The Institute of English Studies in the Faculty of Modern Languages at the University of Warsaw hosted their sixth Scotland in Europe conference during 22-24 October 2025. A wide range of 23 sessions were held with speakers from Poland, Scotland, Hungary, Czechia, Italy and France. Expert papers were presented on the themes of Polish-Scottish Relations; the challenge and interpretation of translations; European perspectives; contemporary Scottish fiction; poetry; 17th and 18th century Scotland; multi-modal perspectives; and politics past and present.
Historical studies, including personal genealogical searches and archival research, demonstrated the longer-term impacts of the political, economic and social contexts of their time with current perspectives. The importance of the role of literature and literary figures, creating an exchange network of ideas, culture across political boundaries, came to the fore supplemented by an appreciation of translation and multilingualism. Scotland provided speakers from the University of Glasgow, the University of Edinburgh, the Faculty of Advocates in Edinburgh, the Adam Smith Global Foundation and Zielony Balonik.
It was a pleasure to be able to describe our Scottish Polish Book Club and to refer to current initiatives such as The Richard Demarco Archive Trust and its collaboration with the Muzeum Sztuki in Łódż; the Bibliotheca Polonica Collection in Edinburgh; and the Sir Walter Scott Club. During the conference I was being approached mostly by the younger participants for more information and how to set up a book club. The University of Warsaw intends to produce a summary of the proceedings in due course. My own note for my presentation is attached.
Krystyna Szumelukowa
28 October 2025
SCOTLAND IN EUROPE CONFERENCE VI, UNIVERSITY OF WARSAW, 22-24 OCTOBER 2025
AND YET THE BOOKS
KRYSTYNA SZUMELUKOWA
Convener, The Scottish Polish Book Cub
And Yet the Books
And yet the books will be there on the shelves, separate beings,
That appeared once, still wet
As shining chestnuts under a tree in autumn,
And, touched, coddled, began to live
In spite of fires on the horizon, castles blown up,
Tribes on the march, planets in motion.
“We are,” they said, even as their pages
Were being torn out, or a buzzing flame
Licked away their letters. So much more durable
Than we are, whose frail warmth
Cools down with memory, disperses, perishes.
I imagine the earth when I am no more:
Nothing happens, no loss, it’s still a strange pageant,
Women’s dresses, dewy lilacs, a song in the valley.
Yet the books will be there on the shelves, well born,
Derived from people, but also from radiance, heights.
Berkeley, 1986
Czeslaw Miłosz, translated by Czeslaw Miłosz and Robert Haas
I hope that you love this poem as much as I do!
The idea to form a Scottish Polish Book Club began in 2004 when Poland joined the European Union. By 2006 we were established as Zielony Balonik taking the name from the cabaret so popular in Kraków from 1905-1912. It was chosen to embrace the legacy of the cabaret representing free floating ideas expressed in literature beyond borders and made more accessible with modern communications technology.
Zielony Balonik celebrates its 20th anniversary next year. We can look back and surprise ourselves as we have read over 120 books; arranged public events; entertained authors; written our own books and poems; provided teaching materials for schools; participated in Edinburgh’s festivals; enjoyed literary visits to Poland; and rescued a book collection in Edinburgh’s last remaining Polski Dom. Our club includes members who are European, British, Scottish and Polish We read books in English and Polish. Our first book was Olga Tokarczuk’s House of Day House of Night, and our current reading is The Polish Book of Short Stories. Where would we be without Antonia Lloyd-Jones?
To consolidate our literary endeavours we established a web site in the spirit of Zielony Balonik to reach out beyond our intimate group and also provide an archive of our reading. The Covid Pandemic then arrived to challenge us to learn the pros and cons of being hybrid. To see our reading list over the years and for reviews and comments you might like to visit our website.
The advantages of internet technology means that book choices now accumulate enriching information on authors, the translators, publishers, book awards and fairs and the literary world of the past and present. Our personal exchanges is our cherry on the top of an ever enlarging information cake. Our connections with libraries, universities, cultural organisations, the Scottish Government and local government and ambassadors and consuls have been enriching and thus we have been involved in a myriad of projects from designing tartans to erecting statues and advising on exhibitions and theatre scripts!
But also as individuals we have gradually accumulated our personal book collections which are taking up more and more space on our shelves at home. We are faced with the cataloguing of our own books and personal decisions on their future homes. Who can we trust to curate our collections? As a book club we engaged in the rescue and cataloguing of the literary heritage housed in the last remaining Polski Dom in Edinburgh prior to its renovation. The collections of books, documents, photographs, videos, art works and memorabilia were in disarray and decay on the floors and in boxes, not even on the shelves. The work appears to have been in vain with no access to the collection.
