The Invention of Scotland: Myth and History
By Hugh Trevor-Roper
Yale University Press £18.99, 282 pages
FT bookshop price: £15.19

With the Scottish Nationalists in power in Edinburgh for the first time, pragmatism dominates Scottish politics. While the independence debate remains alive, it has so far been mercifully short on rabble-rousing rhetoric about the semi-legendary exploits of William Wallace and Co.