Who Built Scotland

Who Built Scotland PDF Author: Alexander McCall Smith
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781849172721
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
Experience a new history of Scotland told through its places. Writers Kathleen Jamie, Alexander McCall Smith, Alistair Moffat, James Robertson and James Crawford pick twenty-five buildings to tell the story of the nation.Travelling across the country, from abandoned islands and lonely glens to the heart of our modern cities, these five authors seek out the diverse narrative of the Scottish people. Follow Kathleen Jamie as she searches for the traces of our first family hearths in the Cairngorms and makes a midsummer journey to Shetland to meet the unlikely new inhabitants of an Iron Age broch. Tour the wondrous and macabre Surgeons' Hall with Alexander McCall Smith, or walk with him over sacred ground to Iona's ancient Abbey. Join Alistair Moffat as he discovers a lost whisky village in the wilds of Strathconon, and climbs up through the vertiginous layers of history in Edinburgh Castle. Accompany James Robertson as he goes from the standing stones of Callanish to the humble cottage of Hugh MacDiarmid - via the engineering colossus of the Forth Rail Bridge. And journey with James Crawford from a packed crowd in Hampden Park, to an off-the-grid eco-bothy on the Isle of Eigg.Who Built Scotland is a landmark exploration of Scotland's social, political and cultural histories. Moving from Neolithic families, exiled hermits and ambitious royal dynasties to highland shieling girls, peasant poets, Enlightenment philosophers and iconoclastic artists, it places our people, our ideas and our passions at the heart of our architecture and archaeology. This is the remarkable story how we have shaped our buildings and how our buildings, in turn, have shaped us.

Who Built Scotland

Who Built Scotland PDF Author: Alexander McCall Smith
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781849172721
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 336

Get Book

Book Description
Experience a new history of Scotland told through its places. Writers Kathleen Jamie, Alexander McCall Smith, Alistair Moffat, James Robertson and James Crawford pick twenty-five buildings to tell the story of the nation.Travelling across the country, from abandoned islands and lonely glens to the heart of our modern cities, these five authors seek out the diverse narrative of the Scottish people. Follow Kathleen Jamie as she searches for the traces of our first family hearths in the Cairngorms and makes a midsummer journey to Shetland to meet the unlikely new inhabitants of an Iron Age broch. Tour the wondrous and macabre Surgeons' Hall with Alexander McCall Smith, or walk with him over sacred ground to Iona's ancient Abbey. Join Alistair Moffat as he discovers a lost whisky village in the wilds of Strathconon, and climbs up through the vertiginous layers of history in Edinburgh Castle. Accompany James Robertson as he goes from the standing stones of Callanish to the humble cottage of Hugh MacDiarmid - via the engineering colossus of the Forth Rail Bridge. And journey with James Crawford from a packed crowd in Hampden Park, to an off-the-grid eco-bothy on the Isle of Eigg.Who Built Scotland is a landmark exploration of Scotland's social, political and cultural histories. Moving from Neolithic families, exiled hermits and ambitious royal dynasties to highland shieling girls, peasant poets, Enlightenment philosophers and iconoclastic artists, it places our people, our ideas and our passions at the heart of our architecture and archaeology. This is the remarkable story how we have shaped our buildings and how our buildings, in turn, have shaped us.

How the Scots Invented the Modern World

How the Scots Invented the Modern World PDF Author: Arthur Herman
Publisher: Crown
ISBN: 0307420957
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 482

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Book Description
An exciting account of the origins of the modern world Who formed the first literate society? Who invented our modern ideas of democracy and free market capitalism? The Scots. As historian and author Arthur Herman reveals, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries Scotland made crucial contributions to science, philosophy, literature, education, medicine, commerce, and politics—contributions that have formed and nurtured the modern West ever since. Herman has charted a fascinating journey across the centuries of Scottish history. Here is the untold story of how John Knox and the Church of Scotland laid the foundation for our modern idea of democracy; how the Scottish Enlightenment helped to inspire both the American Revolution and the U.S. Constitution; and how thousands of Scottish immigrants left their homes to create the American frontier, the Australian outback, and the British Empire in India and Hong Kong. How the Scots Invented the Modern World reveals how Scottish genius for creating the basic ideas and institutions of modern life stamped the lives of a series of remarkable historical figures, from James Watt and Adam Smith to Andrew Carnegie and Arthur Conan Doyle, and how Scottish heroes continue to inspire our contemporary culture, from William “Braveheart” Wallace to James Bond. And no one who takes this incredible historical trek will ever view the Scots—or the modern West—in the same way again.

Scotland: A History from Earliest Times

Scotland: A History from Earliest Times PDF Author: Alistair Moffat
Publisher: Birlinn
ISBN: 085790874X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 561

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Book Description
In this book, Alistair Moffat brings vividly to life the story of this great nation, from the dawn of prehistory through to the twenty-first century. Ambitious, richly detailed and highly readable, Scotland: A History From Earliest Times skilfully weaves together a dazzling array of fact and anecdote from a vast range of sources. The result is an imaginative, informative, balanced and varied portrait of Scotland, seen not just through the experience of the kings, saints, warriors, aristocrats and politicians who populate the pages of conventional history books, but also through that of ordinary people who have lived Scotland's history and have played their own important part in shaping its destiny.

Where are the Women?

