In bed with an Elephant : A Journey through Scotland's Past and Present

Ludovic Kennedy

Published by Bantam Press, hardcover with dustjacket, illustrated

Although bom in Edinburgh, it was not until he was eight and having a picnic on Culloden Moor that Ludovic Kennedy learned from his mother that he was Scottish, his father's family coming from Ayrshire, his mother's from the Highlands. He calls himself an Anglo-Scot but one whose roots are more Scots than Anglo. While his career as broadcaster and writer has been spent mostly in England, he is of a mind with Robert Louis Stevenson who, writing of Scotland from Samoa, mentioned his -head being 'filled with the blessed, beastly place all the time'.

This book is not exclusively a history book, a travel book, a political tract or another slice of autobiography, rather a blend of all four. Ludovic Kennedy writes about the aspects of Scotland that excite him and in particular Scotland's rather stormy relationship with England over the centuries. From the prehistoric settlement of Skara Brae on Orkney, Kennedy moves to a gripping retelling of the story of the '45 rebellion in which Bonnie Prince Charlie emerges as a less than heroic figure.

Other highlights include Boswell's and Johnson's Highland jaunt and the adventures of the Stone of Destiny, its capture by Edward I and subsequent recapture from Westminster Abbey by Scottish patriots in 1950. In a marvellously fluid narrative style, ranging back and forth in time, Ludovic Kennedy illuminates both the famous and the less well-known people and incidents from Scottish history with characteristic verve and insight.

next to you is in some ways like sleeping with an elephant: No matter how friendly and even-tempered the beast, one is affected by every twitch and grunt.'

Pierre Trudeau, Canadian Prime Minister,
speech in Washington DC, March 1969