No Gods and Precious Few Heroes

A colourful and stimulating history of modern Scotland This introductory history takes Scotland through two world wars and subsequent social exhaustion, through the re-energising adjustments loosely referred to as ‘the sixties’ to a final endgame of Union versus Independence. The novel structure of Harvie’s history mirrors that of a grand engineering project, or a structure as complex as the Forth Railway Bridge: ‘three periods of change rendered as towers, and two great cantilevered arches of life-in-common, over which day-to-day life proceeds’. Key Features: A final narrative of ‘Union versus Independence’Thematically rebuilt chapters: Economy/Society/Politics/CultureThe ‘60s’ reinterpretedFrom the APF (JW to ammend) ‘When No Gods and Precious Few Heroes first appeared in 1981 Paul Addison, in the English Historical Review, called Christopher Harvie’s book ‘a masterly synthesis of the most important political, economic social and cultural developments in Scotland’s recent past, written too with great wit and style.’ Updated in 1987, after two further editions in 1996 and 2000 comes this near- total refashioning. ‘Starting and finishing in melodrama’, its much-travelled author, after living with politics and media in Europe, assesses the new parliamentary state against thirty-five turbulent, vertiginous years. Narrative and episodes shift from squaddies in Iraq camps to working mothers reclaiming civic life from failing religion and big crime. Traceable all-too -often to an untended past, the demand for ‘love patience and power to absolve those tormented’ might at last – through most unusual politics – be getting to it