Open a history book, any one really, and there it is: the way we are now. The past may be different on the surface – the clothes, the food, the way of life, the ways of death – but underneath it all, the fundamentals of the past are much the same as the fundamentals of the present, by which I mean the nature of human beings: what we need, what we think, and, most troubling of all, what we’re sometimes capable of doing to each other.

Scotland is no exception to this, even though some Scots think we are. Some Scots also seem to think we’ve changed dramatically in the last ten years or so, post-2014, post-2016, post-everything. But no: open a history book, any one really, and you’ll see it: the same opinions, arguments, behaviours and fights then as now, some of which sprung, and spring, from the complicated feelings about identity we have in our complicated country.

A couple of examples. James Boswell’s diaries for Sunday 21 November 1762 describe his meeting with a fellow Scot Walter Macfarlane who was “keenly interested in the reigning contests between Scots & English”. Boswell says this of Macfarlane: “He talked much against the Union. He said we were perfect underlings, that our riches were carried out of the country and that many others were hurt by it.” Switch the date from 1762 to 2025 and some of the language but not much of it, and this is very familiar stuff.

Another example. There’s been a bit of a fad of late for books about James VI, focusing mostly on what his sexuality might have been, but I quite enjoyed The Wisest Fool by Steven Veerapen and, as with Boswell, there are striking familiarities with now. In the........

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