Arise again, Sir Walter

 There is a characteristically fine report by Charlotte Higgins in The Guardian this morning about the debt the English owe to Sir Walter Scott, the novelist who for many years of the Romantic age was the biggest selling author by far, possibly the biggest selling author of all time in comparison with his peers, but who is now, she rightly says, almost wholly unread.

The piece caught my eye because, until my holiday trip to the Orkney and Shetland in the past two weeks, I too was a member (...