Alastair J. Mann – författare

Before 1708, the Privy Council was the Scottish government. Its records are the nearest we have to cabinet papers and they cover almost every conceivable aspect of the nation’s history. Historians of early modern Scotland frequently refer to those records but not always comprehensively. This is the first book to examine the council itself. Its primary focus is the period from the 1689 revolution to the Anglo-Scottish union of 1707. This was an extraordinary age in Scottish and British history which is imperfectly understood because the council’s role remains largely obscure.The book provides a thematic overview of a wide selection of the council’s activities in this period, covering high politics, Jacobitism and prisoners of war, religious policy and persecution of religious minorities, interaction between the council and the other institutions of the nation, approaches to the economy and the environment, efforts to maintain social order and to respond to the petitions and concerns of all levels of society.

Over two parts, 69 leading scholars, librarians and archivists come together to analyse the development of the book in Scotland from the early seventh century BCE to the 1707 Union, from depictions of books in carved stone monuments to the printing presses of Edinburgh, Aberdeen and Glasgow producing pamphlets and receipts used for everyday business at the end of the seventeenth century.Part II: Networks, Collections and Genre focuses on the types of books and printed material that were being made, produced, collected and used in Scotland in the medieval and early modern periods. On a scale not before attempted, Part II includes a survey of the genres of books and written material produced and consumed in Scotland over a millennium of the country’s history. Profiles of individual collectors help to illustrate the wider narratives of individuals, institutions and networks of the owners, collectors and patrons who helped shaped the bookish landscape of Scotland before the Union.

James VII and II is one of the least studied monarchs of Scotland, and has previously mostly been studied from an English perspective or as the muddled victim of the revolution of 1688/9 which delivered for Britain much-vaunted political emancipation. This book provides the first complete portrait of James as a Stewart prince of Scotland, as duke of Albany and King of Scots. It re-evaluates the traditional views of James as a Catholic extremist and absolutist who failed through incompetence, and challenges preconceptions based on strong views of his failings, both in popular belief and serious history.Investigating the personality and motives of the man, this biography assesses James as commander, as Christian and as king, but also as family man and Restoration libertine - a prince of his time. Painting a picture of James from cradle to grave, from childhood to resigned exile, it brings him to life within his Scottish context and as a member of the royal line of Scotland. The journey from dashing young cavalry commander to pious prince in exile appears oddly incongruous given the political and personal trials that lay between.That journey was much more of Scotland than previous studies have suggested - indeed, James was in many ways the last King of Scots.