Through the Shortbread Tin review – how Scotland’s great literary hoax captured the spirit of the nation

Tron theatre, GlasgowMartin O’Connor’s witty and provocative show casts the 18th-century equivalent of the Hitler Diaries in a fresh light Martin O’Connor calls it “the first Outlander effect”. He is thinking about how an image of a country catches on and, factual or otherwise, comes to define it.Just as the sexed-up Highland romance of Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander projected a view of Scotland with questionable historical grounding so, in 1760, James Macpherson captivated the literary world with his rediscovered verses translated from the third-century Gaelic of the poet Ossian. Continue reading...