Monday, May 13, 2013

Scotland's Story (H.E. Marshall)


I've read several overview "history of Britain" books, and they all have one thing in common: they pretty much ignore Scotland and Wales, and focus on England.  That's certainly not fair to the Scots and the Welsh, so I thought I'd read a generalist history of just Scotland, to see what I could learn about that part of Britain.

Scotland's Story was written in 1906 and geared towards children.  The author acknowledges such, and even admits that parts of the story are embellished or rely on legend.  Especially in the first few chapters, I found that annoying, as I wanted to learn about verified history, not unlikely myth.  But, the book got slightly better as it progressed.  Overall, it was an okay introduction.

As I read through this, I will say the focus was almost exclusively on who was king, how they came to power, who they fought (on a local and/or national scale), and how they were succeeded.  Page after page tells of wars, betrayals, usurpations, etc.  Rather repetitive, it actually started to bore me after a while.  But, I assume there's little in the way of other source material from that time period- few (if any) bothered captured elements of culture, daily habits, etc that we now view as an important part of studying history.  Still, I would have liked to learn more outside of the line of kings.

Rating: C+

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