"The Renaissance in Scotland" contains original essays on the following topics of cultural history: literature; manuscripts and printed books; libraries; law; universities; music; education; social, political and ecclesiastical history. It offers fresh interpretations of many aspects of the age of humanism and reform, as this impinged on Scotland.

In this volume, hitherto unused manuscript material brings to light the history of the Dominican Order in one of Scotland's most turbulent periods. Issues of reform and Reformers, literature, and religious practice are set out with a fresh perspective.

Originally published in 1982, written at a time when Scotland was emerging from a recession, it offered a comprehensive appraisal of the Scottish economy. The book shows that long-term regional problems had not gone away and that the presence of North Sea oil was not a guarantee of future economic health in Scotland. A major theme of the work is the key role of government expenditure in the (then) recent restructuring of the Scottish economy. Many of the issues discussed remain pertinent today, as Scotland once again discusses the future shape of its economy and political identity.

The landscape of the north-east of Scotland ranges from wild mountains to undulating farmlands; from cosy, quaint fishing coves to long, sandy bays. This landscape witnessed the death of MacBeth, the final stand of the Comyns earls of Buchan against Robert the Bruce and the last victory, in Britain, of a catholic army at Glenlivet. But behind these momentous battles lie the quieter histories of ordinary folk farming the land - and supping their local malts. Colin Shepherd paints a picture of rural life within the landscapes of the north-east between the 13th and 18th centuries by using documentary, cartographic and archaeological evidence. He shows how the landscape was ordered by topographic and environmental constraints that resulted in great variation across the region and considers the evidence for the way late medieval lifestyles developed and blended sustainably within their environments to create a patchwork of cultural and agricultural diversity. However, these socio-economic developments subsequently led to a breakdown of this structure, resulting in what Adam Smith, in the 18th century, described as 'oppression'. The 12th-century Renaissance, the Protestant Reformation and the Industrial Revolution are used here to define a framework for considering the cultural changes that affected this region of Scotland. These include the dispossession of rights to land ownership that continue to haunt policy makers in the Scottish government today. While the story also shows how a regional cultural divergence, recognized here, can undermine 'big theories' of socio-political change when viewed across the wider stage of Europe and the Americas.

At last - here is a single volume authoritative history of Scottish architecture. This compact yet comprehensive account combines factual description of the vast and fertile range of visual forms and key architects in each period with a wide-ranging analysis of their social, ideological and historical context. As Scotland has often been closely involved with new trends in western architecture, this book highlights the interaction of Scottish developments with broader European and international movements. From the beginnings of the Renaissance in the 15th century right up to the 1990s ,this much-needed survey covers the entire post-medieval story in one volume.

The relationship between Latin and the Scots vernacular in the chronicle literature of 16th-century Scotland provides the topic for this study. John Leeds here shows how the disposition of grammatical subjects, in the radically dissimilar syntactic systems of humanist neo-Latin and Scots, conditions the way in which "the subject" (i.e., the human individual) and its actions are conceived in the writing of history. In doing so, he extends the boundaries of existing critical literature on early modern "subjectivity" to include the subject of grammar, analyzing its incorporation into narrative sentences and illuminating the ideological contents of different systems for its deployment. Though focused on the chronicles of Renaissance Scotland, the argument can in principle be applied to the entire range of Latin-vernacular relations during the early modern period. While examining the intellectual culture of early modernity, Leeds also takes aim, at every stage of his argument, at the semiotic and social-constructionist orthodoxies that dominate the humanities today. Against the notion that human subjects are "discursive constructs," he argues for the subordination of discourse to realities, both material and immaterial, that are external to language. As part of this argument, he proposes a view of neo-Latin humanism as a resistance to the onset of modernity, arguing that Latin prose provides options (at once syntactic, ideological, and ontological) that vernacular culture has, to its considerable detriment, foreclosed. In sum, Leeds advocates a renewed and theoretically-informed commitment to the humanism that the humanities themselves have been at such pains, during the last scholarly generation, to depreciate.

Set in mid-19th century Ayrshire, in the fictitious town of Barbie the novel The House with the Green Shutters (1901) describes the struggles of a proud and taciturn carrier, John Gourlay, against the spiteful comments and petty machinations of the envious and idle villagers of Barbie (the "bodies"). The sudden return after fifteen years' absence of the ambitious merchant, James Wilson, son of a mole-catcher, leads to commercial competition against which Gourlay has trouble responding.

From the death of James III to the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots, Jane Dawson tells story of Scotland from the perspective of its regions and of individual Scots, as well as incorporating the view from the royal court. Scotland Re-formed shows how the country was re-formed as the relationship between church and crown changed, with these two institutions converging, merging and diverging, thereby permanently altering the nature of Scottish governance. Society was also transformed, especially by the feuars, new landholders who became the backbone of rural Scotland. The Reformation Crisis of 1559-60 brought the establishment of a Protestant Kirk, an institution influencing the lives of Scots for many centuries, and a diplomatic revolution that discarded the 'auld alliance' and locked Scotland's future into the British Isles.Although the disappearance of the pre-Reformation church left a patronage deficit with disastrous effects for Scottish music and art, new forms of cultural expression arose that

A key book for the golfer's library, exploring the intricacies of golf architecture--and how this knowledge can improve your golf game.