Scotland

The story of a country that has long punched above its weight is told in Scotland’s refurbished National Museum, says David Forsyth.

Mary Queen of Scots left Calais for Scotland on August 14th, 1561, aged 18 years old.

Jacqueline Riding examines how a 19th-century painting, created almost 150 years after the Jacobite defeat at Culloden, has come to dominate the iconography of that event.

Richard Cavendish traces the evolution of today's 'mega-bucks' sports industry back to a small competition in Scotland in the mid-19th Century.

August 3rd 1460

Richard Cavendish remembers the death of an ill-fated medieval Scottish king.

The emperor Hadrian presided over the Roman empire at its height, defined its borders and was one of the most cultured rulers of the ancient world. Neil Faulkner revisits his legacy, as the British Museum opens a major exhibition on his life and times.

Richard Cavendish marks a failed attempt on the Scottish and English thrones by the last Stuart pretender, on March 23rd, 1708.

Alexander I succeeded his father Malcolm Canmore, Macbeth's killer, as King of Scots on January 8th, 1107.

Gervase Phillips explains how and why Henry so badly mishandled his relations with the Scots.

Richard Cavendish marks the anniversary of King James I's creation and proclamation of a union flag, on April 12th, 1606.

Murray Watson looks at the historical roots of a phenomenon few commentators have noted: the sizeable English presence in Scotland.

Simon Chaplin describes the extraordinary personal museum of the 18th-century anatomist and gentleman-dissector John Hunter, and suggests that this, and others like it, played a critical role in establishing an acceptable view of dissection.