The Last Highlander by Sarah Fraser

The octogenarian Simon Lovat, hereditary chief of Clan Fraser, was impeached and executed at Tower Hill in 1747. Fiction, as well as history, has not been kind to him: his portrayal by Robert Louis Stevenson in Catriona has done nothing positive for the old rogue’s long reputation as a double-dealer in both the Hanoverian and Jacobite cause. The Master of Lovat was pretty much a self-made man in learning, ambition and avarice. By his own lights he was a patriot who died a martyr for Scotland and he is presented here as the last incarnation of an old Gaelic culture that died at Culloden. He cuts a better figure than usual in this colourful, entertaining biography by Sarah Fraser, who, married to a Lovat Fraser, does not attempt to excuse Lord Lovat’s personal faults or political chicanery but, rather, to present him amply in a complex historical context.