"Starting the Army of Montrose" Topic

Oh noes, I appear to be heading to 'death by painting highlanders'. My research so far link any glaring omissions?

Make sure you have space for some PP Highlander musketeers

martin

I believe that Peter pig makes Irish musketeers.

A fine start. I would recommend three books in addition.

Firstly, Stuart Reid's The Campaigns of Montrose. Very thorough account, and steers very much on the non-romantic view of the armies and actions.

At the other end of the romantic scale is The Heather and the Gale by Ronald Williams which looks at the campaigns from A Clan Campbell v Clan Donald point of view.

Somewhere in the middle is Highland Warrior by David Stevenson which focuses on Alasdair MacDonald through the campaigns.

There is also an interesting tv series on the Beeb at the moment presented by Neil Oliver, and the first episode focuses on the ‘Year of Miracles'.

As a hopeless romantic i love this particular episode in the wars. (The tartan is a bit of a bind though!)

Is that a promise Martin ;-)?

mildbill – thanks, already on the shopping list.

CtG. Thanks for the recommendations. I'd heard good things about Reid's Campaigns of Montrose but haven't actually seen a copy. The other two are completely new to me.

Missed the Neil Oliver series, will have to look it up on iPlayer

I'd like to give a heads up for Ronald Williams "Montrose; A Cavalier in Mourning" which I found fascinating.

Thanks for the recommendation Kev

I strongly recommend the two novels by Nigel Tranter (c.1973), especially the second, Montrose: The Captain-General.

From Morpeth to Carbisdale, to exile and return, a fabulous read. A real gem of a novel.

The first novel is The Young Montrose.

"Blood of the clans" apparently is the Neil Oliver series. I'd not heard of it – 3 episodes, on the Civil War, Rob Roy and the 45. Starting to watch now on Iplayer!

Thank you for the recommendation Captain.

I've watched the first two Blood of the Clans. Nice, atmospheric painting inspiration. First episode clearly has an agenda, boils everything down to a clan dispute (I suppose with the title Blood of the Clans this is inevitable) but no real weight given to Solemn League, and the religious angle.

Solemn League does get a brief mention, but it needed more airtime given to it (but as it didn't fit the clan warfare agenda it was glossed over).

Curses. I can put painting traditionally patterned Scottish textiles off no longer, Peter Pig have now got highlanders with muskets.