Michael Penman's timely biography Robert the Bruce, appearing in the year of the seven hundredth anniversary of a Scottish victory over English troops at Bannockburn in 1314 and of a Scottish referendum on independence, reminds us of the ancient nature of tensions within Anglo-Scottish relations and of the problematic mythical status accorded to that age's protagonists, William Wallace and Bruce. The book likewise underscores the problematic centrality given to that battle, which was only one event (admittedly major) in the earlier part of a reign that lasted contentiously from 1306 to 1329. Penman's magisterial volume does much to rescue Bruce's reputation, deconstructing the myths with an exhaustive analysis of the contemporary record and a new acknowledgement of aspects of Bruce's life and kingship beyond that of his military dealings with the English.

The other unenviable problem for Penman is that he follows in the scholarly footsteps of Geoffrey Barrow's enduringly acclaimed Robert the Bruce and the Community of the Realm, first published in 1965 and, in its last edition, in 2005. Penman's debt to that scholarship is of course acknowledged, but he does manage to rectify the less-than-proportional consideration given by both Barrow and Bruce's medieval apologist, John Barbour, to Bruce's fifteen-year reign after 1314. This allows Penman to explore not merely the much highlighted moments of Bruce's life—among them John Comyn's murder in 1306, Bannockburn, the Declaration of Arbroath—but to give exhaustive consideration to the political, ecclesiastical, and diplomatic rollercoasters of the post-Bannockburn years. Penman examines the evidence of charters, parliamentary records, and domestic and external chronicles to piece together the circumstances in which Bruce was to hone his kingship, in order to come to a better understanding of just how good he was at it.

Robert the Bruce did not succeed in resisting English attempts at overlordship on the strength of his military acumen and martial prowess alone. His careful display of patronage and a radical resettlement of lands and offices after 1314, particularly in the hands of such newcomers as the Douglases, established a network of power and lordship allied to Bruce interests in areas of concern. This was most notable in the Borders with the Douglases, in the west with the Campbells of Argyll, and the Randolphs in Morayshire (helpfully mapping the grants of baronies; see 146–47). Thus strengthening his ability as king to raise troops and to foster compliance in those regions, he was careful, too, in his management of the representative councils in parliamentary, civic, and ecclesiastical spheres. Engaging in this way with the “community of the realm”—those nobles, bishops, and burgesses who helped to govern Scotland—Bruce was able to legitimize the Bruce-Stewart succession by addressing their concerns, tacitly acknowledging their rights to redress and representation. This is seen most notably in Penman's description of the 1318 parliament, at the end of a year of victory at Berwick, and disaster in Ireland with the death of his brother Edward. The same parliament also saw several statutes for the better regulation of justice, a review and codification of the laws, and responses to the difficulties engendered by not only Anglo-Scottish conflict but wider socioeconomic difficulties of the 1310s.

And it is here, in the wider contexts, that Penman excels in placing Bruce's activities within the continental backdrop of diplomatic and papal intrigue, contested kingship, and emerging lordship, of Edward II's political highs and lows, of the years of failed harvest-induced famines from 1315–17, and of pandemic cattle disease from 1319 to 1322. The latter Bruce was able to use to advantage in his resistance of Edward II's incursion to the foot of Edinburgh castle in 1322. A year later, however, Edward II's relative domestic strength was to weaken Bruce's powers in negotiation of a peace, a treaty that was only signed in 1328. Penman is able also to give Bruce a roundness that considers the hybrid influences on him as king, speculating that alongside his Scottish upbringing with Gaelic influences, a spell at Edward I's court might have tutored him in that king's forthright dealings with the Welsh; as a result we can see the “strong hallmarks of Edward I's style” in Bruce's “handling of Scottish parliaments, declarations of community consent or support and potential opposition c.1309–29” (33).

What is particularly revealing is Penman's consideration of Bruce's personal piety and ecclesiastical patronage, a combination that helped legitimize his kingship through underlining the “sacred power of monarchy” (8). Penman's linkage of the significance of a generous grant to Melrose Abbey in 1326, in which the provision of rice soaked in almond milk might have alluded to Bruce's own mortal illness, and Bruce's success in persuading the parliament of that year to give him a tenth of all fermes and rents, implies that it was sufficiently concerned over the royal succession to acquiesce in stabilizing its finances. Bruce was to combine the consolidation of kingship and personal piety again in the final pilgrimage he made to Saint Ninian's shrine at Whithorn at Easter 1329, along which he strengthened the crown's military power through further patronage in the southwest, Argyll, and the Isles. Simultaneously this allowed him “to embrace a cult swelling in regional and indeed national popularity” (297). This rounded portrayal of Bruce allows Penman to claim that Bruce was “the most complete king the independent realm of Scotland would ever see” (330).

This is a book that sees past the myths, the iconic battles, and the preoccupation with the pre-Bannockburn period, in which he struggled to establish his kingship; Penman delves deep into the equally important period that followed, in which Bruce won through the continuing Anglo-Scottish conflict, famines, pestilence, papal censure, and political factionalism to establish the Bruce-Stewart line. In so doing, Penman arrives at a well-evidenced recognition of Bruce's qualities as a king, not merely a military leader or political propagandist, newly justifying his reputation as a “political and cultural icon for Scots” (9).