From the Times Online: Eminent historian debunks Scottish history as largely fabrication.
Scotland’s history is weaved from a "fraudulent" fabric of "myths and falsehoods", according to an explosive new study by one of the world’s most eminent historians.
The Invention of Scotland: Myth and History, is the last book, and one of the most controversial, written by the late Hugh Trevor-Roper.
Now, five years after his death, the book is to be published at one of the most pivotal periods in Scottish political history.
It will provide an inflammatory contribution to the constitutional debate as it debunks many claims upon which the argument for independence is founded.
In the book, Trevor-Roper claims that Scotland’s literary and political traditions, which claim to date back to the Roman invasion of Scotland in the first century AD, are in fact based on myth and were largely invented in the 18th century. [continue]
It’s tempting to create a response to the specifics mentioned from Trevor-Roper’s book. However, the larger problem would still remain; namely, that the issues he brings up are an inflammatory deconstructionist attack on Scottish identity. Better to do some substantive research and form a picture which can replace the presumptive myth.
This book will of course hit a raw nerve in Scotland because there has been discussion for years about the reality versus the stories in national identity.
My own take on that is, debunking myths is nothing more or less than a manifestation of disdain. Imagine if First Nations ancestral stories were dumped off as garbage by some historian.