In 1992, Gordon Brown, then a rising star of the UK Labour party, delivered a lecture on constitutional reform to a large audience in central London. Afterwards, Brown approached the organiser of the event, Anthony Barnett, who recalled: “His first words to me . . . were not about the thousand people but about one: ‘Was Tom Nairn here?’”
Last week, Brown hailed Nairn, who has died at the age of 90, as “a great writer [and] thinker”. Nicola Sturgeon, Scottish first minister, described him as “one of the greatest thinkers [and] political theorists . . . that Scotland has ever produced” — stirring tributes to the “intellectual godfather of the modern Scottish independence movement” who never held a permanent academic post in his native land.
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