For nearly forty years John Wilson travelled the length and breadth of Scotland as a school inspector. From orkney to campbeltown and Jura to Dundee, he visited hundreds of schools and met thousands of teachers and pupils. In these memoirs, first published in 1928, he paints an insightful yet humorous picture of life in the country's schools after the 1872 education Act, which brought free schooling for all Scottish children between the ages of five and ten.

First published in 1928, this book is the personal account of John Wilson's experiences as a School Inspector, encompassing 50 years knowledge of social and educational conditions in the Highlands and Islands.

On the cusp of memory and history, the story of Scotland's twentieth-century is contested territory: international yet parochial; prosperous yet ailing; and, passionate yet temperate. This thematic account of Scotland's twentieth century examines the economic, social, political and cultural aspects that shaped the country during the period. Catroina MacDonald underlines the tensions inherent in the life of a nation distinguished by stark changes and surprising continuities, a fragmented identity, a shifting and at times uneasy accommodation in the UK nation state, and an ongoing engagement with globalising tendencies. In identifying the choices, ambitions, possibilities and contradictions that Scotland experienced during a century of profound change, she uncovers a country in which one can truly say extremes met.

Teaching Britain examines teachers as key agents in the production of social knowledge. Teachers in nineteenth century Britain claimed intimate knowledge of everyday life among the poor and working class at home, and non-white subjects abroad. They mobilized their knowledge in a wide range of media, from accounts of local happenings in their schools' official log books to travel narratives based on summer trips around Britain and the wider world. Teachers also obsessively narrated and reflected on their own careers. Through these stories and the work they did every day, teachers imagined and helped to enact new models of professionalism, attitudes towards poverty and social mobility, ways of thinking about race and empire, and roles for the state. As highly visible agents of the state and beneficiaries of new state-funded opportunities, teachers also represented the largesse and the reach of the liberal state - but also the limits of both.

These are the memoirs of a teacher from England who became headmaster of Garrynemonie School in South Uist in the 1890s. At that time, the Hebrides were as remote and forbidding to mainlanders as the Antarctic is in the late-1990s. In the 1890s this island was one of the poorest districts in the Outer Hebrides. Roads were no more than rough tracks. Gaelic was the majority language, although children had to learn their lessons in English and few allowances were made for bilingual teaching. Epidemics were frequent and the school had to close its doors because of outbreaks of smallpox, whooping-cough, scarlet fever, mumps and measels. Rea's memoirs show how he strove to meet these difficulties. His pupils recall him as a sincere, hard-working man and an excellent teacher. This work reveals his powers of observation and his interest in the unfamiliar scenes and events he witnessed and recorded.