Stone Voices - Couverture souple

'A colourful, colloquial and considered meditation on how history, landscape and culture have created the modern nation' -- The Big Issue

'A fascinating account of the history and current affairs of Scotland' -- Malcolm Rifkind, Prospect

'Acherson is a brilliant writer on Scottish affairs and his investigation of the national conciousness is both fascinating and original' -- Ian MacWhirter, Sunday Herald

‘A richly textured and most unusual meditation on Scotland...inspiring’ -- Andrew Marr, Observer Books of the Year

‘An intelligent and robust addition to the debate north of the border' -- Matthew Morgan, Observer

‘Ascherson is a brilliant writer on Scottish affairs and his investigation of the national consciousness is both fascinating and original.’ -- Iain MacWhirter, Sunday Herald

‘Ascherson is one of the most stylish and erudite journalists around’ -- James Campbell, Sunday Telegraph

‘Beautifully written...full of surprising revelations...and with a range of reference which is breathtaking in its scope.’ -- Magnus Linklater, Spectator

‘Provides a scholarly and poetic explanation of the emotional roots of Scottish nationalism’ -- Anthony Sampson, New Statesman Books of the Year

‘This journey through the mind and inclination of the Scots is an absorbing one, beautifully written...full of surprising revelations' --Magnus Linklater, Spectator

'Stylish, erudite and thought-provoking' --Irish Times

'Stylish, erudite and thought-provoking' --Irish Times

'Erudite and thorough' --Sunday Herald

'A classic history-cum-memoir' --Daily Telegraph

'Expect to be surprised and delighted... In Stone Voices, Ascherson's eclectic, intellectual search sweeps quite breathtakingly across history, geography, society, politics and with a biographical thread running through it. If you want to understand why, after over three centuries of successful Union, an internationalist who loves his country believes Scotland is inexorably drifting away from the UK and towards continental Europe, read this book' --'Book of the Year', Scotland on Sunday

'A classic history-cum-memoir' --Daily Telegraph

Neal Ascherson is one of Britain's finest writers in an undefinable genre that fuses history, memoir, politics and meditations on places. His books on Poland and his collected essays on the strange Britain to which he returned from Europe in the mid-1980s were deeply influential. In 1995, Black Sea won critical praise in many languages and several literary prizes. Stone Voices is Ascherson's return to his native Scotland. It is an exploration of Scottish identity, but this is no journalistic rumination on the future of that small nation. Ascherson instead weaves together a story of the deep past - the time of geology and archaeology, of myth and legend - with the story of modern Scotland and its rebirth. Few writers in these islands have his ability to write so well about the natural context of history.