Last of the Free: A Millennial History of the Highlands and Islands of Scotland

Written by a man who is both an award-winning historian of the Highlands and Islands and a key figure in shaping the region's future development, this is an account of how the Highlands and Islands of Scotland evolved into the way they are today. But the book is not simply the story of humanity's millennium-long involvement with one of the world's most spectacular localities. It is also a contribution to the present-day debate about how Scotland - and Britain - should be organized. James Hunter's central contention is that the Highlands and Islands were most successful when the region possessed a large measure of autonomy, which turned places like Iona and Kirkwall into centres of European significance. That autonomy was destroyed, he maintains, by mediaeval Scotland's monarchy, by 17th-century Scotland's parliament and by the British politicians who inherited the Scottish state's unrelenting determination to ensure that inhabitants of the Highlands and Islands had no worthwhile control over their own destinies.