Respondents were asked to name their favourite film, television programme and fictional book about Scotland.  The most popular films were Braveheart (173, equating to 41% of 426 responses to this question), Rob Roy (11%), Whisky Galore (9%), Local Hero (7%), Brigadoon and Trainspotting (both 2%), and these were closely followed by The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Greyfriars Bobby and Tunes of Glory . 

The five most popular television programmes were Monarch of the Glen (60 of 363 respondents) 17%, Hamish MacBeth (11%), Dr Finlay’s Casebook / Taggart (both 6%), and Highlander (4%).  Obviously this is to a large extent determined by what is available on you local TV broadcasters, with many respondents commentating that they did not have Scottish television programmes available to them. Certainly the largest countries of residence for the most popular programmes were Australia, New Zealand, Scotland, England, Canada and the US.  Also worth a mention are Para Handy, 2000 Acres of Sky and Bill Connolly’s World Tour of Scotland.  Notably, only one of these programmes is actually made outside Scotland (Highlander), and all the other representations are “home-grown”.

 Respondents were also asked to name their favourite fictional book, and, in a separate question, their favourite historical author.  Therefore the answers to the two questions did not necessarily need to tie up.  The historical romance novels of Diana Gabaldon proved the most popular fictional books by far, with a female to male ratio of 34:8.  The standout single title was Kidnapped (female to male 7:21).   

Diana Gabaldon is read predominantly by females in the 41-60 age group, with an overall female to male ration of 34:9.  39 (89%) of Gabaldon’s fans are in the US, and the most popular author within Scotland is Nigel Tranter closely followed by Lewis Grassic Gibbon. Kidnapped was the most cited book of Canadian and Scottish respondents.

 When it comes to history, John Prebble is the clear favourite, with both the most liked book and overall most liked author.  All of the top authors were weighted towards male readership despite an exact 50:50 split in the genders answering this question.  However, these responses were very fragmented, out of 273 total answers naming a history book, 11 respondents represent only 4%, whilst 26 out of 240 answers represents 11%.  The next most highly ranked authors where Arthur Herman (all of those who recommended Herman who gave a country of residence outside of Scotland), and Michael Lynch, who had a wider geographical impact.  Thus it also seems that there is a very wide range of historical books being used and enjoyed by respondents.

If we look at an analysis be country of residence we find that both Prebble and Tranter are more popular abroad than in Scotland.  Nigel Tranter is more popular than John Prebble in the US (11:9), with both outstripped by Fitzroy McLean with 13 responses.  In contrast, Tom Devine is the most popular history author in Scotland and England and hardly ranked abroad.   

Favoured Scottish Websites

I split the analysis of this question into two distinct parts.  The first is for responses gained before the 16 August, the second afterwards.  This is because the second wave of responses could be skewed by the fact that users could be those notified of the survey by the Rampant Scotland email list, so therefore one would expect Rampant Scotland to be a favoured site.  This did prove to be the case, however, if we look at responses for the pre-16 August period only, we find that Rampant Scotland was still the most popular single website with respondents. (357 responses were gathered for this question).It is clear is that Rampant Scotland and Electric Scotland were favoured representations of Scotland.   These two sites were so far ahead of any other sites that they were given their own categories.  

 Home Page     Demographics    Scottish Identity    Images of Scotland and Scottishness   
Favourite films, books and TV series about Scotland    
Respondents own websites about Scotland 

Thank you for your interest. If you have any specific questions you can  contact me  here.