, politics, religion and education, are all viewed through the lens of personal experience.

Alistair's own recollections of big events and small, together with other eyewitness accounts, bring these decades alive in a way that no ordinary history can with a directness and poignancy that underlines how much has been gained - and how much lost.