Pretty Young Rebel
The Life of Flora Macdonald
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3 Months Free
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Pretty Young Rebel
Narrated by:
Cathleen McCarron
Buy Now for £13.92
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Narrated by:
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Cathleen McCarron
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By:
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Flora Fraser
A SPECTATOR AND SCOTSMAN BOOK OF THE YEAR
'So well researched, pacily written and sympathetic to the Auld Cause that it almost makes one a Jacobite' Andrew Roberts, Spectator
‘Enthralling . . . Throws us straight into the fresh air, heather, rain and midges of the Hebrides, followed by the swamps and creeks of North America . . . Full of unforgettable glimpses’ The Times
The year is 1746. The Jacobite rebellion has failed catastrophically and Scotland is reeling in the devastating aftermath of the battle of Culloden. Far to the west, on an island in the Outer Hebrides, twenty-four-year-old Flora Macdonald is woken in the dead of night by a messenger with urgent intelligence.
Bonnie Prince Charlie is outside, begging for her help.
With Flora's assistance, the Stuart prince is disguised as an Irish maid and smuggled to the Isle of Skye, evading government troops. Flora’s bravery and determination will see her immortalised in ballads and proclaimed a Scottish heroine. But her efforts also result in her capture and detention in London. Released the following year and returning to Skye, Flora goes on to marry and emigrate to North Carolina, only then to be caught up in the American Revolutionary War.
In Pretty Young Rebel, award-winning biographer Flora Fraser tells the remarkable story of Flora Macdonald. It is a tale of adventure and daring, wit and charm, struggle and survival, and of a woman who showed extraordinary courage in the face of great danger.©2022 Flora Fraser (P)2022 Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
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Critic reviews
In this enthralling book, which throws us straight into the fresh air, heather, rain and midges of the Hebrides, followed by the swamps and creeks of North America, Fraser fleshes out what for most of us is a sketchy and romanticised area of our general knowledge . . . Full of unforgettable glimpses
Flora Fraser’s new biography stylishly updates MacDonald’s story (Nicholas Harris)
Flora Macdonald has met her ideal biographer. Flora Fraser has a born grasp of the mists and tides of high feeling that swirl about her subject to this day. As in all her biographies, she conveys in scholarly fashion a spellbinding sense that rationality and romance are not remotely incompatible but may compose the heart of a life. (Candia McWilliam)
Flora Fraser unpicks the whys and wherefores of what happened, the tragic outcome of their enterprise and how Flora Macdonald’s gifts as a survivor and shrewd operator came again and again to the rescue of her family … In the meticulous and deep-delving research for the hugely readable Pretty Young Rebel, Flora says she has built a picture of Flora Macdonald as sure of herself, uncowed by royalty, and egalitarian, a gracious, charming yet artful and grounded product of her island roots.
Detailed and enjoyable … This is a full and always interesting book, a rich picture of Highland society at a time of change as well as a persuasive and always pleasing account of Flora’s life, a social study as well as a fine telling of a well-known tale, and of the less familiar story of the Scots who chose loyalty to the Crown in America (Allan Massie)
[Flora Macdonald’s] entire life story is interesting, as Flora Fraser shows in this thoroughly researched biography … Fraser tells the story of Flora Macdonald’s life very well, with sympathy, respect and understanding
[In] her well-researched and enthusiastic biography, Flora Fraser recounts Macdonald's life based on facts culled from published and archival sources on both sides of the Atlantic
This is a full and always interesting book ... a fine telling of a well-known tale (Books of the Year 2022)
Flora Fraser, in Pretty Young Rebel, tells the story of those days well and in some detail … Fraser is keen to underline the high personal risk Flora ran throughout … [Flora Macdonald] carried out her own mission with courage, daring and, as Flora Fraser reminds us, unfaltering good sense.
This new biography by Flora Fraser (who is named after her subject) intends to sift out a 'real Flora' from the spoil heap of sentimental history . . . Nothing in this book is more fascinating that what it suggests about the concept of loyalty . . . After plenty of enterprising research in Britain and in North Carolina, Fraser makes a fresh and exciting narrative
Fraser's finely detailed and well-researched biography looks behind the legend to unveil a strong and determined woman (June Sawyers)
It also highlights an interesting question of loyalty: the heroine was a protestant but she risked her life to save a Catholic pretender; this put her at odds with the British monarcy but when she emigrated to the American coloniies she remained loyal to the British king.
If you're a Scottish nationalist intellectural you would struggle to fit Flora MacDonald into any neat box, so you'd probably ignore her.
Useful insight into Scottish history
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