Scotland’s history has been told many times, but never exclusively by its women. This book takes a unique perspective on dramatic national events as well as ordinary life, as experienced by women down the centuries. From the saintly but severe medieval Queen Margaret to today's first minister Nicola Sturgeon, it encompasses women from all stations of class and fame and notoriety, offering a tantalising view of what happened to them, and how they felt. Drawing on court and kirk records, exchequer rolls and treasurer’s accounts, diaries and memoirs, chap books and newspapers, government reports and eye-witness statements, Scotland: Her Story brings to life the half of history that has for too long been hidden or ignored.

Features material by from a hugely diverse range of authors, including:

Princess Matilda • St Margaret • Margaret Tudor • Mary, Queen of Scots • Lady Grizel Baillie • Elsie Inglis • Mary Slessor • Jane Carlyle • Marie Stopes • Nan Shepherd • Leila Aboulela • Winnie Ewing • Muriel Spark • Liz Lochhead • Jackie Kay • Ali Smith • Nicola Sturgeon

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• The Final Letter Written by Mary, Queen of Scots
• Awake for Sin
• Viking Invaders are Repelled
• Queen Margaret’s Saintly Ways
• Matilda Reluctantly Wears the Veil
• A House Full of Lepers
• A Much-Maligned Wife
• A Nursemaid Witnesses Horror
• King Malcolm’s Mother Goes Too Far
• Queen Margaret’s Ongoing Influence
• A Queen Runs for Home
• Rules for Ale Women
• The Maid of Norway’s Fate is Feared
• Warrant for the Countess of Buchan’s Capture
• Wedding List
• A Mother’s Impossible Choice
• Black Agnes Defeats the English
• Murder of James I
• Bold Women
• Royal Wedding
• A Lonely Bride Writes to her Father
• After Flodden
• Dowager Queen Stands her Ground
• A Prioress’s Double Life
• Mary of Guise is Mocked
• Mary Stuart’s First Wedding
• Young Mary’s Beauty
• Mary, Queen of Scots and her Turbulent Cleric
• David Riccio’s Assassination
• Secret Cure for Smallpox Scars
• Elizabeth I Hears of Mary Stuart’s Newborn Son
• Relations Improve Between Mary and Darnley
• Darnley’s Murder
• Marriage of Mary and the Earl of Bothwell
• Queen in Captivity
• A Pension for John Knox’s Widow
• The Execution of Mary, Queen of Scots
• The North Berwick Witches
• James Vi’s View of Witches
• Prenuptial Contract
• On Beasts and Women
• An Unexpected Night-Time Visitor
• Edinburgh Style
• The Book of Common Prayer is Roundly Rejected
• Dinner Ruined
• Hiding from the Law
• Soldiers’ Wives
• Abduction!
• Martyrs on the Mudflats
• Waiting for Love
• The Tumbling Lassie
• A Servant’s Religious Awakening
• Famine
• Choosing a Wife
• School Fees
• Rape in the Highlands
• Household Accounts
• Queen Anne’s Common Habits
• A Flying Woman
• A Jacobite Wife Springs her Husband from the Tower of London
• Regulations for Midwives
• Well-Bred Girls
• Fornication
• Nursekeepers
• Like an Overgrown Coachman
• Captive on St Kilda
• Two Days After Culloden
• Saving Prince Charles
• Pipe-Smoking
• Brussels Lace and Other Fashions
• How to Kill Time While Men Drink and Gamble
• Happy Sundays
• Houses and Hovels
• Begin the World Again
• Dr Samuel Johnson Makes an Impression
• Upskirting
• Far-Sighted Mrs Somerville
• The Problem with Hoops
• Excellent Scotch Old Ladies
• Hats Like Balloons
• Clarinda Struggles with her Conscience
• Convict Ship
• An Abused Wife
• Robert Burns’s Wife Remembers
• Robert Burns’s Last Letter to Jean
• The First Female Benefit Society
• An Aberdeen Breakfast
• The Farmer’s Wife
• The Gunner’s Wife
• A Church Service in the Highlands
• Miss Baillie Sees Too Much
• A Child’s View
• The Strathnaver Clearance
• Waterloo Blue
• Edinburgh Welcomes King George IV
• Flirting Without a Licence
• Experimenting on a Child
• A Publisher Congratulates his Author
• Celestial Mechanics
• Sir Walter Scott’s Anxious Daughter
• The Well-Dressed Thief
• Maternity Hospital Rules and Regulations
• A Schoolmistress’s Tragic Tale
• Servant Trouble
• Testimony of Coal Workers
• Marriage
• The Sex Trade
• Marital Harmony Restored
• The Factory Girl
• Cholera
• A Missionary’s Mother-in-Law Protests
• Letter to a Doomed Youth
• I Nursed My Husband Night and Day
• Cook’s Hot Temper
• A Right-Minded Woman
• Giving Birth on the Street
• A Room of One’s Own
• Lewd Practices
• O Pioneer!
• Highland Tragedy
• How to be a Domestic Goddess
• Orphans in the Snow
• Newhaven Fishwives
• Stays and Parasols
• Mary Slessor’s Babies
• Death of a Beloved Son
• Combinations
• Black House
• Force-Feeding Suffragettes
• Votes for Women – Dangerous
• War Begins
• Working at the Pithead
• Rent Strikes
• The Lady Tram Driver has Arrived
• Cooking for Elsie Inglis’s Russian Unit
• The Russian Front Line
• Married Love
• Iolaire Widow Asks for Help
• Kept in the Dark
• A Marked Woman
• The Night Washing
• A Thrashing
• A Sexual Harasser Meets his Match
• Fictional Sex
• A Country School
• Bringing Burns Out of the Mist
• The Hockey Party
• Blin’ Drift on the Cairngorms
• Mill Work
• Making Ends Meet
• Sex – Damned Thing
• Edinburgh Women in their Prime
• Storming Stirling Castle
• Greyhounds for Breakfast, Dinner and Tea
• The Famished Prostitute
• The Spanish Civil War Observed
• Fish Gutters
• Teashops
• Health, Husbands and Housekeeping
• Operation Pied Piper
• Lights Going Out all Over Europe
• Stillbirth
• Land Girls
• A Day in the Life of . . .
• Sales Assistant
• Growing Old
• Advice to Sons
• Genteel War-Work
• The Landlady
• National Health Service
• A Protestant Girlhood
• Measuring Out a Life in Percolated Coffee
• A Croft at Christmas
• Day One at the National Library of Scotland
• An Italian Scottish Wedding
• A New Way of Travelling
• The Long Journey Towards Myself
• No. 1 Catterline
• Jean Redpath Wows New York
• Gang Members
• Who do you Think you are?
• Adoption
• Stalked in the Corridors of Westminster
• Stand-Up and be Counted
• Love in a Cold Climate
• Scotland’s World Cup Winner
• The ‘Ootlin’
• Open Casket
• Running for Olympic Gold
• Don’t Lose the Joy of Living in the Fear of Dying
• Rape
• Dunblane’s Darkest Day
• Barbie in the Mosque
• Standing Up to Sectarianism
• Prodigy of the Year
• Stage Fright
• C-Section
• Women Voters
• First Among Equals: Nicola Sturgeon, First Minister
• Sources and Permissions
• Index