With the knowledge that there around 35 million people of Scots descent scattered across the world Scots Heritage Magazine is indeed prescribed reading for those with a passion for our country. Each issue is like a passport to the Scottish diaspora as the unique and authentic articles on Scotland’s rich history and its vibrant past and present are beautifully illustrated in a full colour, glossy format.

This study presents a comprehensive syntactic and semantic analysis of a geographically balanced corpus of written and spoken texts, in contemporary Scots (including the author's own field recordings), amply illustrated with examples, thus making a major contribution to the field of English dialect grammar.

Before 1650, only a few hundred Scots had trickled into the American colonies, but by the early 1770s the number had risen to 10,000 per year. A conservative estimate of the total number of Scots who settled in North America prior to 1785 is around 150,000. Who were these Scots? What did they do? Where did they settle? What factors motivated their emigration? Dobson's work, based on original research on both sides of the Atlantic, comprehensively identifies the Scottish contribution to the settlement of North America prior to 1785, with particular emphasis on the seventeenth century.

Osprey's study of the Battle of Bannockburn, which was part of the First War of Scottish Independence (1296-1328) and the climax of the career of King Robert the Bruce. In 1307 King Edward I of England, 'The Hammer of the Scots' and nemesis of William Wallace, died and his son, Edward II, was not from the same mould. Idle and apathetic, he allowed the Scots the chance to recover from the grievous punishment inflicted upon them. By 1314 Bruce had captured every major English-held castle bar Stirling and Edward II took an army north to subdue the Scots.

The relationship between Queen Elizabeth I of England and her cousin, Mary Queen of Scots, is one of the most complex, tempestuous and fascinating in history. United in blood but divided by religion, the two women were in some ways uniquely close; in others, poles apart. Championed by English Catholics as the rightful Queen of England, Mary was nevertheless given protection by her cousin after she was deposed amid outrage at her immoral behaviour.