Search results for ""john donald publishers ltd""

Winner of the Saltire Society Scottish History Book of the Year Award Badenoch today is a landscape of empty glens and ruined settlements, but it was not always so. This book examines the transformative events that shaped the region’s destiny: climate and market forces, hunger and relief measures, sheep farms and sporting estates, agricultural improvement and proprietorial greed, and the evolution of clanship. Although this is an intensely localised study, the dramatic nature of change is explored against the wider context of events not just across the Highlands, but also within the British state and its global empire. Badenoch’s journey moves from the relative prosperity of the Napoleonic Wars into the terrible post-war destitution that devastated peasant, tacksman and Duke of Gordon alike. Estate reform and ‘improvement’ gradually brought a degree of economic and social stability, but inevitably resulted in depopulation as people were forced off the land to seek refuge in the impoverished ‘planned villages’ or to abandon their Gaelic homeland for life in the Lowlands. For those with the means, however, emigration provided lucrative opportunities unimaginable at home. Through extensive use of documentary evidence, much of it previously unseen, David Taylor paints an intimate portrait of the historically neglected region of Badenoch – one that provides a compelling new perspective on Highland history.

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The 1820 Scottish Rising has been increasingly studied in recent decades. This collection of essays looks especially at local players on the ground across multiple regional centres in the west of Scotland, as well as the wider political circumstances within government and civil society that provide the rising’s context. It examines insurrectionist preparation by radicals, the progress of the events of 1820, contemporary accounts and legacy memorialisation of 1820, including newspaper and literary testimony, and the monumental ‘afterlife’ of the rising. As well as the famous march of radicals led by John Baird and Andrew Hardie, so often seen as the centre of the 1820 ‘moment’, this volume casts light on other, more neglected insurrectionary activity within the rising and a wide set of cultural circumstances that make 1820 more complex than many would like to believe. 1820: Scottish Rebellion demonstrates that the legacy of 1820 may be approached in numerous ways that cross disciplinary boundaries and cause us to question conventional historical interpretations.

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Winner of the Frank Watson Book Prize for the best book published on Scottish History Shortlisted for the Saltire Society History Book of the Year The legendary Scottish king Máel Coluim III, also known as ‘Malcolm Canmore’, is often held to epitomise Scotland’s ‘ancient Gaelic kings’. But Máel Coluim and his dynasty were in fact newcomers, and their legitimacy and status were far from secure at the beginning of his rule. Máel Coluim’s long reign from 1058 until 1093 coincided with the Norman Conquest of England, a revolutionary event that presented great opportunities and terrible dangers. Although his interventions in post-Conquest England eventually cost him his life, the book argues that they were crucial to his success as both king and dynasty-builder, creating internal stability and facilitating the takeover of Strathclyde and Lothian. As a result, Máel Coluim left to his successors a territory that stretched far to the south of the kingship’s heartland north of the Forth, similar to the Scotland we know today. The book explores the wider political and cultural world in which Máel Coluim lived, guiding the reader through the pitfalls and possibilities offered by the sources that mediate access to that world. Our reliance on so few texts means that the eleventh century poses problems that historians of later eras can avoid. Nevertheless Scotland in Máel Coluim’s time generated unprecedented levels of attention abroad and more vernacular literary output than at any time prior to the Stewart era.

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In the course of his long poem An Airce, 'The Ark', the Jacobite poet Alexander MacDonald shows the Campbells being subjected to trial by water for the part they played in defeating Prince Charles's army in 1745-6. Some will be drowned outright, he says, some just given a good ducking - and some will be honourably treated. He names forty individuals; Ronald Black puts their lives and deeds under the microscope to see how far they deserved their allotted fate. The result is a well-balanced portrait of the leading men of Argyll in the eighteenth century and a refreshingly new perspective on one of the most colourful episodes in Scottish history: the rising of the '45 as seen through the eyes of Highlanders who helped to crush it. The Campbells of the Ark includes a detailed study of the sixty-three locally based companies of the Argyllshire Militia of 1745-6, covering every corner of this fascinating county, from Kintyre to Ardnamurchan, from Islay to Genorchy.

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Along the coast of Fife, in villages like Culross and Pittenweem, history records that some women were executed as witches. Nevertheless, the reality of what happened the night that Janet Cornfoot was lynched at Pittenweem is hard to grasp as one sits by the harbour watching the fishing boats unload their catch and the pleasure boats rising with the tide. How could people do this to an old woman? Why was no-one ever brought to justice? And why would anyone defend such a lynching? The task of the historian is to try to make events in the past come alive and seem less strange. The details of the witch-hunt are fascinating. Some of the anecdotes are strange. The modern reader finds it hard to imagine illness being blamed on the malevolence of a beggar woman denied charity, or the economic failure of a sea voyage being attributed to the village hag, not bad weather. Witch-hunting was related to ideas, values, attitudes and political events. It was a complicated process, involving religious and civil authorities, village tensions and the fears of the elite. The witch-hunt in Scotland also took place at a time when one of the main agendas was the creation of a righteous or godly society. As a result, religious authorities had control over aspects of people's lives which seem as strange to us today as beliefs about magic or witchcraft. It was not accidental that the witch-hunt in Scotland, and specifically in Fife, should have happened at this time. This book tells the story of what occurred over a period of a century and a half, and offers some explanation as to why it occurred.

