Download free sample chapters

We’ve made available for download the contents, foreword and first two chapters of Restless Land. They begin with what little we know of the Picts, where recent excavations have shown ‘evidence of a highly sophisticated culture, capable of producing magnificent art and extraordinary architecture’ and end with the Declaration of Arbroath where ‘one passage stands out, not only for its defiant assertion of national sovereignty, but also, almost half a millennium before the French Revolution, its renunciation of the divine right of kings.’

Download the sample chapters now (PDF 3MB)

Author interview: Alan McCombes

Alan McCombes reveals all in an interview we’ve just posted on this website where he explains why he and Roz wrote the book and why everyone should read it. “We’re living right now in the midst of one of the most momentous periods in Scotland’s history, a potential turning point as dramatic as 1314 or 1707, yet there has been a strange dearth of discussion over the past,” he says. “…All of us, individually, are products of all the accumulated experiences and influences we have been exposed to from the day of our birth onwards. Societies and nations are also shaped by the years, decades and centuries that have come before.” Read the full interview