From Columba to The Corries, the Picts to Paisley, Doggerland to Devolution – here is the unmissable story of Scotland. Scotland is one of the oldest nations in Europe. Its territory remains fundamentally unchanged since the fifteenth century, and its southern border with England has barely altered since 1237.
And yet Scotland – a country with its own law, education and church – is not a state at all. In The Shortest History of Scotland, Murray Pittock argues that this very ambiguity has helped make the nation a central part of the global story.
From first tribes to Scotland’s multicultural present, Pittock unpicks the myths from the reality. He explores the glories – real and imagined – of Scottish history, from the Bruce to Balmoral, William Wallace to Walter Scott, Enlightenment to Devolution. And he asks what this rich past can tell us about what may lie ahead.

Only £12 in hardback with an even cheaper paperback soon and at only 200 pages, there is no excuse to miss this. Buy it for all of your relatives this Christmas.

Like me, you will have suffered seriously from an utterly inadequate history education in school, with perhaps almost no Scottish history, and a curriculum based on uncritical, inaccurate, accounts of the Empire. I’ve had to learn the truth myself about Scotland and, of course, the truth of Britain/England’s malign presence across the globe.

This book is concise, cheap and essential – get it!

The author has also written other essential works, including, for me, his eye-opening The Myth of the Jacobite Clans which reveals how Unionist historians retold the events to produce an account that misrepresented a popular movement to reverse the hated Union of 1707 as simply a wild adventure to restore a Catholic monarchy.

Footnote – Inspired by the above, I wrote this song – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snWSngW0XMQ