And the Land Lay Still is enormous in both length (it’s just under 700 pages) and scale. It’s clear that James Robertson has set out to write something in between the definitive Scottish novel and the definitive novel of Scotland – and to achieve this, he unapologetically renders the recent history of his country as his plot.

The book’s clever organising principle is an exhibition of photographs documenting fifty years of Scottish life curated by Michael Pendreich, the son of one of the most celebrated photographers of his time. His father,