Non Fiction Authors From Scotland

"History is the study of the human past, through the systematic analysis of the primary sources, and the bodies of knowledge arising from that study, and, therefore, is the human past as it is known from the work of historians. The human past enfolds so many periods and cultures that history can no more form one unified body of knowledge than can the natural sciences. The search for universal meaning or universal explanations is, therefore, a futile one. History is about finding things out, and solving problems, rather than about spinning narratives or telling stories."

"Historians do not, as too many of my colleagues keep mindlessly repeating, “reconstruct” the past. What historians do is produce knowledge about the past, or, with respect to each individual, fallible historian, produce contributions to knowledge about the past. Thus the best and most concise definition of history is: “The bodies of knowledge about the past produced by historians, together with everything that is involved in the production, communication of, and teaching about that knowledge."

"The insistence that language determines ideas, and is itself a system arising from the existing power structure in society, is as grandiose a piece of speculative thought as ever dreamed up by Hegel or Nietzche."

"If the historian finds himself resorting to metaphor or cliché, that may well be a warning that things have not been sufficiently worked out, and substantiated, to be conveyed in plain simple prose."

"Some candidates describe themselves as feeling numb over the result. Others are simply angry they were put in this position – made to fight an election they thought was a bad idea. It's not just the 'big names' who have lost their seats, it's the losses in areas that have been Conservative for 100 years, such as Chichester. Then there’s Reform gains in former Tory strongholds such as Great Yarmouth. It means the recriminations are well under way."

"In a sign of national disapproval, Mr. Johnson was greeted with boos and jeers at the Platinum Jubilee service on Friday. It's not that a Conservative politician being booed is rare; in fact, it's quite common. It's that such a thing is not supposed to happen to him."

"Reform is also thinking long-term. The party wants to seize this moment of peak Tory unpopularity (few prime ministers have seen approval ratings as low as [[Rishi Sunak|[Rishi] Sunak]] has now) and use it for a realignment of politics. Its real focus is the election after the next one, when it hopes a shake-up of the two-party system could take place. Just as the SDP-Liberal Alliance split the left in the 1980s, Reform may split the right now."

"As the owner of a little place on the Isle of Wight, I should declare an interest. Some 80 per cent of properties in my seaside village are second homes, making it difficult for local shops to survive the winter."

"Now we sat in silence over the prawns and cheese, listening to them arguing. She was telling him The Sunday Times was investigating a tip that he had dodged a driving ban for speeding by pretending she had been at the wheel. He was telling her to keep her mouth shut. The recording finished and she switched off the machine, looking up expectantly."

"[T]he Dutch families who settled in Southern Africa three hundred years ago, are now as fair, and as pure in Saxon blood, as the native Hollander; the slightest change in structure or colour can at once he traced to intermarriage. By intermarriage an individual is produced, intermediate generally, and partaking of each parent; but this mulatto man or woman is a monstrosity of nature — there is no place for such a family: no such race exists on the earth, however closely affiliated the parents may be. To maintain it would require a systematic course of intermarriage, with constant draughts from the pure races whence the mixed race derives its origin. Now, such an arrangement is impossible. Since the earliest recorded times, such mixtures have been attempted and always failed; with Celt and Saxon it is the same as with Hottentot and Saxon, Caffre and Hottentot. The Slavonian race or races have been deeply intercalated for more than twice ten centuries with the South German, the pure Scandinavian, the Sarmatian, and even somewhat with the Celt, and with the Italian as conquerors: have they intermingled? Do you know of any mixed race the result of such admixture? Is it in Bohemia? or Saxony? or Prussia? or Finland?"

"When Mr. Canning made his celebrated boast in Parliament, that he had created the republics of Mexico and Peru, Columbia, Bolivia, and Argentine, I made, to some friends, the remark, that to create races of men was beyond his power, and that the result of his measure would merely be to precipitate that return, sure to come at last, the return to the aboriginal Indian population, from whom no good could come, from whom nothing could be expected; a race whose vital energies were wound up; expiring: hastening onwards also to ultimate extinction."

"But the land of Egypt still abounds with its ancient monuments; the race was quite peculiar, and was, I think, African, or at least allied to the African races. The mouth and lips all but prove this. Nevertheless, their identity with a great section of the present Jewish race cannot be doubted; the young Jew of London or Amsterdam might readily sit for a likeness of the bust of Amenoph."

