"This collection is a stimulating reconsideration of many of the cultural signifiers of Scotland and of what possibilities those signifiers may - or may not - hold in a devolved political structure. "

- Katherine Haldane Grenier, The Citadel, Scotia: Interdisciplinary Journal of Scottish Studies, Volume XXX, 2006

"This is an exceptionally rich and stimulating collection of essays which seems to inaugurate a new style of cultural historiography in Scottish studies. The most memorable readings combine a new-historicist attentiveness to occasions, artefacts, and the 'social energies' that coagulate around them with an astute awareness of how institutions, power-brokers, and popular consciousness give these energies the political form and symbolic currency they require to enter history as something more than narrative. It is, in this respect, quite in step with the present-day devolutionary structures it documents, struggling to cast off their high-concept glossiness and become jobbing democratic institutions."

- Scott Hames, University Of Stirling, Victorian Studies, 50.3, Spring 2008