For a generations, this book - intelligent, fair-minded and accurate - has been acclaimed as 'the' definitive one-volume history of this great nation.
It shows how Duncan (1034-40) emerged from 'the union of the four peoples' as the first king of a united Scotland and provides detailed, reign-by-reign from then on.
Close consideration is given to the Wars of Independence, the Reformation and religious struggles, the union of the crowns under James VI and I, the 1707 Act of Union, the Jacobite risings and the 'reforms' of the Victorian era. Above all, the author also reveals how the Scots long pursued an independent line - in religion, law, culture and foreign policy - that helped them keep at bay in turn the Romans, the French and the English.
This second edition takes the story up to the political crisis of the 1970s--events that offered ample evidence both of Scotland's ability to adapt to the times and its 'continuing significance and vitality as a human society'. An information-packed narrative reference work, comprehensive, and thoroughly indexed.
Please note: This book is new and unused, but arrived to us damaged so cannot be sold at the regular retail price. The backcover has a tear about 2cm long.
Contents:
Introduction to the Second Edition
Acknowledgements
A Note on Scottish Currency
1. The Land and its People
2. The Union of the Four Peoples
3. The House of Canmore
4. Wars of Independence 1286-1371
5. The Crown and the Barons 1371-1488
6. The Renaissance and the New Monarchy
7. The Reformation
8. The Counter-Reformation and the Claim to the English Crown
9. The Union of the Crowns 1587-1603
10. The Crown and the kirk 1603-1625
11. The Presbyterian Revolution: Charles I 1625-1649
12. Cromwell
13. The Restored Monarcy
14. The Revolution Settlement and the Union of Parliaments (1707)
15. The Union in Operation: The Jacobites
16. The Eighteenth Century Development
17. Unrest and Reform
18. Victorian Scotland
19. Modern Scotland
Suggestions for Further Reading
Index
