The Making and Unmaking of the Nation, c.1100-1707 aims to show the importance of Scotland’s relationships to Europe and its part in a broader European story, as well as to dispel long-established myths and preconceptions which continue to exert a firm grip on public opinion. Especially in a post-devolution era, Scottish history and Scotland deserve better than this. The Making and Unmaking of the Nation, c.1100-1707 is certainly designed to provoke but need not be taken to indicate a nationalist view of 1707 as a moment of eclipse. Scotland’s history, like all histories, resists simple generalisations. Were it otherwise, its study would not be so rewarding.
* Politics and the Nation: Britain in the Mid- Eighteenth Century. (Oxford, 2002) 392pp. * 'The Scots, the Westminster Parliament, and the British State in the Eighteenth Century' in Parliaments, Nations and Identities in Britain and Ireland, 1660-1850. (Manchester , 2003) pp. 124-145 * (ed.) Scotland in the Age of the French Revolution . (Edinburgh, 2005) 1-22, 49-78, 164-195pp. * 'Scottish-English Connections in the British Radicalism of the 1790s' in Anglo-Scottish Relations from 1603 to 1900. Vol 127 (Oxford , 2005) pp. 189-212