From terrible loss to great triumph, from exceptional achievement to everyday courage: How millions of stories have become one story...the story of Scotland

Our country’s most important events are described by those who witnessed them in two enthralling supplements only in

There are countless way to tell Scotland’s stories and uncover its past, but none better, to my mind, than to hear people’s own version of events. In future decades, when the history of the Covid-19 pandemic is written, there will be sweeping generalisations, mountains of statistics, and closely argued analyses of what happened, and why. Nothing, however, will capture what people have endured or felt more vividly than their individual experience, as expressed at the time it was happening, or remembered in the years to come.

History is sometimes seen as a dry and daunting subject. Yet it is essentially an amalgam of all our stories, or at least as many as survive in the records. I see it as a tapestry of individual lives, threads running alongside others. They might be brightly coloured or drab, longer or shorter, but each is an essential part of the fabric. Pull one, and others are teased out.

Academic history, such as that written by our greatest living historians, professors Tom Devine and TC Smout, is essential to understanding how the country navigated previous centuries. Meticulous scholarly research illuminates the currents that have swept the nation in one direction or another, be it the religious revolution of the Reformation, or political waves, as when women were given the vote, or economic and cultural shifts, such as the lowland and Highland clearances, or the insight of writers like Muriel Spark and James Kelman.

Keen to explore the past from the perspective of individuals who were in the thick of it, I set out to tell Scotland’s story by gathering eyewitness accounts of key events, from the earliest days to the present. That book – Scotland: The Autobiography – was jampacked with the testimony of chroniclers and kings, statesmen and politicians, artists and factory workers, journalists, engineers and novelists. Yet it became obvious how rarely women featured in tales of the major turning points; and how only in the last 50 years or so have they been in a position to play as large a part in public life.

Because of that dearth, I went back to the drawing board – more accurately, the library – and began a new search. The result was Scotland: Her Story. A companion volume to the first book, it is an almost wholly fresh version of the last millennium. This time it was exclusively about or by women and girls. In searching for their footprints, I often had to look beyond the main political events, such as battles, treaties, coronations and political edicts, to the way in which women actually lived.

This might be running a farmhouse or croft, or skippering a boat, working as a midwife or teacher, secretary, shop worker, tram driver or cook. Whatever the century, for many women getting married, having or adopting or losing a baby, managing a home, coming out as gay or changing gender are, for a time at least, as important as international crises. These are crucial components of women’s history, alongside being allowed into universities, or parliament, or the Royal College of Surgeons.

The earliest written historical record, as left by chroniclers, is largely devoted to those at the pinnacle of society, be they bishops, lords, or royalty. As the archives expand, more

so-called ordinary voices can be heard, as people who were neither entitled nor wealthy were able to write. The hundreds of pieces I’ve gathered are drawn from court records, memoirs, biographies, newspapers, government reports and oral accounts. I’ve used speeches, such as Jimmy Reid telling the Upper Clydeside Shipyard workers “there will be no hooliganism, there will be no vandalism, there will be no bevvying, because the world is watching us”, print interviews, such as with Irvine Welsh on publication of Trainspotting, first-night reviews of plays like JM Barrie’s Peter Pan and Gregory Burke’s Black Watch, and extracts from books. A personal favourite is Margaret MacKirdy Black’s bestselling manual of how to run a Victorian household.

Perhaps the richest sources are diaries and letters. The most useful of these were not intended for publication, but offer a vivid description of what had just happened. As you can see from James Simpson’s description of the day he tried chloroform, they are as accurate an account as any one person can give, unless they set out deliberately to distort the facts. David Smith’s handwritten diary from the battle front – breathless but as gripping as a newsreel – pitches you straight into the trenches at the Somme. Memoirs are also invaluable, as in John Logie Baird’s account of how he came to solve the problems of inventing television. How many of us knew the role played by a warm and slippery human eyeball in this worldchanging innovation?

Newspaper reports are another prime source, as reporters deliver the facts as they first emerge, or try to convey dramatic events with scrupulous accuracy. One such is The Bulletin’s account of the mass evacuation of children from Glasgow in 1939, in Operation Pied Piper. Another is the Glasgow Herald’s report after the Clydebank blitz of 1941 of people found alive despite being buried for over a week. You sense that even a grizzled newshound was deeply touched when relating these survivors’ stories.

Depending on what lens you choose, it would be possible to portray the past as nothing more than a litany of poverty and misery; or to see it as an everboiling stew of religious bigotry and fanaticism.

Scotland’s history contains all of the above, and much else besides. It has its amusing moments, as when in 1950 Ian Hamilton and his student friends steal the Stone of Destiny from Westminster but, when dragging it to their car under the nose of a policeman, think they have broken it. Or it can be inspirational, such as when the Countess of Nithsdale, in 1716, dresses her tall and bearded Jacobite husband in women’s clothing, puts rouge and powder on his face, and sneaks him out of the Tower of London the night before his execution.

Having to choose a selection for The Sunday Post was not easy – where to draw the line? To simplify matters, it was decided to emphasise people whose contribution was extraordinary, or who showed exceptional bravery or stoicism.

Few are more memorable than the women and children interviewed for a government report in 1840 on conditions for child workers in the mines. Here is Janet Cumming, aged 11, who worked in Ormiston colliery: “The roof is very low; I have to bend my back and legs and the water is frequently up to the calves. Have no liking for the work. Father makes me like it.”

There were many like her, some even younger, who had no option but to toil until they dropped. Their testimony eventually helped improve working conditions in collieries, and the place of children in society. It demonstrates the impact of people’s stories, and how powerfully they resonate across the ages.