I happily reaffirm the many thanks I distributed in the first edition of this book (1980). Alas, many of the recipients are now beyond renewed thanks. I list all persons once more leaving the specificities of their services to the earlier edition. But time can make no difference to my gratitude to: Bruce Young, Robert Sutherland, Margaret Roxton, the late Professor Sir Neil MacCormick, the late Very Rev. Anthony Ross, O.P., Professor Sir Thomas Devine, Professor Bruce Lenman, the late Professor Robert Dudley Edwards and the late Síle Ni Shúilleabháin (my parents), Ray Footman, Patrick Rayner, the late Professor Dennis Roberts, the late William Brown, the late Ian Rae, Julian Russell, Alan Bell, Rev. Conrad Pepler, O.P., Dom Mark Dilworth, O.S.B., the late Right Rev. David McRoberts, Nicolas Barker, Professor George Shepperson, Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones, Tom Nairn, the late Robert McIntyre, the late A. G. Donaldson, Griselda Donaldson, Edward Spiers, George Johnstone, Professor Robert Morris, Professor Rosalind Mitchison, William Ferguson, the late John Arnott, the late Allen Wright, Roger Savage, the late Sir John (Lord) Cameron, the late Lionel Daiches, Q.C., David Campbell, Charles Wilde, Paul Harris, Ailfrid Mac Lochlainn, the late Professor David Greene, Ben Shepherd, the late Magnus Magnusson, Professor G. J. Romanes, I. B. Macleod, A. A. Shivas, J. S. K. Stevenson, C. N. Stoddart, Professor Christopher Smout, the late Professor V. G. Kiernan, James Hutcheson, William Kilpatrick Campbell, Louis Appleby, Graham Sutton, Rory Knight Bruce, David Johnston, Timothy Willis, Adam Griffin, Neville Moir, Jamie Donald, Alasdair G. Mathers, Judith Baldwin Mathers, Professor Roy Foster, Bonnie, Leila, Sara and Michael Dudley Edwards. Tom Johnstone, Seán Costello, Allan Boyd and D. Ainslie Thin were invlauable guides in the book’s second edition by the Mercat Press, later subsumed into Birlinn, for whom Tom saw this latest edition through publication. (The first publishers, Edinburgh University Publications Board, now no more, was a student-run school of journalism to which faculty members, such as myself, were co-opted occasionally; its most famous chair, much beloved for his kindness and idealism, was the future Prime Minister Gordon Brown.) Over the years students and colleagues have improved the book’s insights and arguments, notably the late Professor Matthew Kaufman of Anatomy at Edinburgh University, and Ms Pat Strong and Dr Jack Cormack of its Royal Medical Society, to whom my cadaver has been bequeathed. My thanks to the National Library of Scotland and to Edinburgh University Library are perpetual.