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Scottish Arctic Whaling brings to light a previously little-known but important Scottish industry. The author's extensive use of original sources such as log-books and diaries shows that hundreds of whaling vessels, sailing variously from sixteen east-coast Scottish ports, harvested more than 20,000 bowhead whales at East Greenland, Davis Strait and Baffin Bay during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. And they did so under almost unimaginably demanding and hazardous conditions. More than 110 ships were lost, while others were often detained within the pack-ice, causing the whale men to suffer starvation, disease, scurvy, frostbite and death. In 1836 alone, more than 100 whalers on the Advice and Thomas, Dundee, and Dee of Aberdeen perished when they became entrapped at Davis Strait. Nevertheless, by the second half of the nineteenth century, through hard work, skill and perseverance, Scotland had a virtual monopoly on Arctic oil and bone, until seriously depleted stocks and the outbreak of the First World War brought the industry to a close.

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Land for the People? covers a previously neglected period which saw the formative legislation and policies which continue to shape Highland life. Drawing on a wider range of sources, both public and private, than hitherto, Ewen Cameron delivers an impartial corrective to so many previous emotional studies. Both crofters and landlords emerge from scrutiny with more ambiguous reputations than previous hagiographies and demonologies have been prepared to allow.

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This is the story of a Scottish island as it has never been told before. While many books on the Hebrides are a litany of agricultural statistics and population movements, this is the story of the landlords, tacksmen, cottars and others who actually lived on or visited the island of Mull. It is based on research into a vast archive of rarely seen or previously unknown documents, particularly the original correspondence of the principal families, Macleans and Maclaines. In this book Jo Currie relates how the emigration that led to the disappearance of most of the island's native population during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries did not follow the pattern of clearance seen in other parts of the country. It was instead caused by the long deterioration in relationships between the gentry, the 'half gentry' and commoners and the inexorable forces of economic change during these centuries. This is the first serious history ever written of one of the most beautiful and most visited of Hebridean islands and is the product of fifteen years' research. It is lavishly illustrated with a wealth of previously unpublished pictures. The result is one of the most important books on Hebridean history yet written, told throughout with humour and masterful characterisation.

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James VII and II is one of the least studied monarchs of Scotland, and has previously mostly been studied from an English perspective or as the muddled victim of the revolution of 1688/9 which delivered for Britain much-vaunted political emancipation. This book provides the first complete portrait of James as a Stewart prince of Scotland, as duke of Albany and King of Scots. It re-evaluates the traditional views of James as a Catholic extremist and absolutist who failed through incompetence, and challenges preconceptions based on strong views of his failings, both in popular belief and serious history. Investigating the personality and motives of the man, this biography assesses James as commander, as Christian and as king, but also as family man and Restoration libertine - a prince of his time. Painting a picture of James from cradle to grave, from childhood to resigned exile, it brings him to life within his Scottish context and as a member of the royal line of Scotland. The journey from dashing young cavalry commander to pious prince in exile appears oddly incongruous given the political and personal trials that lay between. That journey was much more of Scotland than previous studies have suggested - indeed, James was in many ways the last King of Scots.

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James III is the most enigmatic of the Stewart kings of Scotland. Variously characterised as artistic, peace-loving, morbidly suspicious, treacherous, pious, lecherous and lazy, King James was much criticised by contemporaries and later chroniclers for his failure to do his job in the manner expected of him, and particularly for his reliance on low-born favourites to the exclusion of his 'natural' counsellors, the nobility. Specific complaints included debasement of the coinage, royal hoarding of money, failure to staunch feuds and to enforce criminal justice. Yet James III has also been seen as a major patron of the arts, as Scotland's first Renaissance king, and as the architect of an intelligent and forward-looking foreign policy. In this new study, the author explores all these areas and seeks to explain why King James was challenged by a huge rebellion in 1482, which he narrowly survived, and why he succumbed to a further rising in 1488, which placed his eldest son on the throne as James IV.

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James V suffered the fate of many a son of a famous father in being somewhat overshadowed not only by his father James IV but also by his internationally renowned daughter Mary Queen of Scots. But no-one would deny the importance of his reign, embracing as it did the establishment of the Court of Session, the birthpangs of religious dissent, and the growth of royal power to such a remarkable extent that this king could leave his kingdom for nine months in 1536-7 without fear of rebellion. Jamie Cameron concentrates on James V's style of government and relations with his nobility, and challenges the widely held view of a vindictive and irrational king, motivated largely by greed, who antagonised most of his leading magnates and met his just deserts when they refused to support him in 1542. This book offers a different view, and presents us with a rounded picture of a king whose approach to government, in spite of some personal defects, closely resembles that of his supposedly more popular father; and, like James IV himself, retained impressive magnate support to the end of his reign.

