“Scott found himself caught between a deep-seated loyalty to, and knowledge of, his country and an equally fundamental commitment to the Union with England. He sought to find a way for Scotland to accommodate its sense of identity with the economic and other benefits of being a partner in the greatest empire the world had yet seen, This was both a deliberate and a subconscious for a highly intelligent, complex, energetic and emotional man. To complete it successfully, the Scottish past had to b turned into a kind of serious playground, rich in possibility except for the possibility that it might inform the future in some disruptive way. Scott well knew, because of the way he himself was affected by it, that Scottish history had the potential to release grear energy: fascinated by it, he nevertheless felt a need to keep it, like a wild animal, behind a barrier of time. It was therefore fitting to his purpose that he should make the extraordinary claim to his tens of thousands of readers - in a book aimed particularly at the young - that nothing worth drawing to ther attention had occurred in Scotland in the pasr eighty years.”