Nicola Sturgeon’s much-anticipated political memoir Frankly is now on sale after a cascade of hype and teasing interviews.

The once stratospherically popular Scottish Nationalist leader, who led her party to repeated electoral success before becoming by her own admission a polarising force in Scottish politics, reflects on her working-class upbringing and the “burning sense of destiny” that drove her.

As Scotland’s first female first minister, she participated in some of the most significant moments of modern political history – the independence referendum, the Brexit vote and its aftermath, and the Covid pandemic.

But her revelations have already inflamed many of the divisions she discusses in the book. So what have we learned?

Her relationship with Alex Salmond

Sturgeon’s political partnership with her predecessor as first minister, Alex Salmond, dominates the memoir far more than any of her romantic relationships.

She describes tensions that existed between them long before their catastrophic falling out over her government’s handling of sexual harassment complaints against him. Salmond later stood trial and was cleared of all 13 charges, although a pattern of bullying and inappropriate behaviour towards younger female staff emerged in court.

Asked directly in pre-publication interviews if she had known about Salmond’s alleged behaviour, she insisted she had not, telling Sam Baker on The Shift podcast: “I have searched my own soul over this so many times.”

The memoir includes a forensic deconstruction of the conspiracy theory espoused by Salmond before his death last autumn that the allegations were confected by Sturgeon’s inner circle – “he was determined to destroy me,” she writes – and she includes the startling suggestion that Salmond himself may have leaked the initial story to the Daily Record.

Her treatment of Salmond has drawn immediate fire from his allies. The former SNP MP Joanna Cherry accused Sturgeon of “impugning a dead man who cannot defend himself” while others have demanded a retraction and an apology to his widow, Moira.

David Clegg, the journalist who broke the story after receiving an anonymous envelope containing details of the harassment investigation, described Sturgeon’s allegation as “a conspiracy theory too far”.

He told the BBC: “It shows the level of suspicion and the deep rift that had formed between Alex Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon prior to his death.”

Gender recognition

Writing about the bruising parliamentary passage of her flagship gender recognition measures, aimed at making it easier for a trans person to change their legal sex, Sturgeon uses far more ameliorative language than she has done before.

She admits she should have considered pausing the legislation as the debate around it became increasingly toxic, although she says she still “fervently believes” that the rights of women and the interests of trans people are not irreconcilable.

She writes how she was “blindsided” when the case of the double rapist Adam Graham, who was initially sent to a female prison after self-identifying as a woman called Isla Bryson, came to light and “gave a human face to fears that until then had been abstract for most people”.

She accepts she “lost the dressing room” when she was unable to answer directly whether Bryson was a woman. In interviews now she remains evasive on that question, saying someone who commits a crime of such gravity “forfeits their right” to change gender, and explains that “anything I say about Isla Bryson will immediately be taken and transferred to every trans person”.

The campaign group For Women Scotland, which opposed the measures, has accused Sturgeon of belatedly displaying “retro reasonableness … in order to promote her book”.

Operation Branchform

Sturgeon is legally constrained in what she can write about Operation Branchform, the Police Scotland investigation into the SNP’s finances, while her husband, Peter Murrell, a former party chief executive from whom she is now separated, awaits trial for embezzlement.

But she describes feeling as if she had “fallen into the plot of a dystopian novel” when the police knocked on her door to arrest Murrell in April 2023 and she was arrested herself a few months later. “I was devastated, mortified, confused and terrified,” she says.

And although she insists she knew nothing of the alleged embezzlement, she writes of the shame she felt at how others would interpret events. “‘No smoke without fire’ is a strong human instinct,” she writes.

Independence

In another striking moment of candour, Sturgeon describes having a panic attack “on the floor of my home office, crying and struggling to breathe” as she struggled to edit the Scottish government’s white paper on independence.

The 2014 campaign was “like trying to push a boulder up hill”, she writes, and she is particularly critical of what she describes as biased and London-centric media coverage.

She assesses her later strategy critically and accepts she was “probably wrong” to try to cast the 2024 general election as a de facto independence referendum – but predicts that “within 20 years … the UK in its current form will no longer exist”.

Personal relationships

In a line pored over by interviewers, she writes: “I have never considered sexuality, my own included, to be binary.” Pressed on what she meant by this, Sturgeon – who has been the subject of prurient and often lesbophobic speculation in the past – said she was not intending “some big revelation” and that she hoped in future her relationships would remain private matters.

On the breakup of her marriage, she writes that the strain of the police investigation was “impossible to bear”. She also writes with graphic honesty about the gruelling miscarriage she went through aged 40, and shares the name she had chosen for the baby, whom she believed would be a girl, Isla.

Toll of Covid

The title of the memoir, Frankly, raised some eyebrows when it was announced considering the repeated criticisms of Sturgeon’s government for its lack of transparency, in particular during the Covid pandemic. Evidence to the UK Covid inquiry revealed mass deletions of WhatsApp messages by senior Scottish government figures and unminuted crisis meetings.

Sturgeon reveals she sought counselling for the first time in her life when she came “perilously close to a breakdown” after giving evidence to the inquiry – where she was confronted with a “devastating” accusation that she had been self-serving and politically motivated.

Sexism and self-criticism

Sturgeon writes of the misogyny and sexism she faced – “so endemic that I didn’t always recognise it as such” – and the pressures she put on herself. “Living up to the honour of being the first female incumbent of my office became almost an obsession,” she says.

She sets out how a male MSP bullied her during her first term at Holyrood, spreading a “horrible” rumour that she had injured a boyfriend during oral sex and giving her the nickname “gnasher”.

She also writes about how she was accompanied by almost crippling self-doubt, but she told Baker on The Shift that she believed her lack of confidence became her “superpower” as it fuelled her ferocious work ethic and determination to succeed.

London calling?

Sturgeon says at the conclusion of her memoir that she is more content and more resilient than she has ever been, and that the process of writing has been “a form of therapy in action … amidst a constant cacophony of voices claiming to know me better than I do myself”.

She has hinted she may leave Scotland for a time, telling a BBC News podcast: “This may shock many people to hear, but I love London.”

• Frankly by Nicola Sturgeon (Pan Macmillan, £28). To order a copy for £23.80 go to guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.