Where are the Women? PDF Author: Sara Sheridan
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781849173087
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 448

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Book Description
Can you imagine a different Scotland, a Scotland where women are commemorated in statues and streets and buildings - even in the hills and valleys? This is a guidebook to that alternative nation, where the cave on Staffa is named after Malvina rather than Fingal, and Arthur's Seat isn't Arthur's, it belongs to St Triduana. Where you arrive into Dundee at Slessor Station and the Victorian monument on Stirling's Abbey Hill interprets national identity not as a male warrior but through the women who ran hospitals during the First World War. The West Highland Way ends at Fort Mary. The Old Lady of Hoy is a prominent Orkney landmark. And the plinths in central Glasgow proudly display statues of suffragettes. In this 'imagined atlas' fictional streets, buildings, statues and monuments are dedicated to real women, telling their often untold or unknown stories.For most of recorded history, women have been sidelined, if not silenced, by men who named the built environment after themselves. Now is the time to look unflinchingly at Scotland's heritage and bring those women who have been ignored to light. Sara Sheridan explores beyond the traditional male-dominated histories to reveal a new picture of Scotland's history and heritage.

Scotland

Scotland PDF Author: Jenny Wormald
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019960164X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 323

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Book Description
The work of leading authorities on Scottish history is brought together in this accurate and sophisticated portrait of Scotland from Roman times to the present day.

David I

David I PDF Author: Richard D. Oram
Publisher: Tempus Publishing, Limited
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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Book Description
Considered to be one of the greatest of Scotland's medieval kings, David was never expected to succeed to the throne. Before coming to the throne David made a career for himself as an Anglo-Norman nobleman and made a good marriage and rich inheritance with many estates spreading from Normandy to northern England, as well as a principality of his own in southern Scotland. When David finally came to the Scottish throne in 1124 he faced a long and bitter struggle against rivals for the crown. David then set out to modernise the kingdom modelled along European lines. He continued to add to his kingdom including parts of Yorkshire and Lancaster, tipping the balance of power in Britain firmly in facour of the Scotts.

Scotland's Rural Home

Scotland's Rural Home PDF Author: John Brennan
Publisher: Lund Humphries Publishers Limited
ISBN: 9781848224476
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
Rural Scotland is a charged landscape, alive with history, soaked in myth and often rather sublime. For those of us living an urban existence, the countryside is a retreat for refuge and decompression, but it is also a place where infrastructures strain to reach and in which livings must be made. The countryside is resistant to easy explanation and is thus vulnerable to stereotyping. The nine building stories told in this book show how rural households and communities define themselves, and the role architecture plays in this. Illustrated with beautiful photography and drawings, the projects, from affordable housing on the islands to exquisite renovations of traditional agricultural stock, and all recognised by the Saltire Society's Housing Design Awards, are visually rich both in themselves and the contexts in which they sit.

A Work of Beauty

A Work of Beauty PDF Author: Alexander McCall Smith
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781902419909
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
'I love this city, and always shall. I write about it. I dream about it. I walk its streets and see something new each day - traces of faded lettering on the stone, still legible, but just; some facade that I have walked past before and not noticed; an unregarded doorway with the names, in brass, of those who lived there sixty years ago, the bell-pulls sometimes still in place, as if one might summon long-departed residents from their slumbers.'Edinburgh is a city of stories - a place that has witnessed everything from great historical upheavals, to the individual lives of a remarkable cast of characters. Every spire, cobblestone, bridge, close and avenue has a tale to tell.In this sumptuous new book, Alexander McCall Smith curates his own, distinctive story of Edinburgh - combining his affectionate, incisive wit with a wealth of stunning imagery drawn from Scotland's national collection of architecture and archaeology. Through a series of photographs, maps, drawings and paintings - many never before published - he takes the reader on a unique tour. Just like the city's architecture, the book can move in an instant from sweeping views to secret, hidden vignettes. This is a story of famous landmarks and lost buildings; the people who made them; the people who lived in them.A Work of Beauty is an intimate portrait of a city by one of Scotland's greatest storytellers.

The Drove Roads of Scotland

The Drove Roads of Scotland PDF Author: A. R. B. Haldane
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781912476534
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
One of the great classics of Scottish history, The Drove Roads of Scotland interweaves folklore, social comment and economic history in a fascinating account of Scotland's droving trade and the routes by which cattle and sheep were brought from every corner of the land to markets in central Scotland. In pastoral Scotland, the breeding and movement of livestock were fundamental to the lives of the people. The story of the drove roads takesthe reader on an engrossing tour of Scottish history, from the lawless cattle driving by reivers in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to the legitimate movement of stock which developed after the Union of the Crowns, by which time the large-scale movement of stock to established markets had become an important part of Scotland's economy, and a vital aspect of commercial life in the Empire.

Highland Retreats

Highland Retreats PDF Author: Mary Miers
Publisher: Rizzoli Publications
ISBN: 0847844765
Category : House & Home
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Featuring breathtaking photographs of some of Scotland’s most remarkable and little-known houses, this book tells the story of how incomers adopted the North of Scotland as a recreational paradise and left an astonishing legacy of architecture and decoration inspired by the romanticized image of the Highlands. Known as shooting lodges because they were designed principally to accommodate the parties of guests that flocked north for the annual sporting season, these houses range from Picturesque cottages ornées and Scotch Baronial castles to Arts and Crafts mansions and modern eco-lodges. While their designs respond to some of Britain’s wildest and most stirring landscapes, inside many were equipped with the latest domestic technology and boasted opulent decoration and furnishings from the smartest London and Parisian firms. A good number survive little altered in their original state, and some are still owned by descendants of the families that built them. Images from the famous Country Life Picture Library and specially commissioned photographs evoke the dramatic settings and arresting detail of these houses, making the book as appealing to decorators and architectural historians as it is to travelers and sportsmen.