MacDiarmid focuses on poetry and the novel (backing Edwin Muir and Neil Gunn, just then embarking on their careers), on theatre, art, music, history and education, and writing by women in Scotland. His criticism of received attitudes is balanced by an appraisal of the possibilities for a renaissance in the arts in Scotland and a reassertion of national cultural and political identity.

A contemporary of I.A. Richards and F.R. Leavis, MacDiarmid too seeks the integration of cultural and social well-being. How has his challenge been met? The essays are published with the lively correspondence to which they gave rise, an engaged commentary. The author's 1976 comments on the book appear as an appendix. Contemporary Scottish Studies is a crucial work in modern Scottish literature and politics - which is to say that it is also essential to our understanding of the larger British dimension.