In May, my wife and I took a much delayed (thanks COVID!) vacation to the United Kingdom, hitting London, the Scottish Highlands and Isle of Skye, and Edinburgh over the course of a couple of weeks.

As is my wont, the trip inspired me to come home and read/listen/watch various things about that part of the world. Here are some quick thoughts.

The whole of the UK is steeped in history and it occurred while I was there that I knew precious little of it, particularly when it came to Scotland. I remedied that by digesting the entirety of Scotland: A History from Earliest Times, by Alistair Moffat.

Never was a book so aptly named, given that it spends a good hunk of its epic runtime (23+ hours in audiobook format) covering the geological history of Scotland before human beings even enter into it. Honestly, I wish the book would have condensed that considerably, since Moffat then covers basically all of Scottish human history (my other criticism is that he goes too close to current, lapsing from history to journalism in the end). As a result, it has a kind of bird’s eye view of things, without a whole lot of detail, but for someone like me who didn’t have a great idea of Scottish history, it was just about perfect. Particularly interesting to me was how Sir Walter Scott (who has a huge memorial in Edinburgh, pictured above) essentially created the modern conception of being “Scottish,” drawing on Highland things that had mostly been suppressed previously.

One of this historical things about which I knew nothing at all before we hit Scotland were the Jacobite Risings that happened there in the 17th & 18th Centuries. The last, started in 1745, was particularly prominent, in spite of the fact that it ended in bloody defeat for the rebels at the Battle of Culloden. We visited the battlefield and I wanted to get a better sense of the battle, so I read/listened to a book with the title Culloden, by Trevor Royle, which you’d think would do the trick.

Except that the full title is Culloden: Scotland’s Last Battle and the Forging of the British Empire. The Culloden part is, maybe, one third of the book, although perhaps it doesn’t need much more than that (it took place on wide open terrain and was over in about an hour – Gettysburg it was not). The rest is about how many of the officers and men at Culloden went on to fight Britain’s imperial wars around the world, with a decent focus on North America. It was interesting, in its own way, but not quite what I was looking for.

My thought was Culloden would be a good subject for a movie, so I was surprised that there weren’t many out there dealing with it directly (as opposed to using it as some kind of background). I finally found one called Chasing the Deer that I was able to watch on YouTube.

I was drawn to this partly because one of the actors is Fish, original lead singer of Marillion and successful solo artist in his own right. I knew he’d done a little bit of acting (this was his only feature film) so that made certain I had to check it out. It was well done in terms of tone and accuracy, but the small budget came through and the script wasn’t great (neither, sad to say, was Fish, although he was about par for the course with the rest of the cast). It did give you some idea of what the actual battle was like, however, so that counts for something.

My final bit of reading when I got home was Devil-Land: England Under Siege 1588-1688, by Clare Jackson.

We were in Westminster Abbey and I saw Oliver Cromwell’s tomb (well, slab of tile under which he’s buried) and realized I’d never really dug into Cromwell or the English Civil Wars. This book looked like just the thing to fill that gap. It’s just as long as Scotland, but only focused on about 100 years, after all. Still, I was disappointed that this was also pretty high-level history, without a lot of detail about life on the ground. In addition, the Civil Wars didn’t get any singular treatment and were just events along the way that happened to involve the royals that were really the focus of the book. There was no discussion of any political philosophy underlying the Republicans or Royalists. What is clear to me, however, is that this period was hugely influential on the American Founding Fathers, as you can pick precise parts of the Constitution that seem designed to prevent atrocities and injustices that happened during this era.

Speaking of Westminster Abbey, part of what we took in there were the tombs of Elizabeth I and Mary Queen of Scots. Somewhere along the way I found out there was a fairly recent movie about the pair, cleverly titled Mary Queen of Scots, with Saoirse Ronan in the title role and Margot Robbie as Elizabeth.

As the title suggests this is a Mary-forward portrayal of events and does give you a sense of the era (the claims of historical inaccuracy, based on my reading, are mostly down to interpretation rather than outright incorrectness). That said, it’s fairly dull for the most part, skipping large periods of time in order to cover all of Mary’s time in Scotland, but precious little of her time as a prisoner in England. And as much as I love David Tennant, one of John Knox’s rants on how wicked women are was enough. Nice bit of synergy, though – I started Devil-Land just after we saw this and it starts with the execution of Mary, so it was a nice transition.

Much less period, and not at all historical, but definitely getting points for Highland isolation is Calibre, from 2018.

Calibre is the story of two buddies, one of whom is getting ready to become a father, who jaunt into the Scottish wilderness for a hunting trip. They wind up in a very small town filled with very creepy people who are full of unheeded warnings. A tragic accident happens and the guys get stuck in town without an easy way out. The movies deals in tropes, to be sure (the “small town creepy hick” cliche transcends oceans), but the atmosphere is really well maintained and the acting is quite good. Like I said, nothing historical, but does give you a sense of what it’s like in the middle of nowhere Scotland (see also “Loch Henry,” one of the episodes of the new season of Black Mirror).

Spending a few days in a foreign land is hardly enough time to get a sense of the place. What it can do, at least for me, is spark a deeper interest in the area’s history and culture, such that it will always be something that captures my interest. I figure British history is a rabbit hole I’m going to plumet down into for a good long while to come.