Submitted for the degree of Ph (D) to the University of Glasgow,

The term post traumatic stress is routinely used to describe the psychological experiences of soldiers returning from war. It is used here to describe the effects it has on the families of PTS victims, in particular children. Hunting Captain Henley is a novel which explores the long term effects of a father’s post traumatic stress on a son’s (intellectual) development. It tracks the progress of the narrator from childhood to adulthood as he sets about tracking down the (English) Royal Signals Captain who allegedly bullied his dad into shooting Arab civilians during the Ismaelia police uprising at Suez in 1951. In his 1919 book Scottish Literature: Character and Influence G. Gregory Smith first coined the phrase Caledonian Antisyzygy to spotlight the zigzag of contradictions at the heart of Scottish Literature, especially under the stress of foreign (in particular English) influence. The term has since been used to point at the schizophrenia at the heart of Scottishness. The novel considers the dual influences of the English (language) on Scottish writing and families. As a prologue to the book a commentary is provided. Scotland’s Fascist Voice addresses th