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Drawing together the evidence of archaeology, palaeoecology, climate history and the historical record, this first environmental history of Scotland explores the interaction of human populations with the land, waters, forests and wildlife.This volume spans 450 years that saw profound transformation in Scotland's environment. It begins in the fifteenth century, when the Golden Age' of the early 1200s was but a fading folk memory in a land gripped by the gathering grimness of a little ice age'. Colder, wetter, stormier weather became the new normal, interspersed with brief episodes of warmer but still moist conditions, all of which brought huge challenges to a society on the knife-edge of subsistence. Viewing the religious and political upheavals of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries against the cycles of disease and dearth that were ever-present into the later 1700s, the book explores the slow adoption and application of the ideas of Improvement' and the radical disruption of Scotl

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The Great Hunger in nineteenth-century Ireland was a major human tragedy of modern times. Almost a million perished and a further two million emigrated in the wake of potato blight and economic collapse. Acute famine also gripped the Scottish Highlands at the same time, causing misery, hardship and distress. The story of that lesser known human disaster is told in this prize-winning and internationally acclaimed book. The author describes the classic themes of highland and Scottish history, including the clearances, landlordism, crofting life, emigration and migration in a subtle and intricate reconstruction based on a wide range of sources. This book should appeal to all those with an interest in Scottish history, the emigration of Scottish people and the Highland Clearances.

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The archipelagic kingdoms of Man and the Isles that flourished from the last quarter of the eleventh century down to the middle of the thirteenth century represent two forgotten kingdoms of the medieval British Isles. They were ruled by powerful individuals, with unquestionably regnal status, who interacted in a variety of ways with rulers of surrounding lands and who left their footprint on a wide range of written documents and upon the very landscapes and seascapes of the islands they ruled. Yet British history has tended to overlook these Late Norse maritime empires, which thrived for two centuries on the Atlantic frontiers of Britain. This book represents the first ever overview of both Manx and Hebridean dynasties that dominated Man and the Isles from the late eleventh to the mid-thirteenth centuries. Coverage is broad and is not restricted to politics and warfare. An introductory chapter examines the maritime context of the kingdoms in light of recent work in the field of maritime history, while subsequent chronological and narrative chapters trace the history of the kingdoms from their origins through their maturity to their demise in the thirteenth century. Separate chapters examine the economy and society, church and religion, power and architecture.

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The Scottish landscape is justly famed for its beauty and diversity, and Scots law provides good opportunities for people to enjoy access to this land. This book aims to provide a user-friendly guide to the law of access in Scotland. It explains how the law works to regulate access to Scotland’s outdoors, who might be entitled to access land or inland waters, and the activities people are entitled to do there. An understanding of the multilayered framework of the law is crucial to clarify the rights and responsibilities of users and landowners/occupiers, and to minimise and resolve conflict. This book will be of particular value to access professionals and advisers but is also suitable for general readers who are broadly interested in the subject or are seeking an answer to a specific point. The Scottish Rights of Way and Access Society (‘ScotWays’) is a charitable body dedicated to providing information and assistance about responsible access to land. It commends this book to all who cherish our country.

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David I was never expected to become king, but on succeeding to the Scottish throne in 1124 he quickly demonstrated that he had the skills, ruthlessness and ambition to become one of the kingdom’s greatest rulers. Drawing on the experiences and connections of his youth spent at the court of his brother-in-law, Henry I of England, and moulded by the dominant personality and intense piety of his mother, St Margaret, he set out to transform his inheritance and create a powerful and dynamic kingship. After neutralising all challengers to his position and building a new powerbase that drew on support from both Scotland’s native nobles and the English and French knights whom he settled in his realm, David emerged as a power-broker in mid twelfth-century Britain as England descended into civil war. He pursued his wife Matilda’s lost inheritance in Northumbria, gaining control over much of northern England and giving him access to economic resources that allowed him to invest in patronage of the reformed monastic orders, and in the reconfiguration of the secular Church in Scotland. The peace and stability of his kingdom, coupled with the economic boom brought by burgeoning population during an era of benign climate conditions, secured him a reputation as a saintly visionary who achieved the cultural and political transformation of Scotland.

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Shortlisted for the Saltire Society Scottish History Book of the Year Award James VI and I was arguably the most successful ruler of the Stewart Dynasty in Scotland, and the first king of a united Great Britain. His ableness as a monarch, it has been argued, stemmed largely from his Scottish upbringing. This book is the first in-depth scholarly study of those formative years. It tries to understand exactly when in James' 'long apprenticeship' he seized political power and retraces the incremental steps he took along the way. It also poses new answers to key questions about this process. What relationship did he have with his mother Mary Queen of Scots? Why did he favour his kinsman Esmé Stuart, ultimately Duke of Lennox, to such an extent that it endangered his own throne? And was there a discernible pattern of intent to the alliances he made with the various factions at court between 1578 and 1585? This book also analyses James’ early reign as an important case study of the impact of the Reformation on the monarchy of early modern Europe, and examines the cultural activity at James' early court.

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The true story of the Lady of the Mercians. At the end of the ninth century AD, a large part of what is now England was controlled by the Vikings – heathen warriors from Scandinavia who had been attacking the British Isles for more than a hundred years. Alfred the Great, king of Wessex, was determined to regain the conquered lands but his death in 899 meant that the task passed to his son Edward. In the early 900s, Edward led a great fightback against the Viking armies. He was assisted by the English rulers of Mercia: Lord Æthelred and his wife Æthelflæd (Edward’s sister). After her husband’s death, Æthelflæd ruled Mercia on her own, leading the army to war and working with her brother to achieve their father’s aims. Known to history as the Lady of the Mercians, she earned a reputation as a competent general and was feared by her enemies. She helped to save England from the Vikings and is one of the most famous women of the Dark Ages. This book, published 1100 years after her death, tells her remarkable story.

