Scotland’s national library has reversed a decision not to include a gender-critical anthology featuring more than 30 female writers including JK Rowling and a number of MPs in its centenary exhibition.

The Women Who Wouldn’t Wheesht charts the campaign against the Scottish government’s controversial gender recognition laws. It had been nominated by a number of members of the public to be part of the institution’s Dear Library exhibition.

In the wake of “polarising” debates over trans rights, and after concerns were raised by the library’s LGBT+ staff network, it said it had decided not to include the book in the exhibition although it did still have the text in its reading rooms.

After an outcry over that decision, however, the library has said it will now include it.

“Concerned about the effect of the polarising public discourse around the subject matter, the library made the curatorial decision not to include the book in this exhibition,” it said in a statement on Thursday. “The library has since been subject to scrutiny regarding the decision.”

The U-turn comes after talks on Wednesday between the national librarian, Amina Shah; the chair of the National Library of Scotland board, Drummond Bone; and the book’s editors, Susan Dalgety and Lucy Hunter Blackburn.

Shah and Bone apologised for not consulting the editors, the library said, adding that it had had further conversations with staff “and other exhibition stakeholders”.

Dalgety and Blackburn said: “On behalf of the women who contributed to the book, the people who nominated the book, and all our readers, we are delighted that The Women Who Wouldn’t Wheesht is now taking its rightful place in the Dear Library exhibition.

“We hope this is a turning point in public discourse in Scotland, particularly around sex and gender identity, but also other topics.

“We will not progress as a nation unless we are able to celebrate our pluralist society and discuss ideas and beliefs in a rational way.

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“Public institutions have a responsibility to show leadership in strengthening national debates and helping find constructive ways through areas of disagreement.”

The book is to be placed on the exhibition’s shelves by the end of the week. The library said it would work with its editors and other exhibition stakeholders to ensure its placement was “constructive and inclusive”.

Shah said: “We aspire to bring people together, and encourage respectful and constructive conversation. We will always be inclusive, and we will always welcome everyone to the library.”

Peter Mackay seems to write poetry as he speaks. An island, he ponders, “can be seen as bounded by the sea or as infinitely connected”. He is interested in the parallels between Federico García Lorca’s Andalucía and “the wet deserts of the outer Hebrides”. Poetry, he believes, “can create whole worlds and make them matter”.

It is appropriate, then, that 45-year-old Mackay was announced yesterday as Scotland’s new makar, or national poet. He is the youngest makar to date, and the first one who writes primarily in Gaelic. He is “flabbergasted and delighted” by the honour, but also “slightly bemused,” he says.

“There are so many other great, distinctive voices who could do this role and who will go on to do it in future,” he says. “It’s a huge honour, especially considering those who have come before me” – previous makars include Jackie Kay and Edwin Morgan.

Mackay started life on the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides, going on to study in Glasgow and Dublin, where he developed an interest in the links between Scottish and Irish literature. These days he divides his time between his role as senior lecturer in Literature at the University of St Andrews and writing his own poetry; his collections, 2015’s Gu Leòr/Galore, and Nàdar de/Some Kind of from 2020 were each shortlisted for the Saltire Scottish poetry book of the year.

While his first poems were published in a 2010 pamphlet, he started much earlier – a poem he wrote aged four can still be found filed safely away in his mother’s home. “I grew up in a community where there was so much music, so much song, so many stories,” Mackay says. “That meant it was always legitimate; I was allowed to write and to be a storyteller.”

Raised bilingual in Gaelic and English, Mackay also speaks Spanish, Danish and Irish, and the relationship of languages to each other and to culture more widely features heavily in both his work to date and his ambitions as makar. His poems usually begin life in Gaelic, after which he roughly translates them into English before the two diverge and grow apart – a process he describes as “necessarily dishonest translation” because, in a nod to Emily Dickinson, “every language tells its truth”.

His appointment comes amid a national conversation about the future of Scotland’s native languages, Gaelic and Scots, as the number of speakers of each dwindles. The Scottish languages bill, which would give both official status, will have its final reading during Mackay’s tenure.

“It’s useful to have a Gaelic speaker in the role for that, to contribute to discussions about all the different languages spoken in the country today, and to try and build as many bridges as possible between Gaelic, Scots, Polish, Urdu and all those other languages,” he says. “I’m interested in how Scotland has always been multilingual, and multilingual in ever-increasing and fun ways.”

