Writing on a small island in the Firth of Forth in the 1440s, Walter Bower set out to tell the whole story of the Scottish nation in a single huge book, the Scotichronicon - 'a history book for Scots'. It begins with the mythical voyage of Scota, the Pharaoh's daughter, from Egypt with the Stone of Destiny. The land that her sons discovered in the Western Ocean was named after her: Scotland. It goes on to describe the turbulent events that followed,...