Good books on Scottish-English conflict and the post-Roman era in the UK
July 13, 2019 1:27 AM Subscribe
What it says on the tin. I just returned from my Hadrian's Wall trek and am now very interested to read about the Border Reivers, the Roman withdrawal. Basically anything covering the period from Hadrian's Wall to the Jacobite uprising. I lean more towards popular history than academic history.
Yep, seconding the Steel Bonnets. If it reads like the encyclopedic notes for a film dramatisation of the subject, that's because it is. Shame the film never got made.
posted by scruss at 8:29 AM on July 13, 2019
posted by scruss at 8:29 AM on July 13, 2019
more fiction would be Dorothy Dunnett's Lymond novels, particularly The Game of Kings and Disorderly Knights, both of which explicitly involve quite a bit of business on the border. DO goes deeper into the whole thing, including the Scotts vs. the Kerrs.
posted by suelac at 9:18 AM on July 13, 2019
posted by suelac at 9:18 AM on July 13, 2019
Super classic fiction, and definitely worth a read, is Sir Walter Scott’s The Lay of the Last Minstrel.
posted by bananacabana at 11:41 AM on July 13, 2019
posted by bananacabana at 11:41 AM on July 13, 2019
Alistair Moffat also has two books The Borders, which is a more general history of the border region, and The Reivers. Unfortunately, both of them are (still) on my to-be-read pile, so I can't comment on whether they are any good.
(Also, the proper link to the Sir Robert Carey series.)
posted by scorbet at 12:22 PM on July 13, 2019
(Also, the proper link to the Sir Robert Carey series.)
posted by scorbet at 12:22 PM on July 13, 2019
The chapter "Alt Clud: Kingdom of the Rock (fifth to twelfth centuries)" in Norman Davies's Vanished Kingdoms is about a country that existed in the area which is now on the English/Scottish border, with its capital at Dumbarton. Alt Clud began as a tribe of ancient Britons in alliance with the Romans, saw itself as the last surviving part of the Roman Empire after the retreat from Britannia, and was constantly at war with the Anglo-Saxons (including the northerners now called the Lowland Scots), the (Highland) Scots (who were originally Irish colonists), and the Picts.
posted by Harvey Kilobit at 1:22 PM on July 13, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by Harvey Kilobit at 1:22 PM on July 13, 2019 [1 favorite]
Agreed on The Steel Bonnets and Vanished Kingdoms. In my TBR pile is Jacobites and Scotland: An Autobiography.
posted by Chrysostom at 1:37 PM on July 17, 2019
posted by Chrysostom at 1:37 PM on July 17, 2019
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(I’d also recommend P.F. Chisholm’s series about Sir Robert Carey but they are fictional.)
posted by scorbet at 2:55 AM on July 13, 2019 [3 favorites]