J.H. Burns writes that few men have had a more decisive influence on the history of Scotland than John Knox. At what point in his career did he make up his mind to use his religious authority for political purposes, in order to bring down the “idolatrous sovereignties” that he saw around him? And why did he thus, almost unwittingly, become a revolutionary?
R.J. Adam presents a new study of the Jacobite rising, and of the complex pattern of local interests that helped to determine the conduct of the Scottish clan-leaders.
J.W. Blake describes how, during the colonial period, just over half a million emigrants—English, Scottish, Irish, French, German, Dutch, Swedish and Finnish—are calculated to have left Europe for a new home in America. Often they reached their goal only at the cost of hideous suffering.
By the Act of Union, the Scots lost their Parliament but gained the freedom of the British Empire.
A study of the hostile legends, immortalized in Shakespeare’s tragic drama, that have gathered around the real historical figure of Macbeth.
John McEwen describes the events of September 9th, 1513, as Scotland lost her King and suffered appalling losses during a disastrous battle that “remains in large measure a mystery.”
Though Andrew is the patron saint of Scotland, the influence of St Columba on Scottish Christianity remains profound. Ian Bradley examines the Celtic evangelist’s legacy 1,450 years after his arrival on the Hebridean island of Iona.
S.M. Toyne investigates how, from earliest times, the migration of the herring has exercised an important influence on the history of the peoples living around the North Sea and the Baltic.
Deborah Cohen opens the archives of the Scottish Marriage Guidance Council, founded in 1946, and finds that couples in the postwar years were more than happy to air their dirty linen.
J.J. Bell describes a powerful force of raiders on the early modern Scottish Borders.
