The visitor to Derby’s city museum, perhaps attracted there by its Joseph Wright paintings, will also discover a recreated 17th-century, oak-panelled living room. The room is on display because it was in Derby, in December 1745, that Prince Charles Edward Stuart called off his Jacobite army’s advance on London and began the retreat to Scotland. It was a turning point for the British monarchy and for the union. Four months later, the prince’s forces were brutally routed at Culloden.
In the 277 years since then, no one else emerged from Scotland to challenge the British political order as fiercely as the Bonnie Prince – until Nicola Sturgeon. True, Sturgeon never invaded England. But then she never needed to. From Hanoverian Edinburgh, underpinned by successive nationalist election victories, she has rocked the assumptions underpinning the union of Scotland and England more effectively than anyone in modern British history.
