Graham Dalton

  It's all very well going on about the Stuarts, but I'm also rewriting the story of the Highland drover and his rescue of his sweetheart from the clutches of her neighbour. That tale preceded Bubbles in the Cauldron and it seems its message was much more recognisable to readers. Bubbles is a story of loyalty, the loyalty of the drover to his deaf shepherd, which turns them all into refugees. One reader told me they wanted a battle but the 1820 uprising was quashed like a soft balloon. The story was set in that time because it produced suspicion and an atmosphere of fear among the people of southern Scotland. It could just as easily have been set in any unsuccessful rebellion, Boadicea against the Romans, the Huguenots in La Rochelle, Bonnie prince Charlie and might have been best in the Hungarian uprising of 1956. It came from a note in a report on the Korean War, which dealt commented on the American bombing of the Middlesex Regiment but included the comment - and there was a...

 How do I see the Highlander of the 17th century? He's poor in terms of money and goods, and because of that, he's avaricious. He eats well enough with deer from the hill, rabbits, fowl and what oats he manages to grow on the flatter parts of the glen near the river. Those who are efficient hunters, are big and strong, but there are many who are skinny and not so strong. When they raid, the strong ones fight and take the booty, the thin ones drive the stolen cattle and carry anything, pots and pans or iron utensils. When the Chief calls for fighters or raiders, the strong go but take someone to carry food for the estimated time of the campaign. In general the fighting rations are a handful of oats and if that's all there is for two weeks it's easy to imagine how many boxes of porridge oats the carrier needs to have with him.  I'd think, at least, one a day.  When they are called out, they are unpaid, so they plunder whatever the can. Please note this is how the Stua...

 I watched Neil Oliver's story of the clan warfare last night. To be honest it's about the clans but, as the historians usually do, it is slanted towards the romantic side of the Stuart struggle to recover their kingdom. Which isn't their kingdom any more because the majority of their people, from Lands End to John O' Groats, had deserted them. My main concern is that it it overlooks the effect the Highlander's ravages had on the general population of Scotland, living in the central and southern part of the country. How did the people in Dundee, Dunfermline or Glasgow, feel about the ravaging of Aberdeen by Graham and his Irish pirates? How did it make them feel when they heard of the 'Massacre' of the McDonalds at Glencoe? Much the same as we felt after El-Alamein, I'd expect. That rabble of thieves has go their comeuppance, I'd think. It's only the military historians who marvel at Rommel's tactics. Those who lost a son, husband, brother or...

  In researching the Stuarts it was interesting to find that the area in which the 1820 novel Bubbles in the Cauldron was set saw an earlier uprising in 1679 when the Presbyterian Covenanters defeated the troops sent to force the Episcopalian system of church government on them at Drumclog a few miles from Strathaven. Unlike the 1820 group the 1679 rebels took control of Glasgow. As in many 'rebellions', however, the extremists took over and it ended in tragedy. The background to the troubles of the late 1670's goes some way to explaining the reaction of the people of the south and especially south west to Bonnie Prince Charlie's Highland host. Charles II in trying to force the Church of England on the Presbyterians had called down the Highlanders to discipline the recalcitrant South West and, as Scott notes, the Highlanders, despite behaving well towards persons, needed horses to take back the loot they collected from the neighbourhood. This was not the only time the ...

  I've found in my researching it is often an almost throw away comment that offers the greatest possibilities. For example, in my researches for incidents for a book, hopefully a series, on the navy during the Stuart times, I came upon 1666 by Rebecca Rideal and found in it mention a woman called Alphra Behn, a spy. This Alphra's early life is mysterious, which offers scope for the imagination, did a bit of spying, didn't get paid and, it seems, went to debtors prison, came out and became a highly successful playwright. Now if I wanted a heroine, she'd be near the top of the list. There are others. Quoting from Rebecca Rideal's book, "In the 1650's, the Leveller Mary Sexby travelled across the Channel with pistols and 1,000 coins hidden in her bodice, to provide money to the opponents of the Cromwellian regime, while Dianna Jennings had used an alias to infiltrate a group of Royalists, including the 1st Earl of Rochester, in a tavern in Brussels. And, just...

 I'm still looking into the Struart era for story lines for aa historical novel and found these comments in Sir Walter Scott's, Tales of a Grandfather under the section on Cromwell. One thing I've learned about history is that it can't be whitewashed. You can ignore the bits you don't like but that distorts the picture so this is as much part of Scottish history as Robert Bruce.  "To regulate the administration of public justice, four English and three Scottish judges, were appointed to hear causes ... The English judges, it may be supposed were indifferently versed in the law of Scotland; but they distributed justice with an impartiality to which the Scottish nation had been entirely a stranger, which ceased to be experienced from the native judges after the Restoration. The peculiar rectitude of the men employed by Cromwell being pointed out to a learned judge, in the beginning of the next century (The 18th), his lordship composedly answered, "Devil take...

 I've been talking about the Stuarts but I'm actually rewriting a book called Drover, which will have a new title and is the first in the Drover series. The follow on is Bubbles in the Cauldron. The desire to write about the Highlands started when I first read Kidnapped, but the trigger came from a most unlikely source – my mother-in-law, a lovely woman. She had a friend whose father had been a drover, saved his money, bought a pub and never drank another dram. It seemed unlike the kind of tramp image we had been given of drovers and I did some research. Much to my surprise I found the leader of the drove was trusted all the way from the Moray Firth or the Western Isles to the markets near Falkirk or Glasgow and Fergus Findlay came to life. The ideal time for some strife was either just after the 1745 Rebellion and the Massacre at Glencoe or after Waterloo and the time of the Highland Clearances. I chose the later and was able to include Bernard Cornwell's hero Sharpe’s fav...