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Experience a new history of Scotland told through its places. Writers Kathleen Jamie, Alexander McCall Smith, Alistair Moffat, James Robertson and James Crawford pick twenty-five buildings to tell the story of the nation.Travelling across the country, from abandoned islands and lonely glens to the heart of our modern cities, these five authors seek out the diverse narrative of the Scottish people. Follow Kathleen Jamie as she searches for the traces of our first family hearths in the Cairngorms and makes a midsummer journey to Shetland to meet the unlikely new inhabitants of an Iron Age broch. Tour the wondrous and macabre Surgeons' Hall with Alexander McCall Smith, or walk with him over sacred ground to Iona's ancient Abbey. Join Alistair Moffat as he discovers a lost whisky village in the wilds of Strathconon, and climbs up through the vertiginous layers of history in Edinburgh Castle. Accompany James Robertson as he goes from the standing stones of Callanish to the humble cottage of Hugh MacDiarmid - via the engineering colossus of the Forth Rail Bridge. And journey with James Crawford from a packed crowd in Hampden Park, to an off-the-grid eco-bothy on the Isle of Eigg.Who Built Scotland is a landmark exploration of Scotland's social, political and cultural histories. Moving from Neolithic families, exiled hermits and ambitious royal dynasties to highland shieling girls, peasant poets, Enlightenment philosophers and iconoclastic artists, it places our people, our ideas and our passions at the heart of our architecture and archaeology. This is the remarkable story how we have shaped our buildings and how our buildings, in turn, have shaped us.
An exciting account of the origins of the modern world Who formed the first literate society? Who invented our modern ideas of democracy and free market capitalism? The Scots. As historian and author Arthur Herman reveals, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries Scotland made crucial contributions to science, philosophy, literature, education, medicine, commerce, and politics—contributions that have formed and nurtured the modern West ever since. Herman has charted a fascinating journey across the centuries of Scottish history. Here is the untold story of how John Knox and the Church of Scotland laid the foundation for our modern idea of democracy; how the Scottish Enlightenment helped to inspire both the American Revolution and the U.S. Constitution; and how thousands of Scottish immigrants left their homes to create the American frontier, the Australian outback, and the British Empire in India and Hong Kong. How the Scots Invented the Modern World reveals how Scottish genius for creating the basic ideas and institutions of modern life stamped the lives of a series of remarkable historical figures, from James Watt and Adam Smith to Andrew Carnegie and Arthur Conan Doyle, and how Scottish heroes continue to inspire our contemporary culture, from William “Braveheart” Wallace to James Bond. And no one who takes this incredible historical trek will ever view the Scots—or the modern West—in the same way again.
In this book, Alistair Moffat brings vividly to life the story of this great nation, from the dawn of prehistory through to the twenty-first century. Ambitious, richly detailed and highly readable, Scotland: A History From Earliest Times skilfully weaves together a dazzling array of fact and anecdote from a vast range of sources. The result is an imaginative, informative, balanced and varied portrait of Scotland, seen not just through the experience of the kings, saints, warriors, aristocrats and politicians who populate the pages of conventional history books, but also through that of ordinary people who have lived Scotland's history and have played their own important part in shaping its destiny.
Can you imagine a different Scotland, a Scotland where women are commemorated in statues and streets and buildings - even in the hills and valleys? This is a guidebook to that alternative nation, where the cave on Staffa is named after Malvina rather than Fingal, and Arthur's Seat isn't Arthur's, it belongs to St Triduana. Where you arrive into Dundee at Slessor Station and the Victorian monument on Stirling's Abbey Hill interprets national identity not as a male warrior but through the women who ran hospitals during the First World War. The West Highland Way ends at Fort Mary. The Old Lady of Hoy is a prominent Orkney landmark. And the plinths in central Glasgow proudly display statues of suffragettes. In this 'imagined atlas' fictional streets, buildings, statues and monuments are dedicated to real women, telling their often untold or unknown stories.For most of recorded history, women have been sidelined, if not silenced, by men who named the built environment after themselves. Now is the time to look unflinchingly at Scotland's heritage and bring those women who have been ignored to light. Sara Sheridan explores beyond the traditional male-dominated histories to reveal a new picture of Scotland's history and heritage.
