Lively and controversial, this panoramic history of the highlands focuses squarely on its people. It traces the ironies of their fate as emigration, forced clearances and the breakdown of feudal relations undermined traditional customs. But Michael Fry's groundbreaking reassessment of the highlands is not the usual eulogy for a dying era. He argues that the highlands simply had to modernise and traces the inventive ways in which Gaelic culture withstood economic decline. Wild Scots captures a truly distinctive culture with an emblematic capacity to withstand volatile political change.