Scotland's History
My Auntie Jean and Uncle Jimmy taught me more about Scottish history than I ever learned at school. For a week or two every Easter my sister and I would be sent off to their house in Tso that my parents didn't have to worry about child-care problems during the school holiday. Jean and Jimmy would fill the days by packing us into the back of their Austin Mini and giving us a drive-past tour of Clackmannanshire. They told us about William Wallace, Robert the Bruce, Bannockburn, Stirling Bridge and lots of local folklore and mythology.
Back in primary school we had a book called Conquering Worlds. This, as I recall, consisted of little essays about various British heroes. David Livingstone was in there and probably John Logie Baird, but that seemed to be it for Scotland. Winston Churchill's early exploits were well covered and there was a lot about various British kings and queens. The only Scottish history I recall from secondary school involved the Covenanters and how Robert the Bruce was ex-communicated because he killed someone in a church. I dropped history in third year and studied geography instead. (I still love Ordnance Survey maps).
Asking around, my experience doesn't seem untypical and it's against this kind of backdrop that ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Scotland is launching Scotland's History - one of the biggest projects we've mounted in recent years. This coming Sunday sees the start of the landmark television series A History of Scotland, but also seven - count them - seven different history series on ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Radio Scotland. One of those will look specifically at what we were and were not taught in school.
Now that I'm in my mid-forties (no..honestly, it's true) I've become a real enthusiast for things ancient and historic. The thing about travelling across Scotland is that you see history everywhere you turn. It's there in every statue, every rusted or eroded plaque on old buildings - these always draw my attention and provoke a desire to know more.
Yet we take it for granted. Outside Inverness Castle, for example, there's that statue of . I must pass it five times a week, at least. Yes, we all know how Flora helped Bonnie Prince Charlie escape to France by disguising him as a servant girl called Betty Burke. Not so many know that she then emigrated to North America and sided with the British in the American war of independence...or that she ended her life back here in Scotland.
The statue itself is now part of the heritage of Inverness, It was erected in 1899 and there are contemporary photographs showing the huge crowds that turned out for the formal unveiling.
Yet the best thing about history is that it's always good for an argument. My children were taught at school about the Jacobite uprising and the Battle of Culloden. The new Culloden Vistor Centre attracts tourists from around the world. But click on and you'll hear how historians can trade verbal blows when it comes to interpreting the facts.
I'm guessing we'll have lots more of that in the year ahead.
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