Roy Foster hails Flora Fraser’s biography of Flora MacDonald, the heroine who saved Bonnie Prince Charlie
Despite all the efforts of spoilsport historians such as John Prebble and Hugh Trevor-Roper, Jacobite narratives will always hit the sweet spot for romantic escapism. Kidnapped, Scott’s Waverley and, better still, Redgauntlet – and this reviewer’s childhood favourite, John Keir Cross’s The Man in Moonlight. (I still treasure it, published in 1947 by John Westhouse, London, ‘and decorated in the manner of the period by Robin Jacques’.)Flora Fraser, no spoilsport, is from a Highland clan who fought for Charles Edward Stewart; for his pains, her ancestor Lord Lovat became the last peer to be beheaded on Tower Hill. And, as the accomplished biographer of Emma Hamilton, Queen Caroline, Pauline Bonaparte and Mr and Mrs George Washington, she has a beady eye for the paradoxes of history, the rationalisations of survivors, and the way myths and reputations are made. And that is what makes this book such a riveting read. Her...
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