Scotland

Are beavers beasts or fish? For medieval philosophers, this was an important question with implications for the dining table.

The often overlooked life of Robert Fergusson, Edinburgh’s unofficial poet laureate and Scotland’s voice.

Who should claim Scotland’s royal jewels? After the forced abdication of Mary, Queen of Scots, the answer was not clear cut.

On 28 August 1839, the earl of Eglinton hosted a ‘medieval’ tournament to mark Queen Victoria’s coronation. It was a damp squib.

Remembered today as a national hero, Robert the Bruce, King of Scots, had an upbringing which spanned Essex to Ulster. He was a hybrid king to the last.

Following his accession, the majority of James I’s new English subjects accepted their Scottish king with ‘comforte and contentmente’. Such sentiments would not last.

The soldiers of Archibald Douglas, Earl of Angus, fought the men of James Hamilton, Earl of Arran, in Edinburgh on 30 April 1520.

Four historians consider whether the traditional Whig history of Britain, as one of evolutionary political progress, has ever been challenged by events. 

Scotland’s short-lived, catastrophic Central American colony exposed its precarious relationship with England. Was closer union an inevitable result?