The building in Edinburgh which became the Polski Dom in 1948 actually dates back to 1820; the year when Adam Konstanty Zamoyski came to the university to study economic theory. The following year the Zamoyski family donated ninety-three works of Polish literature and culture to the Library of The Society of Writers to Her Majesty’s Signet in Edinburgh. A further fifty works were also presented by Count Sobański. These collections include the Chronica Polonorum (1521) and a second edition of Copernicus’ De Revolutionibus printed in 1566. ‘Bibliotheca Polonica’ has been resting quietly for many years as a backdrop to the history of relations between Scotland and Poland. It is good to know that Dr. Kit Baston is now researching the original Polish Collection for an exhibition in anticipation of the British Council’s 2025 UK /Poland Cultural season. It has only taken over 200 years!
Also in 1820 Karol Sienkiewicz, Prince Adam Czartoryski’s librarian, visited Edinburgh and met Sir Walter Scott. ‘Britomania’ had come into vogue heralding literary exchanges, influences, translations, and new connections associated with WalterScottism in Poland. To be a witness to events in Scotland and in the non-place of Poland at that time must have been as dramatic as it can be now. It was Jan Czeczot in 1822 who referred to Adam Mickiewicz as the Walter Scott of Lithuania.
The Edinburgh Sir Walter Scott Club was founded in 1894 and celebrates the life, works, and legacy of Scotland’s greatest storyteller. It is an active and thriving literary society of over 200 members, drawn from Edinburgh, across the UK, and overseas.
A vibrant programme of meetings, lectures, excursions, and online publications, we explore Sir Walter Scott’s enduring influence — not only in literature, but across art, history, music, law, architecture, ecology, and cultural identity. The aim is to advance public understanding and appreciation of Scott’s work, ensuring his ideas remain alive, accessible, and dynamic for new generations. Go to the website and join us!
It would be of great interest for the club to host an event in 2026/2027 with a focus on the impact of Sir Walter Scott in Poland. There is already a substantial body of academic research on the subject notably produced by the late Witold Ostrowski and by Mirosława Modrzewska.
To take another point in time I move on to the aftermath of the Second World War and the process of reconciliation. Donations of military documents from 1940-1947, when Polish forces were based in Scotland, were made to the Signet Library and then in 1962, the Millennium of the Polish state was recognised with the donation of a thousand books by the Polish community in Edinburgh. All the collections were then presented to the National Library of Scotland. In addition, the University of Edinburgh hosts the Polish Medical School Library and Collection from the times of the Second World War, tirelessly curated by the late Maria Długołęcka-Graham.
The desire for peace and security in Europe and to overcome the accumulation of grief of loss of life and homeland was expressed by the inauguration of the Edinburgh International Festival in 1947. One of its tireless personalities is the eternal Richard Demarco who celebrated his 95th birthday this summer to the rendition of STO LAT! Over 60 years he has traversed the cultural scene in Europe opening doors for Polish painters, sculptors and performance artists resulting in a one million plus archive of photographs, rare books, posters, letters and catalogues.
On the day he welcomed Daniel Muzyczuk, the Director of the Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź, and announced its new collaboration with the Demarco Collection and Archive Trust, The National Galleries of Scotland, the University of Dundee and Papple Steading in East Lothian. Always looking to the future, he said;
“I hope to announce how I envisage future generations of academics, artists, and art students will benefit from the Demarco art collection and archive as a unique academic resource with the support of our charity, the Demarco Archive Trust, to encourage future generations to focus on how the history of the Edinburgh International Festival cannot be separated from the history of the second world war with a distinct Scottish-Polish dimension”.
Funding to the Muzeum Sztuki from the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage will cover the costs of transportation and packaging, which will include the purchased works and the donation of the collection and archive. The shipping and inventory is to be completed by the end of this year and then work on the archive and collection will begin so that parts will be available online.
It is with some hope that Zielony Balonik may have been a catalyst to achieve wider Scottish Polish literary connections, no matter how modest. Individual members past and present have different reasons for our exploration of Poland through literature. This is our strength. We have inevitably been immersed in its turbulent history and geography and the turmoil and suffering of its populations in non-fiction and fiction to the point of despair at times. But we have also been impressed with the quality of authorship and translation in the re-reading of past classics and the vitality of contemporary writers deep into crime and psychology producing Book Fair Rock Stars such as Jakub Żulczyk! Women writers have featured with our own Scottish member, Jenny Robertson, publishing From Corsets to Communism: the Life and Times of Zofia Nałkowska in 2019. We read contemporary works by Anne Applebaum, Neal Ascherson and Philippe Sands as a matter of course to give us insight into the current political world.
Scotland is not just a so-called ‘small stateless nation’; it is a country of enlightenment which has its daily struggles at every moment in time. Mistakes and muddle are normal. But the opportunities for active citizenship abound and the answer to any question can itself be questioned. The Global Scot is to be found everywhere just as The Global Pole. When the Scottish and Polish Diaspora come together then there is every reason to celebrate.