A while back I found an interesting article about the weapons of the Scottish Highlanders. I just read it again, taking a somewhat broader perspective.

The author has quite a bit of background information on Highland society. He emphaasizes how different the Highlanders were from the Lowlanders (who ruled everything that was officially “Scottish”), and how they were actually much more like their fellow Gaels in Ireland. He takes a very cynical view of the Highland regiments in the post-Culloden British army, similar to that of John Prebble.

On a related note, I just started reading Oliver Thomson’s The Great Feud: The Campbells & the MacDonalds. The introduction concludes:

Most histories of Scotland tend to focus on the concept of nation and wade into emotional quicksands as it ebbs and flows. This book shows two families who, though quintessentially Scottish, for the most part regarded the idea of Scotland as an irrelevance.