A Landmark Study of Scotland’s Sacred and Literary Imagination
A major new work of scholarship, The Making of the Scottish Dream-Vision by Dr Kylie Murray, a parishioner at St John the Baptist’s RC Church, Perth, will be launched at St John’s Kirk, Perth, on Wednesday 4 March 2026 — in the Kirk’s own 900th anniversary year.
Published by the British Academy and Liverpool University Press, this new study reveals how medieval Scotland used dreams and visions as profound vehicles for exploring faith, national identity, kingship, and divine purpose. Far from imitating England, Dr Murray demonstrates that Scotland developed a rich and original contemplative tradition rooted in wider European Christian thought, drawing on figures such as St Augustine of Hippo.
Of particular significance to the Diocese of Dunkeld, the book concludes with the work of Gavin Douglas — Bishop of Dunkeld (1474-1522) and one of Scotland’s most magnificent poets — situating him within a vibrant Scottish tradition of visionary and devotional writing that flourished centuries earlier than previously believed.
Dr Murray also presents compelling new evidence linking Perth — medieval capital of the Scottish kingdom and home to Scotland’s only Carthusian monastery — to decisive moments in Scotland’s literary and spiritual history, including fresh insight into James I’s Scots poem, the Kingis Quair and visionary passages in Walter Bower’s Latin Scotichronicon. Perth emerges not merely as a political centre, but as a spiritual and intellectual heart of the nation.
She is a graduate of St Andrews and Oxford, former fellow of Harvard, Oxford, and Cambridge, a BBC New Generation Thinker, and the youngest scholar ever to deliver the British Academy’s prestigious Chatterton Lecture. Dr Murray returns to Scotland with a work already described by Professor Jeremy Smith, Emeritus Professor of English at Glasgow and St Andrews Universities as ‘a groundbreaking reassessment of Scotland’s place in medieval European culture.’
At a time when questions of identity, heritage, and faith are widely debated, this book powerfully recovers a Scotland where contemplation, kingship, poetry, and Christian belief were inseparably intertwined.
The launch at the Fair City’s St John’s Kirk will honour both Perth’s medieval heritage and the enduring spiritual vision that helped shape Scotland’s national story.