Sorry, I don't know anything about Literature, so I'll leave that for one of the others.
But the other questions I can answer.
1) Sorry, but St Andrews is quite an expensive place to live. It's also a great place to live, and you can see that if you come to an open day/have been to one. But if you budget, then St Andrews turns out not too be too expensive. I manage fine.
2) My guess is that the cheapest would be train (you can get direct from Birmingham New Street to Edinburgh and from there a train to Leuchars). From what I can see it would be around the £40 if you have a Young Person's Railcard. Maybe less if you get in early on the advance tickets and chose awkward times to travel.
3) The only times you will most likely "need" to go home is during Christmas and the January inter-semester period. Your room contract doesn't cover that 1 month. But apart from that the period covered on your contract takes you from the very beginning of Freshers' week to the very end of the May exam period. So hopefully you won't have to keep travelling forwards and backwards from home (unless you want to go home for a weekend etc).
4) Yes, there are room checks. And it feels like they vary between halls, but typically if you're self-catered then it'll be something like a monthly check to see that you're cleaning your room and flat/house. They also keep an eye out for things you not allowed, e.g. candles, dangly lights etc. Details of what you're not allowed can be read in the
Terms & Conditions (they're sort of dotted about everywhere...).
What you might be thinking about with confiscation is previous discussions about people's laptops and other things being taken. This happens during routine PAT Testing (where they make sure your electrical equipment is electrically safe) and in some very rare cases, things like laptops have had to be confiscated because they failed the testing. But that's it really.
I hope this helps, I know I can ramble on a bit.