A dark, rainy day in Scotland, long ago. Returning from battle, Macbeth and his friend Banquo meet three witches. 'Macbeth, the king!' they say, but Macbeth is not a king, he is just a simple soldier. Macbeth and Banquo cannot forget the witches' words. Soon Macbeth is king, but his wife walks in her sleep at night, and dreams of blood. What lies in the future for Banquo? And how many people must die before Scotland finds peace once more?
That a man who caught murderers should be a successful poet seemed inappropriate to some people. But Superintendent Adam Dalgliesh of the Criminal Investigation Department was attending his publisher's annual sherry party when a call from Scotland Yard whipped him away to investigate a particularly brutal murder.
Heraldry arose, almost spontaneously, throughout Europe in a short space of time between 1130-1160 coinciding with the development of more sophisticated armour. It can be seen from the contemporary seal below of William Ferrers, Earl of Derby, that the horseman would be unrecognisable in the encasing helmet, but easily spotted at a distance by the distinctive markings on his shield and on his horses's drapery.
Premodern Scotland: Literature and Governance 1420-1587 brings together original essays by a group of international scholars to offer fresh and ground-breaking research into the 'advice to princes' tradition and related themes of good self- and public governance in Older Scots literature, and in Latin literature composed in Scotland in the fifteenth, sixteenth, and early seventeenth centuries.
Christopher Harvie, one of Scotland's leading historians and political writers, takes a long view of Scotland: its land, people, and culture. Scotland: A History sweeps from the earliest settlements to the new Parliament of 1999 and beyond. It describes the unique multi-ethnic kingdom which emerged from the Dark Ages, the small, proud nation manoeuvring among the great powers of medieval Europe, and the radical reformation which forced a compromise with its mighty southern neighbour. Harvie follows Scotland's tense partnership with England for over 400 years, through dual monarchy and union, enlightenment and empire, industrialization and de-industrialization.