I had the pleasure of spending time again with Professor Mary Beard last week, enjoying one of those slow, intelligent conversations which seem so lacking in the world of late.

One of the subjects we touched on was the hijacking of history: how the past is relentlessly politicised by fools and extremists in the present.

For Beard, the country’s foremost classicist who specialises in the history of ancient Rome, it’s the far-right which most acts as the metaphoric highwayman. White supremacists relentlessly exploit antiquity, particularly Ancient Greece and Rome. It’s a sorry, pathetic game.

Far-right propagandists aren’t the only stick-up men trying to steal the stagecoach of history and set it in a direction of their choosing. The far-left does it, and here in Scotland extremists on both sides of the constitutional divide attempt to corral the past for their purposes. A curse on them all.

I’ve been particularly irritated over the years by those on the fringes of the Yes movement who try to paint Scotland as a victim of the British empire rather than a willing junior partner. Many hardline nationalists would sooner peddle myths about Scots being slaves, than confront the truth about Scottish slave-owners.

Robin Bell created the display in 2015 (Image: Gordon Terris)

My irritation is strongest with the Yes movement as that’s my ‘own side’ - a divisive term, I hate. I support independence and detest this squawking stupidity being attached to a political project in which I believe.

Evidently, the hardline unionist fringe is just as bad. Indeed, no sooner had Mary Beard quit speaking, than up popped an example of Scottish history being bastardised by the political obsessions of the 21st century from a unionist........

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