Peter Marshall was born in Orkney, his ancestors were farmers and farm labourers on the northern island of Sanday - where, in 1624, one of them was murdered by a witch. Merging his local experience with wider historical expertise, Marshall looks afresh at a small group of islands that has been treated as a mere footnote, remote and peripheral, and in doing so invites us to think differently about key events of British history. With Orkney as our point of departure, Marshall traverses three centuries of dramatic religious, political and economic upheaval; a time during which what we think of as modern Scotland, and then modern Britain, was being forged and tested. What happens to our understanding of Scotland and Britain when they are viewed from the perspective of their island edge?

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