Right across the world there are people who think of themselves as Scottish Highlanders, people who, though they may be separated from Scotland's hills and glens by many thousands of miles and several generations, still identify with this remote locality on the western edge of Europe. What is the truth behind the many myths surrounding the Highland past? Who were the Scottish Highlanders and where did they come from? What part did they play in Scotland's evolution as a nation state? How did Highlanders become one of the most widely-dispersed peoples on Earth? And why do the Scottish Highlands still matter so much to men and women who, quite frequently, have never ever seen the landscapes which feature so evocatively in so many of their songs of exile? This book begins in North America and ends in Uist and Lewis. It takes the reader to Iona, Morvern, Argyll, Islay, Perthshire, Aberdeenshire, Edinburgh, Skye, Lochaber, Inverness and Sutherland. It also take the reader to Donegal and Antrim. It introduces you to the people of the Scottish Highlands, to the sort of men and women, past and present, whose fierce attachment to their Gaelic language and their Celtic heritage ensured the survival of so much of what makes the Scottish Highlands special still.