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“A book is a wonderful present. Though it may grow worn, it will never grow old.”
― Jane Yolen, Girl in a Cage

“Before Christina could stop herself, her gaze dipped lower. Holy saints, the outline of his manhood stretched the cloth taut. She’d never seen a man so well endowed. Taking a deep breath, she pressed her hand against her forehead and tried not to swoon while she forced herself to snap her gaze to his face. “They’re braies, not box-ers.â€� She bent down, picked up his blue ones and held them up. “Ye ken?â€�
“Right, bra-ie-s,â€� he said as if it were a new word for him. “How do you keep them up?”
― Amy Jarecki, The Time Traveler's Christmas

“After Scotland's mounted knights had been routed by Edward I in 1296, resistance leaders worked out new methods of waging war, using foot-soldiers armed with long pikes and axes. Medieval infantry usually fled when charged by cavalry, but William Wallace and Robert Bruce (King Robert I) solved the problem by organising their men into massed formations ('schiltroms'), and fighting on the defensive on well-chosen ground; that is how Robert I's army won the battle of Bannockburn. Also, Robert ordered that castles recaptured from the English should be demolished or slighted. This denied the English any bases for garrisons, and meant that subsequent warfare consisted chiefly of cross-Border raids - in which Robert I perfected the technique of making rapid hard-hitting strikes. The English could not win this type of warfare. The actual fighting was done by ordinary Scotsmen; most of the pikemen came from the substantial peasantry, whose level of commitment to the independence cause was remarkably high. But the organisation and leadership came from the Normanised Scottish landowners. Norman military success had been based on these qualities as well as on armoured cavalry; now they were vital in countering the armies of English knights. There is a most significant contrast here with the Welsh and the Irish, who never found the way to defeat the English in warfare. It was the Normanised Scottish landowners, forming the officer corps of Scotland's armies, who achieved that crucial breakthrough.”
― Alexander Grant, Why Scottish History Matters

“The play was written between 1948 and 1951, in the aftermath of the German occupation of several countries in Europe. The ending of that and the subsequent launching of the United Nations showed that the concept of national freedom was likely to be fundamental in the post-war world. A dramatic treatment of the origins of that concept seemed to me to be well worth attempting. The material was to be found in my native country, for the Scottish Declaration of Independence commonly known as the Declaration of Arbroath, is generally accepted as the earliest document in which the concept of national freedom is carefully defined, and asserted with passionate conviction. It is an early landmark on the road to later documents such as the United States Declaration of Independence, the Atlantic Charter, and the Charter of the United Nations.”
― Robert S. Silver, The Bruce: Robert I, King o Scots