Expect to learn about the workings of a Highland shieling (summer grazing in the high mountains), the method for waterproofing boots when going duck shooting in a marsh, castle architecture, battle tactics and strategy. Tranter is also very good on historical detail, especially on minor aspects of everyday life.
Expect to find at least two sides to every war, and good people on all of them. Similarly, although Robert Bruce is the hero of his trilogy he is not without flaws, and although Edward I is on the opposite side he is not shown as a black-hat villain but as a fully developed character with a mix of good and bad qualities. Rather than taking a simplistic nation-state view that they were ‘traitors’ or ‘backsliders’, Tranter’s Bruce Trilogy recognises that family loyalties and rivalries were at least as important as nationality (a concept that hardly existed at the time). Taking the Wars of Independence again, plenty of Scottish nobles fought for Edward I and/or against Bruce. Tranter is good at capturing political complexity. When the underlying history is rambling, as with Bonnie Prince Charlie’s flight after Culloden where he seems to have stumbled from one refuge to another without much of a goal beyond avoiding capture, the associated novel seems to be rambling too. When the underlying history is stirring stuff, as with the Wars of Independence, the actual events are dramatic enough to carry a story, even if it may not be as neat as books of literary theory prescribe. I prefer that approach - that’s why, in my view, it’s called historical fiction - but plenty of people disagree. Another author might have chosen to alter the date of Bannockburn or the date of Edward I’s death in pursuit of a dramatic clash between the main protagonist and the main antagonist. For example, it would be satisfying for Robert Bruce to defeat his main antagonist (Edward I) in battle to win Scotland’s independence, and it’s less dramatic for Edward I to die of a stroke and Robert Bruce to defeat his successor, Edward II, at Bannockburn. I think this is probably a consequence of respect for the underlying history. I find many of Nigel Tranter’s novels episodic, rather than following a simple three-act play structure with a character in pursuit of a single goal. Real life, and therefore real history, doesn’t usually follow a nice neat “story arc” (I think that’s the correct lit-crit term?), and doesn’t always take the most dramatic turn of events. As far as I can tell, the novels stick closely to historical events and weave a story in the gaps where information is missing. Thomas Kerr of Ferniehurst who tells the story of Mary Queen of Scots’ personal rule in Scotland in Warden of the Queen’s March. Bruce or Wallace, sometimes it is a real figure on the periphery of events, e.g. Sometimes the main character is an important historical player, e.g. the Bruce Trilogy is both a biography of Robert Bruce and an account of the Wars of Independence. William Wallace or Rob Roy MacGregor, or a combination of both e.g. the Wars of Independence or Bonnie Prince Charlie’s flight after Culloden, or a dramatised biography of a historical figure, e.g. It may be a historical event or episode, e.g. The typical Nigel Tranter historical novel takes a chunk of Scottish history and dramatises it in narrative form. So although I haven’t read everything, and a good many of them have blurred together in my memory, I can probably claim that my impression of his novels is based on a reasonably representative sample. The public library in the town I lived in as a kid had a lot of his historical novels, and I read twenty or thirty of them.
#NIGEL TRANTER NOVELS PLUS#
Nigel Tranter wrote more than 60 historical novels set in Scotland, plus a great many other books. This is in response to a query in another discussion, in which someone asked which of Nigel Tranter’s novels were worth reading besides the Bruce Trilogy.