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Scotland

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Scotland has always had a tempestuous history. The clans fought among themselves when
they weren’t fighting the Sassenachs from the South.

From the Border Reivers harrying Roman legions to the Scottish National Party of today
demanding a return to independence, the Scots have a history of resistance and outright rebellion.

Indeed, the Highlanders and Lowlanders were mostly at war with each other throughout their early
history with only brief periods of unity against common foes. For the Lowlanders, the men of the
north were just as much a threat as the English to the south.

The result is a rich legacy of fortifications – Edinburgh, Stirling, Kilchurch castles; of historic
battlefields – Flodden, Culloden, and Bannockburn; of larger-than-life characters – Rob Roy
McGregor, William Wallace, Robert the Bruce, Black Agnes (betcha never heard of her!) a woman
not easily beaten in a battle.

But Scotland also has a softer side, a creative dimension. Authors such as Robert Burns, Sir
Walter Scott, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, J.M.Barrie, Robert Louis Stevenson, John Buchan, James
Heriot . . . and scores of others. David Hulme, the mid-18th-century philosopher, and James
Boswell, biographer of the redoubtable Samuel Johnson. The painter, Sir Henry Raeburn, whose
portraits capture a golden age of culture in Scotland.

Then there’s the skill of its engineers and scientists – everything from the first postage stamp, the
use of a decimal point, fingerprinting, the pedal bicycle, rugby sevens(!), to hypnotism. And I
haven’t even bothered with tar-sealed roads, pneumatic tyres, penicillin, television . . . all the well-
known Scottish achievements.