Stewarts on the dole

Rosalind Mitchison

  • Bonnie Prince Charlie by Rosalind Marshall
    HMSO, 208 pp, £8.50, April 1988, ISBN 0 11 493420 7
  • Bonnie Prince Charlie: A Biography by Susan Maclean Kybett
    Unwin Hyman, 343 pp, £12.95, April 1988, ISBN 0 04 440213 9
  • Charles Edward Stuart: A Tragedy in Many Acts by Frank McLynn
    Routledge, 640 pp, £24.95, September 1988, ISBN 0 415 00272 9
  • Mary Queen of Scots: A Study in Failure by Jenny Wormald
    George Philip, 206 pp, £14.95, March 1988, ISBN 0 540 01131 2
  • Mary Stewart: Queen in Three Kingdoms edited by Michael Lynch
    Blackwell, 238 pp, £25.00, July 1988, ISBN 0 631 15263 6
  • The Shadow of a Crown: The Life Story of James II of England and VII of Scotland by Meriol Trevor
    Constable, 320 pp, £15.00, June 1988, ISBN 0 09 467850 2
  • The Scottish Tory Party: A History by Gerald Warner
    Weidenfeld, 247 pp, £12.95, May 1988, ISBN 0 297 79101 X
  • The Elgins, 1766-1917: A Tale of Aristocrats, Proconsuls and their Wives by Sydney Checkland
    Aberdeen University Press, 303 pp, £25.00, April 1988, ISBN 0 08 036395 4

Recent anniversaries for Scotland have been encouraging the simplified version of its history that obtains in most English minds. Two topics are sufficiently dramatic to break through cultural isolationism: the reign of Mary Queen of Scots and the Jacobite risings. The more sophisticated English absorbers of history may also entertain an uneasy recollection that the Scots had something to do with the English Civil Wars, and may even have an impression of outbreaks of Presbyterian intransigence in the 19th century: but for most people in England Scottish history means Mary and Prince Charles Edward, whose deaths, one of which was directly caused by England, are associated with ’87 and ’88. This setting in time is unfair on those of us who try to show that Scottish society had its own interesting line of development, a topic which neither of these known figures paid any attention to. A theme which unites the central figures of these anniversaries is their marked lack of interest in Scotland.

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[*] Edited by Gordon Donaldson. Archie Duncan and Dorothy Dunnett. £1 each part.