Tariq Ali

Scotland's political identity was destroyed, and a huge Scottish emigration to North America followed the brutal Highland clearances. These included every layer of Scottish society, not just the remnants of the defeated clans.

Independence is the only way Scotland can realise its full political and cultural potential in the 21st century.

Those who really value Ukrainian sovereignty should opt for real independence and a positive neutrality: neither a plaything of the West nor Moscow.

The weakness in traditional Scottish nationalism lay in its own inability to grasp that identity could not be the only factor in the march to independence.

History rarely repeats itself, but its echoes never go away.

I was in my mid-teens when someone gave me a copy of 'Pears Encyclopaedia of Myth and Legends' as a birthday present. It sat on my shelves for many months before I looked at it. When I did, I couldn't stop reading it.