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. ...

Written by award-winning Scottish historian James Hunter, this groundbreaking & definitive account reveals how the Highlands & Islands of Scotland have evolved from a centre of European significance to a Scottish outpost. Never before has the history of the region been recounted so comprehensively & in so much fascinating, often moving, detail.

But this book is not simply the story of humanity

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In the chaotic aftermath of the fall of Acre in 1291 & the reconquest of the Holy Land by the Moslems, the last survivors of the Order of the Temple make their bloody retreat from the Middle East. Loading the treasure of their Order into a decrepit, leaky vessel, they set sail for Europe, where, unbeknownst to them, King Philip of France plots their destruction.

Among their number is Beltran, a native of the Holy L&, who has led the life of a soldier-monk for the past thirty years. World-weary yet incorruptible, Beltran is guardian both of the treasure & the Rule of the Order. As his companions

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' There was this terrible trough in the mid-70s: England didn't qualify forthe 1974 World Cup, Miss Hall our English teacher left school, & the Faces split.' Billy Bragg Do you remember The Faces? The group that was born out of the ashes of the legendary sixties band the Small Faces, but with the addition of Ron Wood on guitar (later to join the Stones) & Rod Stewart on vocals. Last Orders, Please is the first biography of the band who have acquired legendary status in the annals of rock 'n' roll history. It's also a book about Britain in a forgotten era
- the early seventies. Not the seventies of Glam Rock, Sweet & Gary Glitter, but the real seventies of the three day week, trade union strikes, blackouts, the IRA, steak, chips & warm beer. In these difficult times it was the Faces
- a soulful, goodtime band who drank & played hard, who didn't dress to impress, but just got on with the job
- that the working class adopted as its own. In the days before football was fashionable the Faces played soccer on stage on TOTP. In 1974 this was a near-political act that confirmed The Faces as truly a people's b&, & they are still loved, & revered to this day.


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