Wild Scots

Michael Fry's controversial highland history captures a truely distinctive culture and its volatile politics One bleak night in March 1603, a lone horseman galloped to Holyrood, home of James VI of Scotland. There he knelt on bended knee and saluted him as James I, king of England. The accession marked a union of the kingdoms while the lowlands were integrated with England, the outlying highlands became marginalized. Highlanders responded by consolidating their already distinct identity, built around the unique feudal clan system, a Gaelic cultural heritage and a history of fierce resistance. From the heroic blood feuds of clan chiefs to the dour asceticism of Presbyterian ministers, Michael Fry's encyclopaedic social history of the Scottish highlands from 1603 to the present focuses squarely on the people. He traces the ironies of their fate as emigration, forced clearances and the breakdown of feudal relations undermined traditional customs. But this is no eulogy for a dying era. Michael Fry shows that the highlands simply had to modernise and traces the inventive ways in which Gaelic culture adapted.