The 'land of the mountain and the floor', of tartan and tatties, Burns Nicht and bagpipes, is also the land that has spawned writers and poets, statesmen and philosophers, commentators and wits as diverse as William MacGonagall and Hugh MacDiarmid, Sir Walter Scott and Billy Connolly, Arthur Balfour and Muriel Gray, Sir William Wallace and Robert Louis Stevenson, among a thousand others. Famed for their candour, their ability to deflate pomposity, their good advice, so kindly and freely offered, and a wit so dry it almost evaporates, the Scots have always offered a rich vein of a particular kind of humour matched to well profound good sense. 'An atheist is a man who has no invisible means of support.' John Buchan 'Freedom and Whiskey gang thegither!' Robert Burns 'There are few more impressive sights in the world than a Scotsman on the make.' J.M. Barrie