Quote of the day 19th April 2021

"The miracle of Scottish history is that a country that for centuries so closely resembled Afghanistan in our own time — torn apart by compulsively warring mountain clans and religious fanatics, and subject to recurrent foreign interference — should have transformed itself in the space of a generation into a cradle of the Enlightenment. 

As Scott observed in the postscript to “Waverley”: “There is no European nation which, within the course of half a century or little more, has undergone so complete a change as this kingdom of Scotland.”


(Niall Ferguson, from an article "To save the UK, give Scotland the Canada treatment" which you can read in full here.)

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