When the Scottish Parliament sat in Edinburgh for the first time in nearly three hundred years it was the climax of Europe's most peaceable and legalistic national movement. But dull it wasn't. In war and peace, from Empire to Europe, through the rise and fall of industry, the cause of self-government has been endlessly reinvented and remodelled, sometimes surviving more as a poetic fashion rather than as a political campaign. But it got there in the end.
The Road To Home Rule documents not just the demonstrations, party politics, and international upheavals that swept the Scottish cause along -- and all too frequently adrift -- during the twentieth century, but also shows how it swam in the tides of social change and cultural inspiration. From Keir Hardie's and William Gladstone's promises to Tony Blair's and Donald Dewar's delivery, via a route populated by the larger-than-life characters and ideas of Hugh MacDiarmid, Winnie Ewing, Michael Forsyth, round the milestones and millstones of Conventions, Covenants, Wee Magic Stanes, and Bravehearts -- all Scottish life is there. With a core essay by the historian Christopher Harvie and the political correspondent Peter Jones, the book's 150 illustrations cast a cool eye on the grandeurs and miseries encountered on the long way to Holyrood.
