Culloden

Description

Culloden is the story of a battle and of what followed, the destruction of a way of life and the persecution of a people. There is little in this book about Bonme Prince Charlie and other principals of the last Jacobite Rising of 1745. This is the story of ordinary men and women involved in the Rebellion, who were described on the gaol registers and regimental rosters of the time as 'Common Men'. Culloden recalls them by name and action, presenting the battle as it was for them, describing their life as fugitives in the glens or as prisoners in the gaols and hulks, their transportation to the Virginias or their deaths on the gallows at Kennington Common. The book begins in the rain at five o'clock on the morning of Wednesday, 16 April 1746, when the Royal Army marched out of Nairn to fight the clans on Culloden Moor. It is not a partisan book, its feeling is for the 'Common Men' on both sides - John Grant charging with Clan Chatten and seeing the white gaiters of the British infantry suddenly as the east wind lifted the cannon smoke, and Private Andrew Taylor in a red coat waiting for Clan Chatten to reach him, likening them to 'a troop of hungry wolves'. Culloden reminds us, too, that many of the men who harried the glens as ruthlessly as the Nazis in Occupied Europe were in fact Scots themselves. It recalls the fact that many men in Prince Charles' army had been forced to join him. It shows that a British foot-soldier's wish for a sup of brandy on a cold morning before battle is as much a reality as a Prince's pretensions to a throne. The detail for the story told in Culloden has come from regimental Order Books and manuals, from contemporary newspapers and magazines, from the letters and memoirs of soldiers and officers, eye-witness accounts of atrocity and persecution, and the personal stories of the victims themselves. Culloden is the story not of a Prince, but of a people.

John Prebble was born in the UK in 1915 but spent his boyhood in Canada. He became a journalist in 1934 and went on to become an historian, novelist, film-writer and the author of several highly praised plays and dramatised documentaries for BBC TV and Radio. He became interested in Culloden when he was a boy in a predominantly Scottish township in Canada. He died in January 2001.

[Culloden] is romantic and tragic, and helped me, as a London boy, to develop a love of Scotland that lasted my whole life. -- David Aaronovitch * The Week * Prebble and Scotland down the years have become as inseparable as oatcakes and whisky. He has...succeeded in giving the Scots a fresh awareness of their past. * Daily Telegraph * One of Prebble's great strengths is his ability to empathise with his subject matter. * Daily Mail * Marked by formidable research and passionate commitment to the cause of the poorest. * Spectator * One of our leading historians, whose works...are as scholarly as they are readable * Observer *