"The source of all evil lies in the race, the Celtic race of Ireland. There is no getting over historical facts. Look at Wales, look at Caledonia; it is ever the same. [...] The race must be forced from the soil; by fair means, if possible; still they must leave. The Orange club of Ireland is a Saxon confederation for the clearing the land of all Papists and Jacobites; this means Celts. If left to themselves, they would clear them out, as Cromwell proposed, by the sword; it would not require six weeks to accomplish the work. But the Encumbered Estates Relief Bill will do it better."

"[Following Murray's comments ("That things happened in the USSR...") cited above] Mr Murray believes that British communists in the 1930s were justified in backing the Great Terror, the Moscow Trials and the Ukraine famine."

"[During the 2017 general election campaign] Andrew Murray is a member of the Labour Party and he is an official at Unite, and he is temporarily helping us with the campaign."

"[Following Murray's comments ("That things happened in the USSR...") cited above] Murray is seriously maintaining that its an open question whether British communists did all they might have done in denouncing these abominations."

"There is nothing in the imperial record as chilling as the systematic extermination of the great majority of Europe's Jews."

"That things happened in the USSR which were inexcusable and which ultimately prejudiced Socialism's whole prospect is today undeniable. Whether Communists in the capitalist world could or should have done more than they did is much more contentious."

"For the Labour Party, the exclusion of the revolutionary trend in the movement paved the way for the unchallenged domination of the right wing and locked the party ever more firmly into class collaboration and reformism. [...] In that sense, the decision to reject communist affiliation paved the way for the whole miserable litany of Labour-led disasters from 1931 to 1979."

"Next Tuesday is the 120th anniversary of the birth of Josef Stalin. His career is the subject of a vast and ever expanding literature. Read it all and, at the end, you are still left paying your money and taking your choice. A socialist system embracing a third of the world and the defeat of Nazi Germany on the one hand. On the other, all accompanied by harsh measures imposed by a one-party regime. Nevertheless, if you believe that the worst crimes visited on humanity this century, from colonialism to Hiroshima and from concentration camps to mass poverty and unemployment have been caused by imperialism, then [Stalin’s birthday] might at least be a moment to ponder why the authors of those crimes and their hack propagandists abominate the name of Stalin beyond all others. It was, after all, Stalin’s best-known critic, Nikita Khrushchev, who remarked in 1956 that "against imperialists, we are all Stalinists"."

"[Israel is a "white settler state"] To ask Muslim community leaders to tackle "extremism" effectively when every night you can see on television a Muslim child being pulled lifeless from the rubble caused by the operations of the bloc of the USA, Britain, Israel and other white settler states like Canada and Australia is asking a lot."

"The Salisbury attack is something we got wrong. When it happened, I thought, "Well, probably there's Russians behind this, because of the use of novichok." I just thought it was Russian gangsters — some business interests, and so forth. I didn't think the Russian state was behind it. And we were wrong. The evidence that's emerged since is overwhelming. We misread that. I still think that the line Jeremy was trying to follow, which is, "Get the evidence first and then state sanctions, and so on, rather than the other way around," is a defensible position. You don't run into saying "This is Putin's responsibility" when you haven't produced the evidence of it. In fact, this evidence has now been produced. Had we known then what we know now, we'd have taken a different view, I think. We just didn't think the Russian state would be so stupid and brazen as to do something like that — to carry out a poisoning attack on British soil. I know, given the Litvinenko precedent perhaps we should have done but that never really got sorted out so clearly . . . Up until then we'd still ha[d] a quiescent PLP. We were doing all right in the polls. That started bringing all the doubts about Jeremy and the leader’s office to the surface again."

"[Asked about Murray's alleged "Stalinism"] I don't believe that Andrew is anything other than a democratic socialist and member of the Labour Party like me."

"Hitler is uniquely excoriated because his victims were almost all white Europeans, while those of Britain (and other classic colonialisms — French, Belgian, Dutch, Italian and Wilhelmine German) were Asian, African and Arabs. That Hitler's regime is seen as the most bestial of modern times is not of course objectionable. What needs to be confronted is the view that the crimes of other great powers of the last 150 years or so, being less lurid than those of the Nazis, can therefore be subject to a more nuanced judgment, in which the deaths of millions of people on the one hand can be offset against the construction of railways on the other. The British Empire was almost certainly responsible for more human deaths, albeit over a considerably longer period of time, than Hitler was."

"Our party has already made its basic position of solidarity with People's Korea clear."

