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.
They are epitomised by Stevenson’s 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
