I've somehow never got around to reading any of her biographies or historical writings, so the image of Lady Antonia Fraser that sticks in my mind tends to be the one I picked up in childhood, of her adding a touch of glamour to BBC2 panel shows otherwise populated mostly by ageing male actors and (ex-)comedians. This anthology obviously owes something to that playful side of her public persona, but its real roots seem to be in the work she did researching her Mary Queen of Scots biography, which came out about five years before this. There's one poem by Mary herself in the book (in Fraser's own translation from the French), as well as poems attributed to her ancestor James I and her son James VI.

The title of the anthology raises two obvious questions, both of which Fraser deals with by simple editorial fiat: a poem is Scottish/a love poem if I say it is. Which is probably as good a test as any other, but it doesn't make it easy to work out whether there is any kind of common thread we can pick out. Anyway, it's billed as "a personal anthology", and it is quite fun to see some of the interesting juxtapositions she sets up by putting (say) Hugh MacDiarmid's twentieth century "synthetic Scots" next to a Border ballad or to Lord Byron's Regency standard English.

Obviously, if you think of Scottish love poems you think of Robert Burns, and he is reasonably well-represented in the selection, with a mix of familiar and less familiar pieces, but it's very interesting to see how much else there is, from the early 15th century right down to Liz Lochhead, still in her twenties when this first came out. Some very well-known names, but also a lot who were new to me.

Fraser has fun dividing the topic of "Love" into semi-serious subheadings, from "Wooings" to "Old loves". She fits in a few poems that are about "other" kinds of love (mother-child, for instance), and there are a few instances of suspicious avoidance of gendered pronouns to offset all those gung-ho ballads about demon lovers carrying their ladies off across the moors on horseback. Plenty that's witty, a certain amount that's sentimental, and quite a lot that's simply miserable — more or less what you would hope to find. Not all that much apart from Burns that's straightforwardly erotic (and none of Burns's really bawdy stuff), however.

Unusually for a poetry book, I can think of a real, practical use for this anthology: it's going to be in my backpack next time I'm invited to a Burns supper, for those moments when someone says "Does anyone want to read a Scottish poem that isn't by Burns?" ( )