Product Description

'I believe that the whole history of Scotland has been coloured by myth; and that myth, in Scotland, is never driven out by reality, or by reason, but lingers on until another myth has been discovered, or elaborated, to replace it,' wrote Hugh Trevor-Roper. This book argues that while Anglo-Saxon culture has given rise to virtually no myths at all, myth has played a central role in the historical development of Scottish identity. Trevor-Roper explores three myths across 400 years of Scottish history: the political myth of the 'ancient constitution' of Scotland; the literary myth, including Walter Scott as well as Ossian and ancient poetry; and the sartorial myth of tartan and the kilt, invented ironically by Englishmen in quite modern times. Trevor-Roper reveals myth as an often deliberate cultural construction used to enshrine a people's identity. While his treatment of Scottish myth is highly critical, indeed debunking, he shows how the ritualisation and domestication of Scotland's myths as local colour diverted the Scottish intelligentsia from the path that led German intellectuals to a dangerous myth of racial supremacy This compelling script was left unpublished on Trevor-Roper's death in 2003 and is now made available for the first time. Written with characteristic elegance, lucidity and wit, and containing defiant and challenging opinions, it will absorb and provoke Scottish readers and intrigue many others.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #25359 in Books
• Published on: 2008-05-31
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 304 pages

Review
'A book from beyond the grave... and though it is unfinished, there is no mistaking the sting in the tale.'

Review
'Written with Hugh Trevor-Roper's characteristic grace and pungency... an enlightening and entertaining work.'

Synopsis
This book argues that while Anglo-Saxon culture has given rise to virtually no myths at all, myth has played a central role in the historical development of Scottish identity. Trevor-Roper explores three myths across 400 years of Scottish history: the political myth of the 'ancient constitution' of Scotland; the literary myth, including Walter Scott as well as Ossian and ancient poetry; and the sartorial myth of tartan and the kilt, invented - ironically by Englishmen - in quite modern times.Trevor-Roper reveals myth as an often deliberate cultural construction used to enshrine a people's identity. While his treatment of Scottish myth is highly critical, indeed debunking, he shows how the ritualisation and domestication of Scotland's myths as local colour diverted the Scottish intelligentsia from the path that led German intellectuals to a dangerous myth of racial supremacy.This compelling script was left unpublished on Trevor-Roper's death in 2003 and is now made available for the first time. Written with characteristic elegance, lucidity and wit, and containing defiant and challenging opinions, it will absorb and provoke Scottish readers and intrigue many others.

Customer Reviews

What lies underneath?
As the male youth of the modern world clamours for the kilt, be it tartan, black, or even pink and glitter as seen occasionally in civil partnership ceremonies, it is useful to muse on the findings of Hugh Trevor Roper in this erudite book, well notated as it is with many references.
There is no shortage of websites devoted to the manufacture and selling of Highland dress - or "Highland Attire" as one solemnly attests it must be accurately labelled, perpetuating the myth, as that claim is clearly fatuous and plainly wrong, as indeed, are myths. Otherwise they would not be myths. As Burns had it in his poem, A Dream ... "Facts are chiels that winna ding."
Many of these websites are based in the US, from where supposed scholars of the tartan will avail a clansman of the correct (and various) setts from which a valued customer might choose in order to look his best at a wedding. And at a whopping price. Where a tux might be purchased for around £250, a prospective buyer of the full "Highland Attire" might have to re-mortgage his house.
So that's near the nub of it: where the Sobieski Stuarts and their charlatan ilk sought to improve their status by their propagation of the tartan myth, so did the manufacturers of such costumery profit, neither stopping to consider that the truth of the matter might be relevant to the notion of what it would mean for the young men of the future to be Scottish.
To confront some of these same young men now with these myths would, in some instances, be leaving oneself open to a sucker punch and 'a sore face' such as one might expect in Glasgow at least.
Yet The Invention of Scotland is a book which must be read by all Scots - and indeed our cousins in the rest of the UK - merely to set the record straight. It will surely instil in an intelligent person the quality that - warts and all, to summon up a terror of the Scots - we are what we are. And let's work on that.

A Parcel of Rogues All
Thirty years ago scottish officials engaged a team of historians to unearth a link - any link, however tenuous - which would allow them to claim William Shakespeare for their own. TWH Crosland's 'daw with a peacock's tail of his own painting' will be unimproved by this brisk corrective to native impertinence. Whether we English learn from it remains to be seen.

Ironically my nationalist sympathies oblige me to defend a people who wouldn't dream of returning the compliment, who rejoice in vainglory and rancour and who we consistently fail to see for the wrenching, grasping, lying, covetous breed they are. I've given the book five stars because telling the truth from an admirer's perspective resists allegations of bias.

