"It amuses me to hear some of my Scotch friends, who have leapt nimbly on to the new band-wagon, speaking as if, with independence, Scotland would be the same as before, only independent. Will it even be as large as before? The native historian of the Orkney Islands closes his work with the remark that the only advantage that the Orkney islanders gained from their annexation by Scotland in 1468 was "the ultimate advantage of annexation to Great Britain" in 1707. They may well prefer to be ruled by London rather than from Glasgow, to which political power in an independent Scotland will naturally gravitate, and where it will no doubt be exercised—since they too are good at that kind of politics—by the Irish. This will perhaps compensate them for their inability to rule the Scots of Ulster from captured Belfast."
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Historians from EnglandUniversity of Oxford facultyUniversity of Oxford alumniConservative Party (UK) politiciansFellows of the British Academy
Original Language: English
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'Scotching the myths of devolution', The Times (28 April 1976), p. 14
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Hugh_Trevor-Roper
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Hugh Trevor-Roper
Hugh Redwald Trevor-Roper, Baron Dacre of Glanton (15 January 1914 – 26 January 2003) was an English historian. He was Regius Professor of Modern History at the University of Oxford. Trevor-Roper was a polemicist and essayist on a range of historical topics, but particularly England in the 16th and 17th centuries and Nazi Germany.
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