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John Bannerman (1932-2008) saw the history of Scotland from a Gaelic perspective, and his outstanding scholarship made that perspective impossible to ignore. As a historian, his natural home was the era between the Romans and the twelfth century when the Scottish kingdom first began to take shape, but he also wrote extensively on the MacDonald Lordship of the Isles in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, while his work on the Beatons, the notable Gaelic medical kindred, reached into the early eighteenth century. Across this long millennium, Bannerman ranged and wrote with authority and insight on what he termed the 'kin-based society', with special emphasis upon its church and culture, and its relationship with Ireland. This collection opens with Bannerman's ground-breaking and hugely influential edition and discussion of Senchus fer nAlban ('The History of the Men of Scotland'), which featured in his Studies in the History of Dalriada (1974), now long out of print. To this have been added all of his published essays, plus an essay-length study of the Lordship of the Isles which first featured as an appendix in Late Medieval Monumental Sculpture in the West Highlands (1977). The book will be of interest to anyone who wants to know more about the Gaelic dimension to Scotland's past and present.

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The publication of 'An Introduction to Scottish Ethnology' sees the completion of the fourteen-volume Scottish Life and Society series, originally conceived by the eminent ethnologist Professor Alexander Fenton. The series explores the many elements in Scottish history, language and culture which have shaped the identity of Scotland and Scots at local, regional and national level, placing these in an international context. Each of the thirteen volumes already published focuses on a particular theme or institution within Scottish society. This introduction provides an overview of the discipline of ethnology as it has developed in Scotland and more widely, the sources and methods for its study, and practical guidance on the means by which it can be examined within its constituent genres, based on the experience of those currently working with ethnological materials. Theory and practice are presented in an accessible fashion, making it an ideal companion for the student, the scholar and the interested amateur alike.

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Writing on a small island in the Firth of Forth in the 1440s, Walter Bower set out to tell the whole story of the Scottish nation in a single huge book, the Scotichronicon - 'a history book for Scots'. It begins with the mythical voyage of Scota, the Pharaoh's daughter, from Egypt with the Stone of Destiny. The land that her sons discovered in the Western Ocean was named after her: Scotland. It goes on to describe the turbulent events that followed, among them the wars of the Scots and the Picts (begun by a quarrel over a dog); the poisoning of King Fergus by his wife; Macbeth's usurpation and uneasy reign; the good deeds of Margaret, queen and saint; Bruce's murder of the Red Comyn; the founding of Scotland's first university at St Andrews; the 'Burnt Candlemas'; and the endless troubles between Scotland and England. Weaving in and out of the events of Bower's factual history, like a wonderful pageant, are other subjects that fascinated him: harrowing visions of hell and purgatory, extraordinary miracles; the exploits of knights and beggars, merchants and monks; the ravages of flood and fire; the terrors of the plague; and the answers to such puzzling questions as what makes a good king, and why Englishmen have tails. In 1998 Donald Watt and his team of scholars completed the first modern edition and translation of Scotichronicon in nine volumes. It has been described as 'a massive achievement for Scottish cultural history' (Sally Mapstone) and 'an open invitation to join a voyage of discovery' (Books in Scotland). This selection from the whole of Scotichronicon puts Bower's epic of Scotland into the hands of the general reader. It is a marvellous and unforgettable story. Perhaps its importance is best summed up by Bower himself, who wrote at the end of it: Non Scotus est Christe cui liber non placet iste - Christ! He is not a Scot who is not pleased with this book! A History Book for Scots is selected from the complete edition of Scotichronicon by Walter Bower, edited by D E R Watt and a team of scholars, in nine volumes. This monumental work of scholarship, in which the original Latin text appears side by side with a translation in modern English, was completed in 1998. Extensive introductory material and notes guide the reader through the complexities of Bower's history and its background.

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The North Britons are the least-known among the inhabitants of early medieval Scotland. Like the Picts and Vikings they played an important role in the shaping of Scottish history during the first millennium AD but their part is often neglected or ignored. This book aims to redress the balance by tracing the history of this native Celtic people through the troubled centuries from the departure of the Romans to the arrival of the Normans. The fortunes of Strathclyde, the last-surviving kingdom of the North Britons, are studied from its emergence at Dumbarton in the fifth century to its eventual demise in the eleventh. Other kingdoms, such as the Edinburgh-based realm of Gododdin and the mysterious Rheged, are examined alongside fragments of heroic poetry celebrating the valour of their warriors. Behind the recurrent themes of warfare and political rivalry runs a parallel thread dealing with the growth of Christianity and the influence of the Church in the affairs of kings. Important ecclesiastical figures such as Ninian of Whithorn and Kentigern of Glasgow are discussed, partly in the hope of unearthing their true identities among a tangled web of sources. The closing chapters of the book look at how and why the North Britons lost their distinct identity to join their old enemies the Picts as one of Scotland's vanished nations.

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The movement of people, goods, services, ideas and information has dictated the nature of everyday life in Scotland since the earliest times, and has helped to determine the boundaries and character of the nation itself. This multi-author volume explores a variety of topics on the broad theme of transport and communications. The chapters are divided into five thematic sections: water transport, land transport, air transport, communications, and transport and communications in their wider contexts. The chronological and geographical coverage is wide, ranging from the birlinns of the medieval western seaboard to aviation in the Northern Isles, and a variety of approaches to the study of the subject is offered. Each chapter can stand alone, but taken together they indicate the profound influence that transport and communications have on Scottish life and society.