"There were no emails in 1978. Word processing meant dictating copy to stenographers; each newspaper had a phone booth in a gloomy corridor for this purpose. The [[w:Morning Star (British newspaper)|[Morning] Star]]s chief stenographer was an implacable Bolshevik called Doris. The 80-something comrade was hard of hearing with arthritis in her fingers, leaving her bereft of any qualification for her role beyond ideological rectitude. I had no chance of keeping an exclusive as I bellowed my scoops at a pace Doris could keep up with. Eventually I persuaded management that an infusion of youth was required in the stenography department, and a new typist was engaged. Dictating to her for the first time, I began my story, as so often in those days, with "Premier Thatcher...". I was stopped at that point. "How do you spell that?" she asked. "Which word?" I said. "Both." Give thanks for automatic spellchecks too."

"He is a person of enormous abilities and professionalism, and is the head of staff of Unite the union. To manage a very large union and a large number of staff takes special skills, and Andrew has them."

"The motivations and methodologies might differ, but both science and religion posit life as a special outcome of a vast and mostly inhospitable universe. There is a rich middle ground for dialogue between the practitioners of astrobiology and those who seek to understand the meaning of our existence in a biological universe."

"Gamaliel had a reputation for mildness and moderation, but his brilliant young pupil flung himself with fanatical zeal into the task of stamping out the new heresy of the Nazarenes."

"From what we know of living anthropoids, we may infer that the chief mental activities of the group will be three in number—namely, those concerning with mating, maternity, and social behaviour. Each group will be attached to a territory and maintain its isolation."

"'The theology of the gospels!' some will exclaim in dismay, 'and we verily thought the gospels were a refuge from theology!'"

"In all the medical schools of London a notice is posted over the door leading to the dissecting room forbidding strangers to enter. I propose, however, to push the door open and ask the reader to accompany me within, for, if we are to understand the human body; it is essential that we should see the students at work."

"Now we proceed to consider the oldest race of great stature that has yet been discovered, one which flourished in the south of France when the last of the cold periods was lifting from Europe. The first examples of this race were discovered in 1868, when a railway was being constructed in the valley of the Vézère, a tributary of the Dordogne. A cutting made in the débris at the foot of the limestone cliffs which flank the valley of the Vézère at Cro-Magnon, brought to light the skeletons of a man, of a woman, and part of the skull of a third individual. Hence this ancient type or race is usually named Cro-Magnon."

"We have to face the fact that we are the descendants of apelike ancestors. The truth, at first sight, is often ugly and repulsive to our personal feelings, but when it is the truth, its ultimate effects on us are always salutary. ... ... Man's brain does not stand as a thing apart; it is the culmination of an ascending series. There is no part of it and no function manifested by it that cannot be traced to humble beginnings lower in the animal scale. And what we postulate for man's brain we must in all justice apply to that of the ape, the dog, and all other beasts."

"Hell is an element of any religion which is morally healthy."

"... since the Sacred Book is a phenomenon of religion in general, and as isolation is a fruitful source of wrong judgment in the historical investigation of ideas and institutions, we decline to detach our Sacred Book from similar books of its class in other faiths of the world. Now, in surveying the history of religion, I seem to detect four negative truths about the Sacred Book. (i) Not every religion possesses a sacred book. (ii) The sacred book does not lie beside the cradle of the faith in question. (iii) No religion lives by its sacred book alone. And (iv) no sacred book can be judged apart from the specific ethos of the faith out of which it rose and for which it exists."

"I learned, when a university chaplain, that the student who asked where Cain got his wife could really be wanting to know whether he should sleep with his girlfriend."

"When you pray is there anyone there listening?"

"With the best will in the world, I could not bear a second-rate sermon. [...] Now I have found a church where I do not squirm in my seat, but listen in rapt attention from beginning to end. After having heard the first sermon by Dr. David Read, I went Sunday after Sunday, because I was richly rewarded every time. What a feeling of relief to be allowed to come near to God and worship as I always wanted to worship! [...] It therefore became a pleasure to go to church because to be in church was to be near the true spirit of Jesus Christ."

"In the Indus period the Saraswati river system may have been even more productive than that of the Indus, judging by the density of settlement along its course. In the Bahawalpur region, in the western portion of the river, settlement density far exceeded that elsewhere in the Indus civilization . . . While there are some fifty sites known along the Indus, the Saraswati has almost a thousand . . . [The Yamuna] shifted its course eastward early in the second millennium, eventually reaching its current bed by the first millennium, while the Drishadvati bed retained only a small seasonal flow; this seriously decreased the volume of water carried by the Saraswati. The Sutlej gradually shifted its channel northward, eventually being captured by the Indus drainage . . . The loss of the Sutlej waters caused the Saraswati to be reduced to the series of small seasonal rivers familiar today. Surveys show a major reduction in the number and size of settlements in the Saraswati region during the second millennium."

