The John Donald imprint publishes our academic books on all aspects of Scottish culture, from architecture to philosophy, specialising in Scottish history.
What’s new from John Donald?
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Paperback | Pub: 06 Aug 2026
£20.00
The thirteenth-century manuscript The Chronicles of the Kings of Man and the Isles is the earliest surviving piece of historical documentation from the Isle of Man and a uniquely important source describing the rise and fall of the medieval Kingdom…
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Paperback | Pub: 02 Jul 2026
£25.00
Witches in medieval fiction were linked with otherworlds – heaven, hell or fairyland. By the later sixteenth century, as witchcraft prosecutions gathered pace, fictional witches were connected more firmly to the Devil and to hell. Writers then…
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Paperback | Pub: 18 Jun 2026
£30.00
Winner of the Frank Watson Book Prize
The legendary Scottish king Máel Coluim III, also known as ‘Malcolm Canmore’, is often held to epitomise Scotland’s ‘ancient Gaelic kings’. But Máel Coluim and his dynasty were in fact newcomers,…
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Paperback | Pub: 18 Jun 2026
£30.00
Winner of the 2025 Frank Watson Book Prize
Why did Scots in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries know so little about their past and even less about those who controlled their history? Is the historical narrative the only legitimate medium…
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Paperback | Pub: 14 May 2026
£25.00
In 1985, Tilquhillie Castle, in the picturesque Royal Deeside region in Aberdeenshire, was a ruinous Z-plan Scottish tower house. Originally built in the middle of the sixteenth century for the important local Douglas family, it had been derelict…
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Paperback | Pub: 16 Apr 2026
£30.00
Feuding had an effect on the history of most of Europe. Scotland provides a fascinating focus for the study of the bloodfeud because feuding survived until remarkably late there, and thus is much better documented than in other European societies….
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Paperback | Pub: 16 Apr 2026
£30.00
The essays in this book, all by distinguished historians, illuminate the main activities, preoccupations and aspirations of the families whose territorial power and local leadership made them a central factor in medieval Scottish society. Issues…
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Paperback | Pub: 16 Apr 2026
£30.00
In viewing Galloway from the wider context of the northern British mainland, Irish Sea and wider Hebridean zone, it has been possible to explore the dynamics of state-building, dynastic interactions, and the close inter-relationships of the…
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Paperback | Pub: 16 Apr 2026
£30.00
By comparison with their English counterparts, Scottish nineteenth-century railways have suffered from a degree of neglect by economic historians. Most of the existing literature is written for the railway enthusiast, concentrating mainly on…
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Paperback | Pub: 02 Apr 2026
£30.00
Lighthouses are enduring symbols of resilience, hope and safety. The human stories of the keepers’ lives, and the scale of the human effort that went into lighthouse keeping before automation, are fascinating.
This book tells the stories of the…
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Paperback | Pub: 02 Apr 2026
£30.00
The renowned historian Jenny Wormald was a ground-breaking expert on early modern Scottish history, especially Stewart kingship, noble power and wider society. She was most controversial in her book-length critique of Mary, Queen of Scots….
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Paperback | Pub: 19 Mar 2026
£14.99
It was the Vikings, not Christopher Columbus, who made the first European discovery of America. It was the Vikings, not the Pilgrim Fathers, who were the first Europeans settlers in America, and it was probably the Vikings who first used the name…
Forthcoming
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Hardback | Pub: 01 Oct 2026
£22.00
From pre-Roman times, Stirling was seen as a strategic location because of its position at the crossing of the river Forth. In many accounts it appears as the key link between Britain, Scotland and the world beyond, as a place of borders as well as…
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Hardback | Pub: 05 Nov 2026
£100.00
In 1901 Andrew Carnegie founded an educational trust in Scotland to make its universities more available to the country’s ‘deserving and qualified youth’, to improve their status, and to extend research. The result was the Carnegie Trust for…
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Paperback | Pub: 01 Apr 2027
£25.00
Scotland has one of the most recognisable identities of any nation in the world. Yet many impressions that people have about Scotland’s story are gross oversimplifications or plain wrong. Even many Scots misunderstand their past.
Realm puts the…
Paperback | Pub: 14 May 2026£25.00
Hardback | Pub: 05 Nov 2026£100.00
