The story of how Robert Bruce outwitted Edward I, the shrewd and ruthless King of England, defeated his son Edward II, and in doing so regained Scotland's independence.

Professor Barrow describes the dazzling and tragic career of William Wallace, the English military occupation of Scotland that was its consequence, and the emergence of Robert Bruce as the centre of Scottish resistance. The author pieces together from the surviving evidence a vivid and almost day-by-day account of Bruce's daring tactics, his crowning at Scone in March 1306, his defeat by the English three months later, and his life as a fugitive while Edward hunted down such supporters as he could lay his hands on. 

Bruce was by no means fighting only the English: Professor Barrow reveals the complex and fluid webs of alliance between the adherents to the Balliols and the English and how Bruce was able to subdue his enemies in Scotland and then convert them to his cause.

Geoffrey Barrow's Robert Bruce is by any standard a great book: it is, among other things, a vivid recreation of medieval Scotland, a well-paced story full of character and incident, and a forceful reinterpretation of a crucial period in Scottish history. Ending with King Robert's death in 1329, G. W. S. Barrow describes the most crucial years of Scottish history whose impact was almost as great in England as in Scotland.