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The Highland bagpipe has long been a central strand of Scottish identity, but what happened to the Highland bagpipe in the two centuries following Culloden? How was its music transmitted and received? This study presents contemporary evidence and uses a range of methods to recreate the changing world of the pipers as they influenced and were influenced by the transformation in Scottish society. This book is intended for pipers exploring the achievements and musical concerns of their predecessors; for the general reader interested in a music whose history is akin to that of Scotland's poetry and song; and for all students of the process of tradition.Combining newspaper and manuscript evidence from the pipers themselves with a wide range of historical sources, the author harnesses the insights of the practical player to those of the historian and provides a fresh account of the players and their musical traditions, which have previously been the subject of much myth-making. This is the first history of the musical culture of the worldwide piping community.

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Why did Scots in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries know so little about their past and even less about those who controlled their history? Is the historical narrative the only legitimate medium through which the past can be made known? Are novelists and historians as far apart as convention has it? In an age when history grounds any claims to national status, these are important questions and they have implications for how Scottish history has evolved, and how Scottish identity has been understood up to the present day.Scottish history is not simply the distillation of Scotland's past: authors shape what we know and how we judge our forebears. This book investigates who decided which Scottish voices of the past would be heard in history's pages and which would ultimately be silenced. It sketches a picture of a narrow and privileged cultural elite that responded belatedly to a more democratic age and only slowly embraced women writers and the interests of average' Scots. Integratin

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Its overall aim is to examine the interlocking strands of history, language and traditional culture within an international context and their contribution to the making of a national identity. Each volume is a detailed examination of a societal topic and can stand-alone. Together, the fourteen volumes set a cultural benchmark for the new millennium and are of immense value to our understanding of what has shaped Scottish society today.

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Winner of the Saltire Society Scottish History Book of the Year 2019 Presiding over an age of relative peace and prosperity, Alexander III represented the zenith of Scottish medieval kingship. The events which followed his early and unexpected death plunged Scotland into turmoil, and into a period of warfare and internal decline which almost brought about the demise of the Scottish state. This study fills a serious gap in the historiography of medieval Scotland. For many decades, even centuries, Scotland’s medieval kingship has been regarded as a close likeness of the English monarchy, having been ‘modernised’ in that image by the twelfth- and thirteenth-century kings, who had close relationships with their southern counterparts. Recent research has cast doubt on that view, and this examination of Alexander III’s reign is based on a view of Scottish kingship which depends on much firmer continuity with its earlier, celtic past. It challenges accepted truth, revealing that the nature of state and government, and the relationships between ruler and subject, were quite different from the previous ‘received view’. On the cusp of a dynastic catastrophe which led to economic and political disaster, Alexander III’s reign captures a snapshot of Scotland at the end of a period of sustained peace and development: a view of the medieval state as it really was.

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In the summer of 1411, the ageing Donald of Isla, Lord of the Isles, invaded mainland Scotland with a huge, battle-hardened army, only to be fought to a bloody standstill on the plateau of Harlaw, fifteen miles from Aberdeen, a town he had threatened to sack. One of the greatest battles in Scottish history, described by hardened mediaeval chroniclers as 'atrocious', 'Reid Harlaw' left some 3,000 dead and wounded. Dismissed by Scott as a 'Celt v. Saxon' power struggle, it has faded from historical memory, other than in the north-east of Scotland. Written records in Latin, Scots, Gaelic and English are presented in their original form, and with transcriptions and translations. Two major ballads are analysed, one contemporary, and one fabricated over 350 years later - which is still sung. Lowland views dominate, because of the loss and destruction of Highland records, notably those of the Lords of the Isles themselves. The histories themselves fall into two groups - those written at or around the time, and those composed some 300 years later.These later accounts form the basis of most modern descriptions of the battle, but they tend to be romantic and highly imaginative, creating noble order where chaos once existed.

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Challenging the conventional interpretation of Mary of Guise as the defender of Catholicism whose regime climaxed with the Reformation Rebellion, Pamela Ritchie shows that Mary was, on the contrary, a shrewd and effective politique, whose own dynastic interests and those of her daughter took precedence over her personal and religious convictions. Dynasticism, not Catholicism, was the prime motive force behind her policy. Mary of Guise’s dynasticism, and political career as a whole, were inextricably associated with those of Mary Queen of Scots, whose Scottish sovereignty, Catholic claim to the English throne and betrothal to the Dauphin of France carried with them notions of Franco-British Imperialism. Mary of Guise's policy in Scotland was dictated by European dynastic politics and, specifically, by the Franco-Scottish alliance of 1548–1560. Significantly more than a betrothal contract, the Treaty of Haddington established a ‘protectoral’ relationship between the ‘auld allies’ whereby Henri II was able to assume control over Scottish military affairs, diplomacy and foreign policy as the ‘protector’ of Scotland. Mary of Guise’s assumption of the regency in 1554 completed the process of establishing French power in Scotland, which was later consolidated, albeit briefly, by the marriage of Mary Stewart to Francois Valois in 1558. International considerations undermined her policies and weakened her administration, but only with her death did Mary of Guise’s regime and French power in Scotland truly collapse.

