Scotland - Rosemary Goring

A vivid, wide-ranging and engrossing account of Scotland's history, composed of eye-witness accounts by those who experienced it first-hand. Contributors range from Tacitus, Mary Queen of Scots and Oliver Cromwell to Adam Smith, David Livingstone and Billy Connolly.

These include not just key historic moments - from Bannockburn to the opening of the new parliament in 1999, but testimonies like that of the eight-year-old factory worker who was dangled by his ear out of a third-floor window for making a mistake; the survivors of Culloden, who wished perhaps that they had died on the field; the breakthrough moment for John Logie Baird, inventor of television and the genesis of great works of literature recorded by Conan Doyle, Stevenson and the editor of Encyclopaedia Britannica.

From the battlefield to the sportsfield, we have moments of glory or disaster, along with wonderfully readable insights into the everyday life of Scotland through the millennia. This is living, accessible history told by crofters, criminals, servants, house-wives, poets, journalists, nurses, politicians, prisoners, comedians, sportsmen and many more.