MOST countries have iconic battles in their histories, the names of which have deep emotional significance because they helped to shape the nations they became. Ireland has Clontarf, England has Agincourt and Scotland has Bannockburn; further afield outside the British archipelago and in more recent times the US has Gettysburg and the old Soviet Union had Stalingrad.

Significantly, all were turning points in that once victory was achieved, history was changed, and the names of the battles created their own resonance within the psyches of the people concerned.

So it was with Bannockburn, whose 700th anniversary was commemorated in 2014 – which also happened to be the year of the independence referendum. As befitted such a sonorous occasion, an international conference was held at Stirling University to look again at the battle, to re-examine some of the controversies which have grown up around it and to review the impact the battle has had on Scottish life and letters. The resulting papers have now been published in book form and edited with a light hand by the distinguished medievalist Michael Penman, who has also contributed a most readable essay on Bannockburn and Victorian popular politics.

In assembling this book, Dr Penman has produced what must be the last word on the battle’s many reverberations, not just from a historical or military point of view – David Caldwell is particularly good on the way the battle unfolded – but also the archaeological and environmental aspects, not forgetting the battle’s place in Scottish culture, literature and politics. Above all, Penman and his team do not shy away from the undisputed fact that Bannockburn was not only a decisive battle which resulted in victory for the Scots but it also reinforced the inspiring leadership qualities of their king Robert Bruce. And yet, as the archaeologist Tony Pollard points out in an invigorating paper, it has taken many years and much agonised research for the battlefield to be located precisely.

For all that Bannockburn has been well documented from John Barbour onwards there is still much to be learned, and it says much for the hold that the battle has on the imagination of the Scottish people that those midsummer days of 1314 still generate controversy and debate. In his even-handed essay The Battle of the Books, Ted Cowan rehearses the historiography to give a clear view of “what really happened” during the course of what he calls the greatest victory in Scottish history. Similarly but in different ways, Alasdair Ross and Richard Tipping (plus his posse of fellow environmentalists), look again at the ever-changing landscape of Bannockburn and the ways in which climate and extreme weather events have helped mould the landscape.

Elsewhere Peter Yeoman puts under his microscope Stirling Castle, Edward II’s last Scottish outpost, while Sarah Tolmie re-examines the concept of freedom as it is famously expressed in Barbour’s epic poem. John Morrison does a similar service in his interpretation of the imagery in William Allan’s unfinished monumental painting of the battle, and architect Andrew PK Wright takes a wry look at the aesthetic details of the architecture that currently adorns the battlefield. Battles are lost as well as won, and for an English perspective read the essays written by Andrew Ayton and David Simpkin.

Culloden, too, could be claimed as a Scottish battle in that it was fought on Scottish soil, but as Murray Pittock rightly argues in his gripping new account it was an event with great significance for British history. It was the last pitched battle to be fought in Britain with regular troops on both sides, and the defeat of Prince Charles Edward Stuart’s army marked the end of the Jacobite cause. In time, though, Culloden was personified as a fight between the English and the Scots or even as a battle involving romantic kilted Highlanders on one side and dastardly red-coated English and Lowland Scots on the other. Neither viewpoint is true but both came to be accepted largely as a result of a deep-seated need to mythologise the former and demonise the latter, and it has taken time for historians to set the record straight.

In that respect professor Pittock has already done sterling work in reworking the make-up of the Jacobite army, and his study The Myth of the Jacobite Clans is rightly regarded as the benchmark for any investigation into the military dynamics of Jacobitism. More than anything else, Pittock scotched the long-standing notion that Highlanders were “savages”, as contemporary propaganda described them in order to belittle them as people and to denigrate their soldierly abilities. On the contrary, most were skilled in field craft and were proficient in handling weapons, sword or musket, and serving in clan regiments they had officers who had some experience of the military life or had served in wars in Europe.

With the publication of Culloden, which is part of Oxford University Press’s “Great Battles” series, Pittock builds on his deep knowledge and experience of Jacobitism to produce a much-needed concise account of a battle that he claims is “the key to both the breaking and making of Britain”. Like Bannockburn, it is a battle that demands constant re-interpretation to strip it of unneeded romance and false rhetoric.

Incidentally and perhaps uniquely, the indices of both books contain the name of Alex Salmond, then the First Minister and the architect of the referendum. Why? Buy both books to discover the reason; they are well worth the entrance money.

Bannockburn 1314-2014: The Battle and the Legacy, edited by Michael Penman, Shaun Tyas Publishing, £35

Culloden, Murray Pittock, Oxford University Press, £18.99