The story of the land that became Scotland is one of dramatic geological events and impressive human endeavour. Alistair Moffats gripping narrative ranges from the great thaw at the end of the Ice Age which was instrumental in shaping Scotlands magnificent landscape through the megalith builders, the Celts and the Picts, to the ascension of King Constantine II. Moffat deploys his knowledge with wit and deftness, interweaving the story with numerous special features on topics as diverse as cave drawings of dancing girls, natural birth control, the myth of Atlantis and the Zoroastrian Towers of Silence all of them valuable, sometimes quirky, additions to the whole picture. Rounding out the account is a selection of carefully chosen colour photographs that give a strong sense of the Scottish landscape and monuments. Erudite and entertaining, Before Scotland transforms our understanding of a neglected period. A story of dramatic geological events and impressive human endeavour, it is essential reading for anyone interested in the land that became Scotland.
The brainchild of bestselling author Alexander McCall Smith, historian Alistair Moffat and artist Andrew Crummy, the Great Tapestry of Scotland is an outstanding celebration of thousands of years of Scottish history and achievement, from the end of the last Ice Age to Dolly the Sheep and Andy Murray's Wimbledon victory in 2013. This book tells the story of this unique undertaking from its original conception and creation by teams of dedicated stitchers to its grand unveiling at the Scottish Parliament in 2013, its subsequent touring and the creation of its permanent home in the Scottish Borders.
Rural Scotland is a charged landscape, alive with history, soaked in myth and often rather sublime. For those of us living an urban existence, the countryside is a retreat for refuge and decompression, but it is also a place where infrastructures strain to reach and in which livings must be made. The countryside is resistant to easy explanation and is thus vulnerable to stereotyping. The nine building stories told in this book show how rural households and communities define themselves, and the role architecture plays in this. Illustrated with beautiful photography and drawings, the projects, from affordable housing on the islands to exquisite renovations of traditional agricultural stock, and all recognised by the Saltire Society's Housing Design Awards, are visually rich both in themselves and the contexts in which they sit.
One of the great classics of Scottish history, The Drove Roads of Scotland interweaves folklore, social comment and economic history in a fascinating account of Scotland's droving trade and the routes by which cattle and sheep were brought from every corner of the land to markets in central Scotland. In pastoral Scotland, the breeding and movement of livestock were fundamental to the lives of the people. The story of the drove roads takesthe reader on an engrossing tour of Scottish history, from the lawless cattle driving by reivers in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to the legitimate movement of stock which developed after the Union of the Crowns, by which time the large-scale movement of stock to established markets had become an important part of Scotland's economy, and a vital aspect of commercial life in the Empire.
On the brink of the First World War, Scotland was regarded throughout the British Isles as 'the workshop of the Empire'. Not only were Clyde-built ships known the world over, Scotland produced half of Britain's total production of railway equipment, and the cotton and jute industries flourished in Paisley and Dundee. In addition, Scots were a hugely important source of manpower for the colonies. Yet after the war, Scotland became an industrial and financial backwater. Emigration increased as morale slumped in the face of economic stagnation and decline. The country had paid a disproportionately high price in casualties, a result of huge numbers of volunteers and the use of Scottish battalions as shock troops in the fighting on the Western Front and Gallipoli - young men whom the novelist Ian Hay called 'the vanished generation'. In this book, Trevor Royle provides the first full account of how the war changed Scotland irrevocably by exploring a wide range of themes - the overwhelming response to the call for volunteers; the performance of Scottish military formations in 1915 and 1916; the militarization of the Scottish homeland; the resistance to war in Glasgow and the west of Scotland; and the boom in the heavy industries and the strengthening of women's role in society following on from wartime employment.