BBC Scotland has been castigated by one of the nation’s distinguished academic historians over its showpiece documentary series about the country’s past, which he characterised as “a mediocre B-movie”.
According to Professor Tom Devine the scripts of A History of Scotland are “lame, boring and flaccid” and its “hapless, long-haired presenter”, Neil Oliver, suffers from “a sad lack of personal authority or presence”.
The series, Professor Devine claimed, is fatally imbalanced, with only three of its ten programmes devoted to the making of modern Scotland, while some of the most important issues — the Enlightenment and the Scottish diaspora — are, he said, almost entirely ignored.
Aside from these shortcomings — and with the proviso that the series has a predictable narrative style — the