"This work revealed an incredibly dense concentration of sites, along the dried-up course of a river that could be identified as the ‘Saraswati’. . . Suddenly it became apparent that the ‘Indus’ Civilization was a misnomer—although the Indus had played a major role in the rise and development of the civilization, the ‘lost Saraswati’ River, judging by the density of settlement along its banks, had contributed an equal or greater part to its prosperity...Many people today refer to this Early state as the ‘Indus-Saraswati Civilization’ and continuing references [in her book] to the ‘Indus Civilization’ should be seen as an abbreviation in which the ‘Saraswati’ is implied."

"‘[The desertion of the Drishadvati and the Sutlej] is typical of the instability of the river courses in the Indus plains—but in the case of the Saraswati, the effect was not localized but devastating on a major scale. Cities, towns, and villages were abandoned, their inhabitants drifting to other regions of the Indus realms and eastward towards the Ganges, pushing back the centuries-old eastern boundaries of Indus culture and venturing into uncharted territory.’"

"The now-dry Hakra River forms part of this river system. Surveys along its dry bed revealed that this was one of the most densely populated areas of the 3rd millennium, the agricultural heartland of the civilization, although it is now virtually desert."

"The Indus civilization has challenged scholars’ understanding since its discovery some eighty years ago, and in recent years the application of systematic and problem-orientated research, coupled with much new and unexpected data, has overturned many previous interpretations."

"In contrast, changes taking place in the Saraswati Valley in the early second millennium were probably a major contributor to the Indus decline. In Harappan times, the Saraswati was a major river system flowing from the Siwaliks at least to Bahawalpur, where it probably ended in a substantial inland delta. The ancient Saraswati River was fed by a series of small rivers that rose in the Siwaliks, but it drew the greater part of its waters from two much larger rivers rising high in the Himalayas: the Sutlej and the Yamuna. In its heyday the Saraswati appears to have supported the densest settlement and provided the greatest arable yields of any part of the Indus realms. The Yamuna, which supplied most of the water flowing in the Drishadvati, a major tributary of the Saraswati, changed its course, probably early in the second millennium, to flow into the Ganges drainage. The remaining flow in the Drishadvati became small and seasonal: Late Harappan sites in Bahawalpur are concentrated in the portion of the Sarawati east of Yazman, which was fed by the Sutlej. At a later date the Sutlej also changed its course and was captured by the Indus. These changes brought about massive depopulation of the Saraswati Valley, which by the end of the millennium was described as a place of potsherds and ruin mounds whose inhabitants had gone away. At the same time new settlements appeared in the regions to the south and east, in the upper Ganges-Yamuna doab. Some were located on the palaeochannels that mark the eastward shift of the Yamuna. Presumably many of the Late Harappan settlers had originated in the Saraswati Valley."

"The decline of Harappan urbanism probably had many contributing factors. The shift to a concentration on kharif cultivation in the outer regions of the state may have seriously disrupted established schedules for craft production, civic flood defense, building and drain maintenance, and other publicly organized works on which the smooth running of the state depended. The reduction in the waters of the Saraswati and the response of its farmers by migrating into regions to the east tore apart the previous unity of the Harappan state, disrupting its cohesion and its ability to control the internal distribution network."

"I saw him in the studio treating the microphone like an old friend, chatting away, waving his arms about, and I knew this was how it was done."

"Climbing to my mind finds its chief justification as an antidote for modern city life. One cannot sweat and worry simultaneously. The mountain resolves itself into a series of simple problems, unconfused by other issues. Its problems are solid rock, to be wrestled with physically; and in the sheer exuberance of thinking through his fingers and toes as his primaeval fathers did before him the climber's worries vanish, sweated from his system, leaving his brain free to appreciate beauty."

"The ground we had covered was easy; but we did not know that, for we had not yet learned that a vast amount of space below one is not of itself a difficulty, and that the difficulty in rock climbing varies according to the presence or absence of holds. To us, the drop was everything."

"The strange, other worldly, Alice in Wonderland feeling never quite left me at the difficult places; but it diminished as the day passed, and by the time we had reached the north peak John and I were able to sit with our legs dangling over the drop and agree with Tizzie that one met such nice people on mountains."