Poetry can play a role in keeping endangered languages alive, he believes, by “pushing the boundaries of what can be done”.

“One of the dangers when a language is under threat is you get very conservative and say nothing can change, but these have to be living languages; they have to be able to evolve and change.”

But, he notes, that comes with its own responsibilities. “I’m somebody who is reluctant to take on the role of representing anybody else. I think it’s important symbolically that there is a Gaelic makar and I’m grateful and honoured that it’s me, but I do have a sense that everything I do is partly also representing Gaelic speakers and poets as well as my own work and merits – and that’s a lot of different hats to wear and people to do the best possible job for.”

The makar is tasked with promoting poetry across Scotland and producing work that responds to national moments. Mackay expects to engage with themes of climate and environment that characterised the tenure of his predecessor Kathleen Jamie – which is just as well because, he says, the Gaelic language is “landscape-heavy”.

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“I sometimes have a slightly annoyed voice in my head that says ‘there must be more themes than birds, weather, trees’… but it provides an opportunity to continue conversations about nature and the environment, and to see what we can learn between languages,” he says.

The 2026 Commonwealth Games, which will be hosted in Glasgow, provide another such chance to “talk about the world in different languages,” he believes. “Perhaps it’s ironic given the role, but I’m interested in looking beyond the national boundaries of poetry.”

It is an exciting time to become makar, 20 years after the role was established, says Mackay. “Poetry in Scotland is in a really solid and interesting place – the role has really placed it at the heart of Scottish public life, but the poetry culture has also changed in that time.

“Now there are slams, readings, different types of poetry – performance and social media alongside traditional forms which are encouraging whole new generations to become engaged in a different way. The makar allows for those conversations to happen but can also be an instigator for new ways of thinking about poetry.”

Does this mean we’ll be seeing the first TikTok makar? “I’d have to improve my TikTok game for that to happen,” he laughs. But in verbalising his feelings on the brink of his tenure, it’s a surprisingly modern wordsmith he reaches for.

“We’ll just have to see how the next couple of weeks and months go,” he says. “And – in the words of RuPaul – try not to fuck it up.”

Cambridge University Library will soon be asked to return Scotland’s oldest surviving manuscript.

SNP councillor Glen Reid plans to write to the university in the new year to “begin a dialogue” about getting the Book of Deer – which features the oldest surviving example of written Scots Gaelic – permanently returned to Scotland.

The 10th-century book contains the gospels in Latin, with Gaelic annotations in the margins added in the 12th century. The annotations related to the monastery of Deer in Aberdeenshire, giving the book its name. In November, the exact location of the monastery was discovered during an archaeological dig.

Reid said that the book, which was used by monks, is “hugely significant to the Gaelic-speaking community” because it “proved that Gaelic was the common language” in Aberdeenshire. “There is a misconception that Gaelic was only spoken in the Highlands and Western Isles.”

Although it is not known when the text was taken from Scotland, it is believed that the book was stolen during the wars of Scottish independence, according to Scottish newspaper the National. It has been in the Cambridge University Library since 1715, except for a brief stint last year, when it was loaned to Aberdeen Art Gallery over the summer. It is only viewable by appointment.

“It’s the oldest surviving manuscript from Scotland and yet very little is known about it in the very area where it was written,” said Reid. There is little local knowledge because the book “sits 500 miles away, locked up and not on display. It returned on loan last year, drawing huge crowds, and we need to build on this and right this historical wrong,” he added.

Reid has twice submitted resolutions to the SNP conference asking that the Scottish government writes to the University of Cambridge to begin negotiations to transfer the manuscript back to Scotland, but they did not make the final agenda.

Reid is planning to re-submit the resolution to next year’s conference. “I will also raise this with our local MP and neighbouring authority to see if they can exert any influence,” he added.

“Last year, Cambridge University agreed to return 116 Benin Bronzes to Nigeria which were taken by British armed forces during the sacking of Benin City in 1897,” said Reid. “The Charity Commission concluded the university was ‘under a moral obligation’ to return the artefacts, and I am hopeful that a similar conclusion could be drawn about the Book of Deer.”

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Reid said that he feels a “duty” to facilitate the book’s return. “There is a cultural reason, an educational reason, an economic reason and, most importantly, a moral reason”, he added.

Cambridge University Libraries did not respond to a request for comment.