Author(s): Sarah Fraser

World History

Secondhand.

Simon Fraser was one of Scotland most notorious and romantic figures. A double-agent and spy, he became the most famous supporter of Bonnie Prince Charlie and the last nobleman to be executed for treason. For all fans of Ben MacIntyre and C.J. Sansom, a great non-fiction historical adventure. Lord Simon Lovat was the last of the great Scottish chiefs -- and the last nobleman to be executed for treason. He is one of Scotland's most notorious and romantic figures, a shrewd and calculating soldier of unlimited ambition, wit and double-dealing who died a martyr for his country and for an independent Scotland. Born into the unpredictable world of the late seventeenth-century as a younger son of a junior branch of the Frasers, Simon determined to enforce his claim to be chief of the Fraser clan and enjoy the income from its lands. In a life packed with plotting and incident, spells as a wanted outlaw, a prisoner in the Bastille, as loyal British soldier and aspirant Duke, Simon became the greatest double-agent of the age. Determined in 1701 to seek his fortune with exiled Jacobite king in France, Fraser acted as a spy for both the Stuarts and the Hanoverian Georges; claimed to be both Protestant and Roman Catholic. He was feudal, a Highland warrior chief, and benevolent despot. He disputed theological niceties with the Papal Nuncio in France, while courting Louis XIV for money to fund an invasion of England. He was fluent in five languages. In July 1745, Bonnie Prince Charlie landed on Eriskay -- a tiny Hebridean island and launched his last and greatest attempt to seize back his throne, joined after victory at Preston Pans by Simon Fraser and his clans. They reached Derby before retreating ignominiously and facing final defeat at the hands of the British at Culloden. Fraser -- one of Scoltand's most colourful characters -- was found hiding in a tree. This gripping adventure and swash-buckling spy story uses the events of Lovat's life to recreate this extraordinary period of history. As Sarah Fraser argues, the defeat at Culloden led directly to the end of traditional Gaelic civilization; to the brutal clearances and 'pacification' of the Highlands which followed and the lost civilisations of Scotland that were destroyed after 1745 by English repression.