BY ROSEMARY GORING

There are countless way to tell Scotland’s stories and uncover its past, but none better, to my mind, than to hear people’s own version of events. In future decades, when the history of the Covid- 19 pandemic is written, there will be sweeping generalisations, mountains of statistics, and closely argued analyses of what happened, a n d w h y. Nothing, however, will c a p t u re w h a t people h a ve e n d u re d or felt more vividly than their individual experience, as expressed at the time it was happening , or remembered in the years to come.

History is sometimes seen as a dry and daunting subject. Yet it is essentially an amalgam of all our stories, or at least as many as survive in the records. I see it as a tapestry of individual lives, threads running alongside others. They might be brightly coloured or drab, longer or shorter, but each is an essential part of the fabric. Pull one, and others are teased out.

Academic history, such as that written by our greatest living historians, professors Tom Devine and TC Smout, is essential to understanding how the country navigated previous centuries. Meticulous scholarly research illuminates the currents that have swept the nation in one direction or another, be it the religious revolution of the Reformation, or political waves, as when women were given the vote, or economic and cultural shifts, such as the lowland and Highland clearances, or the insight of writers like Muriel Spark and James Kelman.

Keen to explore the past from the perspective of individuals who were in the thick of it, I set out to tell Scotland’s story by gathering eyewitness accounts of key events, from the earliest days to the present. That book – Scotland: The Autobiography – was jampacked with the testimony of chroniclers and kings, statesmen and politicians, artists and factory workers, journalists, engineers and novelists. Yet it became obvious how rarely women featured in tales of the major turning points; and how only in the last 50 years or so have they been in a position to play as large a part in public life.

Because of that dearth, I went back to the drawing board – more accurately, the library – and began a new search. The result was Scotland: Her Story. A companion volume to the first book, it is an almost wholly fresh version of the last millennium. This time it was exclusively about or by women and girls. In searching for their footprints, I often had to look beyond the main political events, such as battles, treaties, coronations and political edicts, to the way in which women actually lived.

This might be running a farmhouse or croft, or skippering a boat, working as a midwife or teacher, secretary, shop worker, tram driver or cook. Whatever the century, for many women getting married, having or adopting or losing a baby, managing a home, coming out as gay or changing gender are, for a time at least, as important as international crises. These are crucial components of women’s history, alongside being allowed into universities, or parliament, or the Royal College of Surgeons.

The earliest written historical record, as left by chroniclers, is largely devoted to those at the pinnacle of society, be they bishops, lords, or royalty. As the archives expand, more