Book review: Where are the Women?, by Sara Sheridan

The subtitle of this fascinating book is important: “A Guide To An Imagined Scotland” – not therefore Scotland just as it is, but Scotland as it might have been, might indeed be. Many readers skip introductions. This book’s introduction must be read. Skip it and you will be puzzled, baffled, irritated or even angered. Open the book at random, find yourself on page 264 and you will be surprised to find that “glorious edifice” Marischal College now apparently re-named Sutherland College after “a penniless wartime refugee who fled Hong Kong when the Second World War broke out” and “moved to Aberdeen.” “What the hell,” you might mutter, “is happening? Have I gone daft?”