Categories: uncategorized
Date: 25 July 2007 19:12:40
Sensible people get a guide book when they do the whole tourist thing, unsensible people buy a history stretching to about 450 pages which they wade through as they admire the results of that history.
Of course whilst I may be many things sensible is not one of them and so it was that I spent my chill time reading The Scottish Enlightenment The Scots' Invention of the Modern World by Arthur Herman. To be fair it is an interesting book which did add to the overall Scottish experience and enlightened me. However, it would have meant even more if the majority of my time had been spent in Edinburgh rather than Glasgow because it as a book it is a tad Edinburgh centred.
Also by the end you were left thinking that anybody who'd come good within the British Isles, USA, Canada or Austrailia could be claimed by the Scottish, somehow. The links were a little thin in places me thinks. Having said that the clearly Scottish 18th and 19th century lives mentioned were enough to give currency to the fact that England wouldn't have become what it is today without the Scottish and the former territories may have been a little different without them.
So if you want to know a little more about Scottish history I would recommend it, but only if you decided to balance it with Soil and Soul by Alistair Mcintosh.