This book is a reasonable short history of the `Wars of Independence' although it is lacking footnotes and proper references. It is unfortunately marred by the author's own prejudice. Call me old fashioned but I do believe that it is necessary to keep some distance when dealing with historical issues that evoke nationalist sentiment today, else any trust the reader can have in the objectivity of the assessment of facts is lost. Sadly that is so with this book. Although the author is not openly abusive about all the English leaders, he does seem to have the need to denigrate their abilities, a slant that was particularly marked when dealing with Edward III. Widely viewed as one of the greatest of medieval kings in Europe, he is depicted as a political and military `butterfly', who loses interest in prosecuting the Scots war due to a shallow opportunism. The reality would seem to be that Scotland was viewed as a side show in comparison to the French conflict, and that to a degree the House of Bruce gained a reprieve by the outbreak of the Hundred Years War. The author over-emphasises the minor battle of Culblean, while skimming over the great Scots reverses of Halidon Hill and Neville's Cross as swiftly as possible.
This can be overlooked as the partial interpretation of a Scotsman with a natural sympathy for his own heroes (that is fair enough, nearly all historians have an affection for some of the people they write about), but there is no excuse for the last few paragraphs which are an explicit attack on the current Union, and a call for that union to be broken. He is entitled to his opinion, but I sugest that they have no bearing on a book about early fourteenth century Scotland. Indeed it is interesting that there are few small minded English historians writing about this period who puff England's achievements and denigrate those of the Scots. I have never read an English history that crows over Flodden, or Neville's Cross for that matter. Let historians write the books and the petty nationalists go and join the SNP, and may never the twain meet.

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