‘Characteristically witty and incisive, Murray Pittock’s most welcome book draws on his strong patriotism and decades of scholarship in order to provide the best available history of Scotland’ JEREMY BLACK

Scotland is one of the oldest nations in Europe with the most consistent borders, with its own law, education and church, and yet is not a nation state at all. It has a much smaller landmass than England, but its coastline is more than twice as long. And while it might be a seemingly marginal state on the edge of Europe, it has, Murray Pittock argues, many times been central to British, European and even global history. Even though it was a joke, Mark Twain’s quip that the American Civil War was fought between those who liked Robert Burns’s poetry (Lincoln was a fan) and those who preferred the work of Sir Walter Scott gives us an indication of the reach of Scottish culture.

From fact and fiction in Scottish romanticism to the glory of Scotland’s long 19th century, from 20th century industrial decline to devolution, from the story of tartan to paisley, The Shortest History of Scotland covers the huge sweep of Scottish history from early tribes up to the present day.