Remembering the 'Radical Laird': George Kinloch as Local Hero in Nineteenth Century Scottish Reform Poetry

This paper will examine expressions of place and local identity in verse celebrating and commemorating George Kinloch (1775–1833), the 'Radical Laird' of Strathmore and Dundee's first MP Kinloch's political life was brief but memorable, and his death left an almost blank screen onto which poets could project ideas of what the reform movement meant to them. The Dundee Advertiser, as a long-term supporter of Kinloch and publisher of most of the verse about him, played an important part in his mythologising. The poems and songs written to commemorate Kinloch, which show familiarity with a range of literary and traditional forms, use allusions to both landscape and history to create a shared sense of a local radical identity, which draws on nostalgic ideas of the laird as guardian of the people.