Colin Kidd

Their resolve fortified by the sturdy civic virtue of Cato and Brutus, and their idea of republican self-government indebted to Greco-Roman models, the founders of American independence deferred to the authority of the ancients, even as they embarked on a revolutionary political experiment. George Washington, for example, identified himself with Cato of Utica, whom the 18th-century British...

At the time of the devolution referendum of 1997, doom-mongers feared that the Scots were about to join ‘a motorway without exits’. Separation from England seemed inevitable in the long run. En route, Scottish politics would be hampered by a systemic instability. After all, the anti-devolutionists whined, the Nationalists needed to win only once in Scottish parliamentary elections...

Until the past two decades most historians tended to be dismissive of Jacobitism as a subject of little more than antiquarian interest. In particular, they questioned both the scale of the threat posed by the exiled Stuart dynasty to the new regime established at the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and the extent of support for the cause (so called because ‘Jacobus’ was the Latin for...

Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-59) presents several faces to the modern world. His measured acceptance of the new forces of democracy unleashed by the American and French Revolutions made him an icon of moderate centrist liberalism. However, he has also had his champions on the right, at least among sophisticated Cold Warriors determined to maintain connections with a broader liberal tradition,...

Since the rise of Scottish Nationalism in the 1970s various prophets have foretold the imminent break-up of Britain. All too often, however, the signs and portents seem to have misled political seers – nationalist dreamers and unionist Cassandras alike apparently confounded by their own predictions. It is easy to discount unfulfilled prophecies, to become inured to pundits crying wolf; but the credibility of the Nationalists with the Scottish electorate has proved more resilient than the credibility of the commentators, and Britain – no longer underpinned in Scotland by loyalty to the ideal of a United Kingdom – remains fragile. Recent history may well be an unreliable guide in these matters, however: so far, at least, each looming crisis has been played out as farce.