Scotland's old order plots a restoration

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Scotland's old order plots a restoration

In 1985, Neal Ascherson compared the different attitudes which the English and the Scots have to their national histories. When the English think of their past, he argued, they “are gazing from the terrace of a country house down carefully-landscaped perspectives of barbered lawns and positioned trees”. The eye is carefully guided towards a clear focal point: a single, national story, leading neatly up to the present and keeping the past safely …