In his autobiography, Powell describes Caledonia, a poem of 154 lines, as a "counter-satire in the eighteenth century manner" on a number of books which had appeared at this period "written in a somewhat self-applauding tone by Scotchmen on the subject of Scotland (or condescendingly humourous about the rest of Great Britain)." Most of the poem was jotted down piecemeal during bouts of insomnia. Constant Lambert wrote the twelve-line section on Scottish music, Edward Burra designed the frontispiece and the whole was printed by Desmond Ryan as a wedding present for Powell, who was married at the end of 1934. "Like Ryan himself, the printer was somewhat given to the bottle, and Caledonia, a treasure-house of long forgotten topical references, is also notable for its misprints."