As you might have guessed, this is a book I borrowed in preparation for the upcoming family trip. I haven’t been to Scotland before and it’s not a country I know a lot about so I thought I’d start by reading about their national dress.

Scottish Tartan and Highland Dress is a pretty tiny book that manages to pack an awful lot of history about the tartan and the kilt. It starts with the oldest known tartan cloth from 1200 BC, which comes from the Tarim Basin, not Scotland. As the book says, tartan as a pattern wasn’t exclusive to Scotland, and so when the book looks at the history of Scotland, it starts off somewhere else. That said, the book soon focuses on Scotland, what the Scottish people wore, and how it’s changed through the years.

The book not only looks at the history of tartan and kilts, it also debunks a few myths we have about the tartans. I thought it was pretty interesting that “modern Scotland’s best-known garment, the short, very neatly pleated kilt, and its most famous fabric, the clan tartan, are not really ancient national traditions. Instead, we might more truthfully say that they are the almost accidental by-products of late 18th-century British (rather than purely Scottish) army uniform). As someone who always thought of kilts and tartans as quintessentially Scottish, this came as a surprise. But the book does put for a rather persuasive argument that the modern kilt and tartan is a relatively modern invention (although it’s probably older than Singapore, so not that modern).

If, however, you’re looking for a handbook on various tartan designs, you might be disappointed. There are illustrations about tartans and their weave, as well as a few coloured inserts of how tartan and kilts have been depicted, but it’s definitely not a handbook on tartan designs. If you’re looking for a book on the different patterns available (apparently there over 7000 designs now!), you’ll probably want to look somewhere else.

Overall, if you’re looking for an interesting book to give you a concise but information-packed history of the tartan and the kilt, this is the book to read.