Welcome back to the home of the oxymoron. Evil genius. He asked the newspaper to print his obituary early so he'd enjoy it. That's like hiding at your own funeral. Yeah, a big, great gig. I'm Russell Kane. Join me to weigh in on whether the biggest players in history are more evil or genius. Becoming that rich, I'd say that is some level of genius. It also helps that it's a long time ago, right?

It's like the podcast version of telling your kids the ice cream van plays music

when it's out of ice cream.

Listen to Evil Genius on BBC Sounds.

Breathe there the man with soul so dead,

who never to himself hath said,

This is my own, my native land.

Walter Scott and the Lay of the Last Minstrel in 1805, the opening salvo in Scots mission to make Scotland proud to be called Northern Britain. It was read for us there by one of Scotland's

leading cultural historians,

Murray Pittock, who joins us from Edinburgh and who'll shortly explain why writing, politics and

Scotland have always gone together like, well, haggis, neeps and tatties. Back in medieval times,

even their kings were at it. The King's Quare or the King's book was written in early Scots,

reportedly by the first King James. Today, Alex Salmond, a fringe nuisance at Westminster during

the 1980s, is back in the newly swelled ranks of Scottish nationalist MPs, so the chamber

might end up ringing to the sound of his favourite poet Robert Burns, or, as

salmon would say, the rocks will melt in the sun before it doesn't.

Then let us pray that come at me, as come at will for all that, that sense and worth for all

the earth shall bear the gree and all that, for all that and all that that's coming yet for all that, that man to man the world

are shall brothers be for all that. Alex Salmon's rendering of Robert Burns, A Man's a Man

for A That, recorded for the BBC. Later in the programme, we'll also consider Gallic-speaking Scotland,

as Peter Mackay, a Gallic speaker from

Lewis in the Western Isles, and one of our new generation thinkers, is alongside Murray-Pittock

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