In a way Scotland and Ireland are a different story about landscape than other parts of Britain, because the story here is about national identity, at heart. Both Ireland and Scotland had difficult relationships with England. Scotland's ended up in the Act of Union in 1707, Ireland's in partial independence. But what it gave to both countries was a keen longing to define their own national identity, to find an identity that was different from the British Isles as a whole that could be seen as theirs, which they could adopt and respond to as nations. It's most vivid with Scotland. The Highlands, and the Highlanders, who incidentally had been looked down on by the Lowlanders... and suddenly Walter Scott comes along ands says 'they're the real aristocrats of Scotland', and it took off. Queen Victoria adopted it, Landseer came and painted pictures for her of the stag... What's really interesting about it is this idea of creating a national identity, and the same thing happening in Ireland.