A respected historian of medieval Scotland releases the authentic historical Macbeth from a prison of literary and folkloric mythThanks to Shakespeare, the name Macbeth has become a byword for political ambition realized by bloody violence.Fiona Watsonhas uncovered, buried beneath the layers of myth, a history that is entirely different from, but just as extraordinary as, that recounted by Shakespeare. As ruler of Alba (Scotland) Macbeth sat on one of the longest-established thrones in Western Europe. It is true that he killed Duncan, the previous king, but this was the normal, if brutal,...