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There has been very little previous attention paid to Scottish civilians during the Great War, but, as is revealed here, Scotland had its own unique experience. Of multi-disciplinary interest for academics, and of broad general interest too, this is the only single-volume study of the impact of the Great War on Scotland. Topics include conscientious objection, voluntary recruitment, press coverage, gender and the war, and the Scottish Highlands and the war.

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The Hebridean island of Islay is well-known for its whisky, its wildlife and its association with the MacDonald Lords of the Isles. There would seem to be little reason to dwell on its fate at the hands of marauding Northmen during the Viking Age. Despite a pivotal location on the 'sea road' from Norway to Ireland, there are no convincing records of the Vikings ever having been there. In recent years, historians have been keen to marginalise the island's Viking experience, choosing instead to focus on the enduring stability of native Celtic culture, and tracing the island's modern Gaelic traditions back in an unbroken chain to the dawn of the Christian era. However, the foundations of this presumption are flawed. With no written accounts to go by, the real story of Islay's Viking Age has to be read from another type of source material - the silent witness of the names of local places. The Vikings in Islay presents a systematic review of around 240 of the island's farm and nature names. The conclusions drawn turn traditional assumptions on their head. The romance of Islay's names, it seems, masks a harrowing tale of invasion, apartheid and ethnic cleansing.

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This book is the first volume to scrutinise in detail the history of the Highlands and Islands incorporating the most up-to-date research. It examines the evolution of the idea of 'Celtic Scotland', tracing the historiography of the Gaidhealtachd through the Caledonians, the Picts and the first medieval writings in the area. It investigates such areas as Galloway as well as surveying politics, culture and the church in the context of the great medieval lordships such as those of the Isles, Argyll, Moray and Ross and demonstrates how the histories of such provinces were integrated into that of Scotland at large.

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Through his personality, ingenuity and ability, he initiated a resistance movement which ultimately secured the nation's freedom and independence. Yet, Wallace was reviled, opposed and eventually betrayed by the nobility in his own day to re-surface in the epic poetry of the fifteenth century as a champion and liberator. Eventually, his legend overtook the historical reality, a process which has continued for centuries as manifested in modern media and film. A team of leading historians and critics from both Scotland and England investigate what is known of the medieval warrior's career from contemporary sources, most of which, unusually for a national hero, were created by his enemies. His reputation, from the time of his horrendous execution to the present, is examined to ascertain what the figure of Wallace meant to different generations of Scots. Too dangerous perhaps for his own era, he became the supreme Scottish hero of all time; the archetypal Scot who would teach kings and nobles where their duty lay, and who would live free or freely die for the liberty of his nation.

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Reading original documents is the only way to achieve a sound basis in historical studies and to acquire a true perspective on cultural evolution. Much modern research has been applied to Scotland's history, but until this volume there has been no comprehensive study of the country's handwriting for nearly 250 years. The main body of this book consists of facsimile texts, each facing a detailed transcript and commentary. The historical background of handwriting usage is surveyed in the introduction, with emphasis on changing fashions. There is also guidance on how to deal with early language and abbreviations. The principal aim is to assist research students, local historians, genealogists and calligraphers in their studies; but this work also recovers a lost chapter in the history of Scottish studies.

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In this study of the reign of James II of Scotland, the king is viewed in the context of the Stewart monarchy, from his struggles to overcome his early adversity and the legacy of his father's style of kingship, to the serious political crises of his reign. The relations between the king and his subjects, and the complex balance of power in medieval Scotland are examined, particularly the significant crisis precipitated by James II's attack on the Black Douglases, the greatest of all late medieval magnate families. The changing nature of political involvement among the nobility and the role of Parliament in influencing events are explored, as are the efforts of the king to recover and promote royal authority in the final years of his reign. The role of James II in the wider European context is also studied with a view to shedding light on contemporary perceptions of the Stewart monarchy both at home and abroad. The study is based on contemporary chronicle and official sources, and consideration is also given to later, highly coloured views of James II, which have influenced popular views of the king to the present day.

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This study examines the political ambitions and influences of the Balliol dynasty in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries in Scotland, England and France. The generally accepted opinion in previous historiography was that John (II), king of Scots from 1292 to 1296, and Edward Balliol (d. 1364) were politically weak men and unsuccessful kings. In a reassessment of the patriarch of the family, John (I) (d.1268), the Balliols are revealed as committed English lords and loyal servants of the kings of England, underlining how the family has been unfairly judged for centuries by both chroniclers and historians, who have assessed them as Scottish kings rather than as English lords. Despite the forfeiture of the Balliol estates in England and Scotland in 1926, John (II) and Edward retained close relationships with the successive English kings and used these connections to fuel their political ambitions. Their kingships illustrate their desires to recover some influence in English politics which the family had enjoyed in the mid-thirteenth century. This re-evaluation of the Balliols highlights their relationship with the English crown.

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The story of 'home life' in Scotland is one which is familiar and varied. This wide-ranging volume considers Scotland's domestic life by examining that variety, and considering changes in the structures in which Scots have lived and the ways in which they have lived in those homes. The great advantage of studying domestic life is that, it is something to which everyone can relate, no matter his or her background. Most of us are in some way already ethnologists of the home. "Scottish Life and Society: A Compendium of Scottish Ethnology" is a major project of the European Ethnological Research Centre in fourteen volumes. Its overall aim is to examine the interlocking strands of history, language and traditional culture within an international context and their contribution to the making of a national identity. Each volume is a detailed examination of a societal topic and can stand alone. Together, the fourteen volumes set a cultural benchmark for the new millennium and are of immense value to our understanding of what has shaped Scottish society today.

