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Essays plucked from Scotland's colorful, combative past.Journalist, documentary filmmaker and playwright Rosie has roamed his native land's highlands and lowlands to fashion this odd but intriguing book. Some of the characters are familiar. One essay concerns Robert the Bruce and his response to a failed coup planned against his early reign. Another defends fiery Calvinist preacher John Knox, unfairly remembered, the author claims, as a "reactionary, ecclesiastical bully." We meet Daniel Defoe in 1706 (13 years before he published Robinson Crusoe), when he was a British secret agent living in Edinburgh and covertly reporting on Scottish opposition to unification with England. Rosie provides an intimate, dishy portrait of the exiled Bonnie Prince Charlie, unhappily isolated in Italy with wayward wife Louise de Stolberg. Their domestic battles, eagerly reported to England by watchful envoy Horace Mann, would have made perfect Hollywood tabloid fodder. The author also uncovers lesser-known figures. John Ross, the son of Scots parents, served as chief of the Cherokee Nation for 40 years, artfully arguing his adopted tribe's cause with every president from James Madison to Andrew Johnson. Allan Octavian Hume, a longtime British administrator in India, paved the way for Gandhi, Nehru and the Indian independence movement. Odder characters include Andrew Ure, an intrepid 19th-century scientist who experimented with planting electrical charges in corpses, and Rev. John White, whose campaign to purge Irish immigrants from Scotland has an ugly contemporary ring. Rosie isn't stingy with his opinions, and his pro-Presbyterian leanings frequently surface. At one point, he complains that the Reformation in Scotland is usually depicted as bloody and brutal, when, in fact, "compared to the deluge of blood that was shed elsewhere in Europe it was a mild affair." But he's also willing to reveal his clansmen's shortcomings, at least as seen through the eyes of writers like Jonathan Swift, Ogden Nash and others.Savory history. (Kirkus Reviews)
Scotland on Sunday
'wonderful purgative for the cant and myth that surround Scottish history... written with wit and economy, immaculately researched.'
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Essays plucked from Scotland's colorful, combative past.Journalist, documentary filmmaker and playwright Rosie has roamed his native land's highlands and lowlands to fashion this odd but intriguing book. Some of the characters are familiar. One essay concerns Robert the Bruce and his response to a failed coup planned against his early reign. Another defends fiery Calvinist preacher John Knox, unfairly remembered, the author claims, as a "reactionary, ecclesiastical bully." We meet Daniel Defoe in 1706 (13 years before he published Robinson Crusoe), when he was a British secret agent living in Edinburgh and covertly reporting on Scottish opposition to unification with England. Rosie provides an intimate, dishy portrait of the exiled Bonnie Prince Charlie, unhappily isolated in Italy with wayward wife Louise de Stolberg. Their domestic battles, eagerly reported to England by watchful envoy Horace Mann, would have made perfect Hollywood tabloid fodder. The author also uncovers lesser-known figures. John Ross, the son of Scots parents, served as chief of the Cherokee Nation for 40 years, artfully arguing his adopted tribe's cause with every president from James Madison to Andrew Johnson. Allan Octavian Hume, a longtime British administrator in India, paved the way for Gandhi, Nehru and the Indian independence movement. Odder characters include Andrew Ure, an intrepid 19th-century scientist who experimented with planting electrical charges in corpses, and Rev. John White, whose campaign to purge Irish immigrants from Scotland has an ugly contemporary ring. Rosie isn't stingy with his opinions, and his pro-Presbyterian leanings frequently surface. At one point, he complains that the Reformation in Scotland is usually depicted as bloody and brutal, when, in fact, "compared to the deluge of blood that was shed elsewhere in Europe it was a mild affair." But he's also willing to reveal his clansmen's shortcomings, at least as seen through the eyes of writers like Jonathan Swift, Ogden Nash and others.Savory history. (Kirkus Reviews)
Scotland on Sunday
'wonderful purgative for the cant and myth that surround Scottish history... written with wit and economy, immaculately researched.'
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Inside This Book
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First Sentence
Every now and again I like to drive down from my home in Edinburgh to East Lothian, and there scramble my way to the top of the whaleback hill know as Traprian Law. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
Every now and again I like to drive down from my home in Edinburgh to East Lothian, and there scramble my way to the top of the whaleback hill know as Traprian Law. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
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