Why is national character so important? In Georgia the answer may lie in its unique brands of outlawism, 19th century poetry, and rich viniculture. It explains why Joseph Stalin codenamed himself "koba" after an outflaw from local literature. How strains of a similar Romantic banditry also created the world's first genuine Social Democratic country - the Georgian Republic of 1918-21. How this stood on the shoulders of a banker, publisher-provocateur, "Father of the nation" an asutere mountain poet; a mysteriously disappearing translator of Shakespeare, an obsessive Georgian language campaigner and children's writer. Also how this distinctive character still very much walks the nation's streets today.