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Bonnie Dundee
Item Code: BK59
Cost: $19.95
John Graham of Claverhouse is to some 'Bonnie Dundee', a charming and cultured man and military tactician, to others 'Bluidy Claivers', a demonic and brutal killer slain by a silver bullet at the Battle of Killiecrankie.
It is these two extremes that make Dundee one of the most compelling and romantic characters of Scottish history. Feted by his Highland soldiers as 'Dark John of the Battles', he was, according to Dean Swift, 'the best man in Scotland'.
He was a devoted servant of the Stuart cause and a key figure in the suppression of the Covenanters under Charles II. He was thus at the very centre of power and influence in the Lauderdale regime. But it is his heroic death at the head of his charging troops at the battle of Killiecrankie that has ensured his name in legend. Without his charisma his rebellion soon collapsed and the regime of William of Orange, a prince whose life Dundee had ironically once saved, gained the crucial space and time to win control of Scotland.
Andrew Murray Scott is editor of the collected letters of Graham of Claverhouse and has drawn extensively on these and other source material in this updated and authoritative study of one of the seventeenth century's most appealing - and ambivalent - figures. He is a freelance historian and writer and the author of numerous books. His novel, Tumulus, won the Dundee Book Prize in 1999. He lives in Broughty Ferry.
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