Review: History of Scotland

Abstract

This illustrated history of Scotland encompasses the thoughts of thirteen different scholars in twelve chapters. As such, it compares favourably in terms of the quality of its coverage with the rather longer collection edited by R.A, Houston and W.WJ Knox. The New Penguin History of Scotland: from the earliest times to the present day (2001). Each of the authors is an acknowledged expert, but considerable effort has been exercised by the authors (or encouragement given by the editor) to write accessibly and with style. The collection is probably at its freshest in the first three chapters which cover, respectively, the period before 1100, the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and late medieval Scotland. Here, in short space, each chapter provides a compelling overview, attacks myths and sets out large themes. Kathleen Forsyth casts doubt on the notion of a unified kingdom of the Picts under a single king and demolishes the cherished idea of the reign of Cinaed (Kenneth mac Alpin, 839-858) as a watershed. Keith Stringer elegantly portrays the emergence between 1000 and 1300 of two separate kingdoms on the British mainland which had much in common with each other and with other realms which experienced the 'Europeanization of Europe*. The result was a sovereign nation-state which was hybrid in most of its key aspects, relatively loosely-jointed* but already formidable in its sense of itself. Michael Brown and Steve Boardman complete the difficult task of explaining how much the later medieval kingdom differed from its early medieval predecessor yet retained a sense of continuity with its past, seen especially in a plethora of recycled regional saints' cults and a calculated cult of chivalry.