While England and Scotland have shared a monarch since the Union of the Crowns in 1603, it was more than a century before, to quote the Treaty of Union, the two were “United into One Kingdom by the Name of Great Britain”. Why did the rulers of the two countries make this choice in 1707?
It’s a question explored by Allan Little in the latest offering in Radio 4’s This Union strand, which looks at each of the four home nations in turn at a time when the wider union is under huge strain.