The Scots are not descended from the Gaels, but of mixed Anglian, British, Viking and Norman blood like the rest of us. Most of the Border Raiding was south for cattle and extortion whilst the English only went north to try to stop it, sometimes by forcing formal submission. Scottish academics claim a centuries-old policy of genocide, but the reality is that most cruelty and oppression has been Scot on Scot. Clever and humane Scots chose Union in order to put an end to slavery, the burning alive of women as witches, legal torture, feudal oppression, and the poverty that annually brought famine to large parts of the country; it led to the flowering of Scotland in science and thought, and vast improvement in agriculture and industry; to a British Empire powered by Scots; and to regular subsidies from the English that continue to this day. Mann shows how primary school textbooks misrepresent all of this in order to inculcate a hatred of the English, prompted by university historians who ought to know better and are responsible for encouraging a fatalism and despair, particularly among the young, that contribute to high levels of physical and mental ill-health. The English do not reciprocate this hatred; hence the free passage of Scots into England and opportunity to prosper there. The Scots, he argues, owe it to their children to snap out of it and put their educational house in order.