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The events of 1000-1130 were crucial to the successful emergence of the medieval kingdom of the Scots. Yet this is one of the least researched periods of Scottish history. We probably now know more about the Picts than the post-1000 events that underpinned the spectacular expansion of the small kingdom which came to dominate north Britain by the 1130s. This expansion included the defeat and absorption of other significant cultural and political groups to the north and south of the core kingdom, and was accompanied by the introduction of reformed monasticism. But perhaps the most momentous process amongst all these political and cultural changes was the move towards the domination of the kingship by just one segment of the royal kindred, the sons of King Mael Coluim mac Donnchada's second marriage to Queen Margaret. The story of how these sons managed to achieve political supremacy through machination, murder and mutilation runs like an unsavoury thread throughout this book. The book also investigates the building blocks from which the kingdom was constructed and the various processes which eventually allowed the kings of the different peoples of north Britain to describe themselves as Rex scottorum. It is a hugely rewarding voyage of discovery for anyone interested in the formation of the kingdom of the Scots.

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In the 1880s two Edinburgh architects began to survey, measure and sketch the castles of Scotland, travelling the length and breadth of the country on trains, bicycles and on foot. Together they produced the five magnificent volumes of The Castellated and Domestic Architecture of Scotland, an unrivalled work of research that surveys more than 700 of Scotland's castellated buildings, ranging from great medieval fortresses to small lairds' houses with pepper-pot turrets, and is illustrated with thousands of sketches and plans.The first part of A Passion for Castles tells the life stories of David MacGibbon and Thomas Ross and their work as Edinburgh architects before they embarked on their magisterial survey, revealing interesting and previously unknown details about the two men. The second part of the book sets their enormously ambitious castles project in its historical context, and describes how MacGibbon and Ross managed to achieve their pioneering, systematic and comprehensive surve

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In this ground-breaking study of the medieval parliament, Roland Tanner gives the Scottish Parliament a human face by examining the actions and motives of those who attended. In the past, the Scottish Parliament was seen as a weak and ineffective institution – damned because of its failure to be more like its English counterpart. But Roland Tanner shows that the old picture of weakness is far from accurate. In its very different way, the Scottish Parliament was every bit as powerful as the English institution. The ‘Three Estates’ (the clergy, nobility and burgh representatives who attended Parliament) were able to wield a surprising degree of control over the Crown during the fifteenth century. For instance, they threatened to lock James I’s taxation in a box to which he, the king, would have no access, made James II swear not to alter acts of Parliament, and prevented him from using his own lands and wealth as patronage for his supporters, and forbade James III to leave the country. Roland Tanner has avoided a dry constitutional approach. Instead he has sought to bring Parliament to life through the people who attended, the reasons why they attended, and the complex interactions which occurred when all the most wealthy, powerful and ambitious people in the kingdom gathered in one place.

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The Glasgow Enlightenment is widely regarded as the first book to explore the nature and accomplishments of the Enlightenment in eighteenth-century Glasgow in a comprehensive manner. In addition to a general introduction by the editors, there are seven chapters devoted to Glasgow University professors, such as Adam Smith, Francis Hutcheson, Thomas Reid, John Millar, William Leechman, and John Anderson. At a time when the Glasgow economy was booming in the strength of its trade with America, these and other Glasgow men of science and learning were making major contributions to the European world of philosophy, law, political economy, natural philosophy, medicine, and religious toleration. There are also five chapters on other individuals and topics, including the physician and author John Moore, James Boswell during his student days, images of Glasgow in popular poetry, and Popular party clergymen who challenged the dominant views of the academic Enlightenment with an alternative vision of liberty and piety. This edition features a new bibliographical preface by Richard B. Sher that discusses the substantial secondary literature on eighteenth-century Glasgow and the Glasgow Enlightenment since the original publication of this book more than a quarter of a century ago.

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Since the middle ages, Orkney has proved remarkable for the volume and the quality of its literary output. From the skalds and sagamen of the Viking age, through to the colourful folklorists, polemicists and translators of the Victorian era, and the internationally acclaimed poets and novelists of the twentieth century, Orkney has continually and self-consciously developed a unique literary culture of its own. This clearly defined artistic territory resembles a sub-nation at times, and is characterised not by insularity, but by what might be termed a positive ‘insularism’ – defining, reinventing and presenting itself to the world. The History of Orkney Literature is the first full survey of literary writing from and about the Orkney Islands. The book presents readings of uncomplicatedly Orcadian writers such as Walter Traill Dennison, Edwin Muir, Eric Linklater, Robert Rendall and George Mackay Brown. It also considers major texts written by ‘outside’ authors which are nevertheless demonstrably Orcadian in terms of their setting, style and influence. The History of Orkney Literature charts the development of this distinctly Orcadian strand within Scottish Literature, and shows how the archipelago, rather than the nation, can indeed be the defining locus of a compact and vibrant literary tradition.

