Nick Robins traces Scotland's seagoing heritage and its outstanding contribution to Britain's development as an empire and as the world's leading maritime power in the 19th century.

This text intertwines Templar and Scottish history, beginning with an overview of the Templars, then applying this to Templar life in Scotland. It describes the Templar arrests in France and contrasts this with the Templar Inquisition at Holyrood. It then follows the Templars from Bannockburn to the present.

For the past 200 years, lifeboats have been stationed around the coasts of Scotland, ready to rescue the shipwrecked. In times past, shipwrecks were much more common and there was little provision to help those stranded at sea. This book tells the story of each Scottish station, both onshore and in the islands.

From Robert the Bruce to Willie Ross and James V to Donald Dewar, land has conferred political and economic power. Andy Wightman updates the statistics of land ownership in Scotland and explains why landowners got their hands on the millions of acres of land that were once held in common.

'Send back the money!' is a thorough and gripping examination of a fascinating and forgotten aspect of Scottish and American relations and Church history. A seminal period of Abolition activity is exposed be Iain Whyte through a study of the fiery 'Send back the money!' campaign named after 'the hue and cry of the day' that encapsulated the argument that divided families, communities, and the Free Church itself.

With the gradual phasing out of wooden fishing boats of Scotland it is timely to record some of these handsome vessels. The book is packed with previously unpublished illustrations going back to the 1960s of Scotland's wooden fishing boats.