Last Of The Free: A History Of The Highlands And Islands Of Scotland

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Written by a man who is both an award-winning historian of the Highlands & Islands & a key figure in shaping the region's future development, Last of the Free is a ground-breaking & definitive account of how the Highlands & Islands of Scotland evolved into the way they are today. Never before has the history of the Highlands & Islands been recounted so comprehensively & in so much fascinating, often moving detail. But this book is not simply the story of humanity's millenium-long involvement with one of the world's most spectacular localities. It is also a major contribution to present-day debate about how Scotl&-and Britain should be organised. James Hunter's central contention is that the Highlands & Islands were most successful when the region possessed a large measure of autonomy, which turned places like Iona & Kirkwall into centres of European significance. That autonomy was destroyed, this book maintains, by medieval Scotland's monarchy, by seventeenth-century Scotland's Parliament & by the British politicians who inherited the Scottish state's unrelenting determination to ensure that inhabitants of the Highlands & Islands had no worthwhile control over their own destinies.