The first 2,500 million years of the geological history of Britain are stored in the gneisses of the Lewisian Complex of NW Scotland. Graham Park explores the long journey of discovery in which this history was gradually deciphered and the controversies and arguments in the scientific community over the past two centuries that arose in this period.

The Geological Survey's 1907 Memoir 'The Geological Structure of the North-West Highlands of Scotland' outlined many of the principles of field-based structural and tectonic analysis that have subsequently guided generations of geologists working in other mountain belts, both ancient and modern. These 32 papers celebrate the centenary of the 1907 Memoir by placing the original findings in both historical and modern contexts, and juxtaposing them against present-day studies of deformation processes operating not only in the NW Highlands, but also in other mountain belts.