Exclusive interview with author Jacqueline Riding, author of a new novel about Bonnie Prince Charlie and the Scottish rebellion of 1745
By Gabrielle Pantera
“In 2007 I had been researching some pictures painted in the mid-1740s at London’s Foundling Museum, the former eighteenth-century hospital for abandoned children,” says Jacobites author Jacqueline Riding. “I was looking at newspapers published throughout 1745 to 1746. I noted down some odd and disturbing stories that were being reported, such as women killing their children for fear of the brutal Highlanders, strange carcasses being pulled out of moats and so on, and eventually, just out of interest really, I started writing a historical novel, a sort of Hogarthian caper-murder mystery, based on these snippets.” Years later Riding would completely rewrite her unpublished first novel to make it into Jacobites.
Picked up on the Hebridean island of Canna, a schoolmaster tells a sea captain bound for Liverpool that a young man has arrived who is gathering thousands of clansmen. The highlanders call him Prionnsa Tearlach, in English, Prince Charles. When the news arrives in London the Lord Mayor, a suspected Jacobite sympathizer, and the banker Sir Richard Hoare can’t believe it. Nobody can. No army is sent from London to fight Charles. The Prince and his men reach Edinburgh, but the city’s famed castle is too heavily fortified to be taken.
Expect ambition, war, battles, treason and spying. Rider’s precision in the details and the battles with Prince Charles move the story along at a brisk pace. Charlie’s cousin, the Duke of Cumberland, is popular among the military before he gains a reputation as a butcher. The duke and Charles are both charismatic. War changes them both. Military and politically driven, the many eyewitness accounts in the book give the reader a balanced account from both sides of the battle.
“We know now that the rebellion failed,” says Riding. “I wanted the reader to feel, even if they knew the history and how it ends, that maybe things might have turned out differently. I think writing the novel helped me to develop a style that was character and narrative led, and also in the moment. One decision I made from the onset was to avoid any sense of predetermination.”
Riding uses the accounts from letters of protagonists and eyewitnesses, rather than the historian’s viewpoint.
“Obviously, I selected and edited the material,” says Rider. “But, I aimed to gently guide, rather than forcefully lead, to show not tell. As I was aiming to base the narrative on eyewitness voices, I focused my attention on primary sources, published and unpublished. My particular focus was the Cumberland Papers and Stuart Papers in the Royal Archives at Windsor Castle.”
Far from being a prototype Scottish Nationalist, Charles wanted to restore his father James the III of England (also James the VIIIth of Scotland) to the throne. His insistence on pressing on to London led to the council of war at Derby where the Scottish clan leaders overrode the prince and insisted on retreating to their Highland fastnesses. The result was the grim and savage defeat at Culloden that ended as the last pitched battle on British soil.
Riding is the former Director of the Handel House Museum in London, where the composer G F Handel (1685-1759) lived for 35 years, composed his masterpiece Messiah, and where he died. “A key element of my job was to animate history and historical characters for many different audiences, whether general visitors, school groups or specialists,” says Riding. “This is good training for writing history that is, hopefully, accessible, and of interest to as broad a readership as possible. The reviewer for BBC History Magazine said that Jacobites had ‘an acute sense of person and place’, which is exactly what I aimed for.”
“Jacobites has opened up some new avenues for me,” says Riding. “I’m writing for the catalogue of the forthcoming Jacobite exhibition at the National Museums Scotland…opens June 2017. And, I’m also working on the iconography of Charles Edward Stuart.”
Riding has written many books about art and history. She has a Ph.D. in the History of Art from the University of York. She is currently writing a book about history.
Jacobites: A New History of the ’45 Rebellion by Jacqueline Riding (Author). Hardcover: 608 pages, Publisher: Bloomsbury Press (July 5, 2016), Language: English ISBN: 9781608198016 $35.00
