Nicola Sturgeon fears the Brexit vote has taken the UK back to what she hoped was "a bygone age" of racism and intolerance.

The First Minister told Scots Makar Jackie Kay a story the poet recounted in her memoirs about a racist attack in the early 1980s felt "a bit too current" when she re-read it after the vote to leave the EU.

In a conversation at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, Kay recalled how she was attacked in the London Underground by "fascists".

She said her pleas for help were snubbed by professional-looking onlookers who said they supported the racists.

Sturgeon also noted the original title of Kay's poem Extinction, about climate change and immigration, was Planet Farage.

The First Minister said: "It's very powerful. Race is very much a theme of your work. I read Red Dust Road when it first came out (in 2010) and there is a scene from around 1980 when you were the victim of a racial attack in London and your friend stepped in and got a bloody nose.

"I read that book again this weekend and that scene really powerfully impacted on me in a way that I don't remember it doing when I read the book the first time.

"Perhaps it was because I felt that was something from a bygone age, whereas this time it reminded me of some of the stories I had heard about the racial attacks in the aftermath of the EU referendum.

"It felt a bit too current. Do you think we are at a moment where we just have to remind ourselves collectively that there is no room for complacency on racism and intolerance?"

Kay said: "Absolutely. I think we really can't be bystanders. We have to find a way to be active witnesses.

"It's really very important because we are living in such frightening times.

"When I was 19, I was on the platform at the Angel and these BNP-type people broke bottles and started to attack me and my friends, and my friend's nose was covered in blood.

"There was three businessmen on the platform and I said: 'Aren't you going to do anything to help us?' "They said: 'No, we support them.'

"It gave me such a shock. They (the attackers) were obvious fascists with T-shirts and broken bottles, but these perfectly respectable looking people said they supported them, and that has always haunted me. It was even more upsetting."

She added: "There were fascists at university and this time does take me back to that time, not in Scotland, actually, but in other parts of the country there is an atmosphere that can be picked up on.

"There is a xenophobia, there's a permission, there has been all sorts of attacks.

"I heard a Polish boy on the radio the other day saying he goes into school and people are attacking him, and these things break your heart. You think, have we sleepwalked into this, how can this be possible?"

Sturgeon urged Kay to "keep writing polemics about Nigel Farage".

Kay, who now lives in Manchester, added: "It's interesting when you come back across that border.

"It's always very resonant when you see Welcome To Scotland and it's never more resonant than now for me because Scotland does now feel like a very different country."