Scotland's dalliance with romantic nationalism has parallels with pre-war Germany according to the author, who fears it threatens the Act of Union he wishes to preserve. Believing local culture heavily influenced by myth Roper describes how fellow unionist Sir Walter Scott used literature to try to reconcile Highland and Lowland life to a mythological, romantic vision of national unity that would make the 1707 Act an easier pill to swallow.

He argues that scotland invented and added to a purely local past, steering clear of the racial supremacism that set German nationalism, Germanic myth-making, on a path to war. Personally I doubt the cases are commensurable. Scottish 'nationalism' is a fraud. It is wedded to Brussels and the public teat. Nationalism, furthermore, is not a synonym for nazism.

Roper admires his subjects' ability to invent and re-invent their past (sometimes known as 'lying'). Perhaps that's why he fails to challenge the 'celtic' pre-migration identity of the British Isles when the very origin of that word should give pause to a professional academic. He also fails to emphasize the profoundly English roots of Lowland scotland.

England ran to the Highland Line for centuries - from long before Athelstan or Eadgar (943-75), who foolishly gave Lothian to scotland, until the early 1300s and intermittently thereafter until the late fifteenth century. Even today Highlanders know Lowlanders as 'English'. Scottish philosopher David Hume is unequivocal: "...all the lowlands....were peopled in great measure from Germany....'

The language of Burns - 'lallands' or 'scots' - is pure Anglo Saxon. The kilt, a garment quite unrelated to that worn by Irish clan chiefs, was invented by a humble English Quaker named Rawlinson. Tartan, too, we learn, is English. The enterprising (and brilliant) Allen brothers, related to the compiler of a still highly regarded history of the county of Surrey, hailed from Godalming.

Almost half 'scottish' clans are Anglo-norman. England may even have introduced the bagpipe. Research elsewhere reveals the earliest written references to bagpipes occur south of the border, pre-dating anything in scotland by 150 years (bagpipes are neither scottish nor irish and were popular throughout mediaeval Europe). More intriguing is that some of the earliest scottish references to the instrument identify them as 'Inglis' (English).

Scottish history is a lie - a Victorian romance got up to emphasize the indispensability of our neighbour at a time of vital imperial expansion. Scottish - not English - pressure initiated union. Indeed for all the book's virtues Lord Dacre's motive for writing it, a conviction that both countries benefit from the arrangement, seems wildly misconceived given current events.

Scotland accepts enormous English subsidies yet few of her burdens. Under EU law she votes herself English tax revenues without the contributor having any say in the matter. Her roads are better maintained. Her health service is better provided for by some way.

Other exceptions neither union nor membership of the EU can explain. In thirty years since the first black footballer donned an England jersey not a single black or asian sportsman has been selected to play for 'proudly multicultural scotland' at anything. Was it to preserve this state of affairs that government secretly closed all scotland's asylum offices in 2004?

Either scotland has them to select and a breach of law is being committed or an immigration war is being waged against the English. Why else is a country with few ethnics and a declining population allowed to restrict its search for new blood to all-white eastern Europe?

Newspapers say nothing. Broadcasters won't touch the subject. I know. I've asked. While English TV imposes ethnic quotas scottish programmes - Taggart, Monarch of the Glen, Rebus - observe no such restrictions. Is it a masonic thing?

Walter Scott denounced the Allens as liars but died, leaving them a free hand. Macaulay, the great historian and a genuine Highlander, who knew well the privations and not-so-romantic realities of life in the far north, simply gave up in defeat, attributing the entire Highland nonsense to Scott's poetry, which created a vision of the past so real it allowed literature to supersede the most obstinate truths of history.

Good. Nationhood is about more than 'scholarship' (etymologically 'nation' implies family connections, ties of blood, not simply an address), and truth is not always the best choice where harm is potentially irreparable. So what if scots tell themselves what they want to hear? It would be none of our business but for this infernal union of the unwilling.

C.S. Lewis denounced myth as 'lies'. Tolkien knew better ["Yes! 'wish-fulfilment dreams' we spin to cheat our timid hearts and ugly Fact defeat!"]. After all it was partly to restore to England something of what she'd had taken from her after 1066 with the importation of a lot of French nonsense about arthurian knights that the great man wrote Lord of The Rings.

What this book says needed saying years ago. But is it really such a bad thing if the mythopoeic instinct it questions appeals to imagination in ways rationalism and scholarship never can? Myth is a cultural anchor. It renders the whole infinitely larger than the sum of its parts by fulfilling our need to feel we belong to something greater than ourselves.

Carlyle said 'history [is but] a distillation of rumour'. If so truth must always come second to cultural preservation. Survival matters. As nations continue to yield before internationalist pressures it's probably the only thing that does.