WELCOME to the first edition of the Sunday National. We hope you enjoy the newspaper and that it becomes as much a part of your Sunday routine as the daily National has during the week.

We’ve been working on it for the past few weeks and the paper you'll be  holding in your hands may not be perfect (if there is such a thing in the media world) but we’re proud of what we’ve achieved in a relatively short period of time.

We’ve certainly listened to the views of National readers and, where possible, to give you what you wanted.

We’ve included the popular General Knowledge Crossword from the Sunday Herald ... and added another page of puzzles to keep your brain active over the weekend.

And we’ve made sure that we can now bring you the brave and bold journalism of foreign correspondent David Pratt, one of the best journalists in Scotland.

David, of course, was one of the highlights of the Sunday Herald every week. The Sunday Herald is no more but we hope that former readers of the only Scottish newspaper to declare its support for independence in the referendum campaign find much to make them feel comfortable in the Sunday National.

Indeed this broadsheet Seven Days section was one of the most popular parts of the Sunday Herald when it launched in 1998. We hope the section you are reading today lives up to the legacy of its predecessor.

The Scottish Life magazine is another new addition to The National family and again you’ll see names familiar from the Sunday Herald, including award-winning restaurant and food critic Joanna Blythman.

We hope you’ll agree that the Sunday National combines the best of the Sunday Herald and the daily National, who have been the only two independence-supporting newspapers in Scotland since the referendum.

The Sunday Herald may have gone but The National and the Sunday National will continue to represent the movement which grew around the Yes campaign and the growing number of people who agree that independence offers the best prospects for Scotland’s future.