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The defeat of the Scots in the Battle of Flodden in 1513 left many of the leaders of Scottish society, including King James IV, lying dead on the battlefield. The long and complex minority of King James V which followed is explored in detail in this book, bringing understanding to the evolving relationships among the Scots, English and French against the background of the wider European context of the early sixteenth century. The competing interests of England and France were personified in two of the Scottish Regents: Queen Margaret Tudor, the sister of Henry VIII, and John, Duke of Albany, James V’s nearest male heir, who had been brought up in France and represented the French connection as much as the Scots. The interests of leading Scots’ families, the Hamiltons and the Douglases, were also at the heart of the power struggle. The book offers a rare insight into a turbulent period of Scottish politics.

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The renowned historian Jenny Wormald was a ground-breaking expert on early modern Scottish history, especially Stewart kingship, noble power and wider society. She was most controversial in her book-length critique of Mary, Queen of Scots. Unfortunately, Jenny never got round to producing a similar monograph on a monarch she was infinitely more fond of, King James VI and I, before her untimely death in 2015. In the absence of such a book, this volume brings together all the major essays by Jenny on James. She wrote on almost every aspect and every major event of James' reign, from the famous Gunpowder Plot, the Plantation of Ulster, the Gowrie Conspiracy, to the witchcraft panics, as well as James' extensive writings. She wrote extensively on James' Scottish rule, but she was also keenly interested in James as the first king of all of Britain, and many of her essays unpick the issues surrounding the Union of the Crowns and James' rule over all three of his kingdoms. This book is an invaluable resource for any scholar on this crucial time in the history of the British Isles.

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The classic three volumes of Hebridean Folksongs, reissued simultaneously for the first time since their original publication (1969, 1977, 1981), contain 135 songs connected with the waulking of homespun tweed cloth in the Hebridean isles. Volume 1 is based on waulking songs collected by Donald MacCormick in South Uist in 1893. Volumes 2 and 3 are based on John Lorne Campbell's recordings of songs made between 1938 and 1965 in Barra, South Uist, Eriskay and Benbecula. The translations for all the songs in Volumes 2 and 3 and many of those in Volume 1 are by John Lorne Campbell, who also wrote detailed notes discussing the songs. Multiple versions of the same song are compared with each other and with versions drawn from unpublished manuscript sources. Francis Collinson's meticulous musical transcriptions of the songs, and musicological analyses, are invaluable. The songs are from the repertoires of some well-known singers of their generation, including Miss Annie Johnson, her brother Calum and Miss Mary Morrison, all of Barra, Mrs Neil Campbell of South Uist, and Miss Nan MacKinnon of Vatersay.

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The classic three volumes of Hebridean Folksongs, reissued simultaneously for the first time since their original publication (1969, 1977, 1981), contain 135 songs connected with the waulking of homespun tweed cloth in the Hebridean isles. Volume 1 is based on waulking songs collected by Donald MacCormick in South Uist in 1893. Volumes 2 and 3 are based on John Lorne Campbell's recordings of songs made between 1938 and 1965 in Barra, South Uist, Eriskay and Benbecula. The translations for all the songs in Volumes 2 and 3 and many of those in Volume 1 are by John Lorne Campbell, who also wrote detailed notes discussing the songs. Multiple versions of the same song are compared with each other and with versions drawn from unpublished manuscript sources. Francis Collinson's meticulous musical transcriptions of the songs, and musicological analyses, are invaluable. The songs are from the repertoires of some well-known singers of their generation, including Miss Annie Johnson, her brother Calum and Miss Mary Morrison, all of Barra, Mrs Neil Campbell of South Uist, and Miss Nan MacKinnon of Vatersay.

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The classic three volumes of Hebridean Folksongs, reissued simultaneously for the first time since their original publication (1969, 1977, 1981), contain 135 songs connected with the waulking of homespun tweed cloth in the Hebridean isles. Volume 1 is based on waulking songs collected by Donald MacCormick in South Uist in 1893. Volumes 2 and 3 are based on John Lorne Campbell's recordings of songs made between 1938 and 1965 in Barra, South Uist, Eriskay and Benbecula. The translations for all the songs in Volumes 2 and 3 and many of those in Volume 1 are by John Lorne Campbell, who also wrote detailed notes discussing the songs. Multiple versions of the same song are compared with each other and with versions drawn from unpublished manuscript sources. Francis Collinson's meticulous musical transcriptions of the songs, and musicological analyses, are invaluable. The songs are from the repertoires of some well-known singers of their generation, including Miss Annie Johnson, her brother Calum and Miss Mary Morrison, all of Barra, Mrs Neil Campbell of South Uist, and Miss Nan MacKinnon of Vatersay.

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Conditioned by a childhood surrounded by the rivalries of the Stewart family, and by eighteen years of enforced exile in England, James I was to prove a king very different from his elderly and conservative forerunners. This major study draws on a wide range of sources, assessing James I’s impact on his kingdom. Michael Brown examines James’s creation of a new, prestigious monarchy based on a series of bloody victories over his rivals and symbolised by lavish spending at court. He concludes that, despite the apparent power and glamour, James I’s ‘golden age’ had shallow roots; after a life of drastically swinging fortunes, James I was to meet his end in a violent coup, a victim of his own methods. But whether as lawgiver, tyrant or martyr, James I has cast a long shadow over the history of Scotland.

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