Hugh Trevor-Roper: Eminent historian debunks Scottish history as largely fabrication
SCOTLAND’S history is weaved from a “fraudulent” fabric of “myths and falsehoods”, according to an explosive new study by one of the world’s most eminent historians.
The Invention of Scotland: Myth and History, is the last book, and one of the most controversial, written by the late Hugh Trevor-Roper.
Now, five years after his death, the book is to be published at one of the most pivotal periods in Scottish political history.
It will provide an inflammatory contribution to the constitutional debate as it debunks many claims upon which the argument for independence is founded.
n the book, Trevor-Roper claims that Scotland’s literary and political traditions, which claim to date back to the Roman invasion of Scotland in the first century AD, are in fact based on myth and were largely invented in the 18th century.
Even the kilt, the ultimate sartorial symbol of Scottishness, was invented by an Englishman in the 1700s. The Declaration of Arbroath, presented to the then Pope in 1320 to confirm Scotland’s status as an independent state with an ancient constitution, is dismissed as being loaded with inaccuracies. It contains information on “imaginary” kings of ancient Scotland, created by historians, to provide false evidence that the Scots arrived north of the border from Ireland in the third century AD, before the Picts....
Read entire article at Times (UK)
The Invention of Scotland: Myth and History, is the last book, and one of the most controversial, written by the late Hugh Trevor-Roper.
Now, five years after his death, the book is to be published at one of the most pivotal periods in Scottish political history.
It will provide an inflammatory contribution to the constitutional debate as it debunks many claims upon which the argument for independence is founded.
n the book, Trevor-Roper claims that Scotland’s literary and political traditions, which claim to date back to the Roman invasion of Scotland in the first century AD, are in fact based on myth and were largely invented in the 18th century.
Even the kilt, the ultimate sartorial symbol of Scottishness, was invented by an Englishman in the 1700s. The Declaration of Arbroath, presented to the then Pope in 1320 to confirm Scotland’s status as an independent state with an ancient constitution, is dismissed as being loaded with inaccuracies. It contains information on “imaginary” kings of ancient Scotland, created by historians, to provide false evidence that the Scots arrived north of the border from Ireland in the third century AD, before the Picts....
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In an exclusive extract from his book The Invention of Scotland: Myth and History, the late historian tells how the country's story is based on fiction