Nigel Tranter

[Margaret]

Has anyone here read a lot of Nigel Tranter's novels about Scottish history? They used to be hard to get in the U.S., and I've only read one. It was years ago - I think it was the one about Macbeth. I'd be interested to know which novels are considered to be his best.

[Mara]

I've read the one about Glencoe some time ago. It was good. His style was more old fashioned storytelling. Sadly I've yet to catch up on other novels (and he published many) but I've seen them dead cheap in second hand book stores here.

[Misfit]

I read the Bruce Trilogy and enjoyed that, but I tried another MacBeth the King and bailed at around 50 pages. It was a bit dry, although I'll admit I was having a bad book day and started about three or four before I could find one to interest me.

[EC2]

My mother read just about every book of his going when we lived in Scotland. I've tried a few but can't get on with him. He sometimes writes in never ending sentences that are very clunky. I found him dry and musty and way off base with some of his historical details. A friend challenged me to read his Master of Grey series and change my mind. I didn't, but to be fair I will say that this was a better read than the others I'd tried. In places it had vague echoes of Dorothy Dunnett (stressing the 'vague.')

[Melisende]

I loved his "Macbeth" - there was also one about one of the early saints of Iona (forgotten the title) which was also quite good.

My local library has quite a few titles on the shelves - but as we have four branches spread far and wide - so are many of the books themselves. Meaning - there is not a full set of each "series" on the shelves of any one library - which is quite annoying when you like to grab them all for yourself!

[Margaret]

Was it Druid Sacrifice about St. Mungo's mother, Melisende? As a young teenager, I read a novel that made druids seem like really creepy charlatans - there was a scene in which one of them was explaining that everyone had a spot on his body where you could stick a needle in without feeling pain, and if you did this as a public display, you could impress people. For years, I've been wondering what book that could have been, and looking over the descriptions of Tranter's titles, I think that might have been the one. I guess you could call it skillful writing, to make a scene like that stick in my mind for so many decades, but even then I thought he was being quite unfair about the druids.

I did find Macbeth the King pretty dry. I was hoping one of his other novels might be better so I could give him another chance. Scottish history is so interesting, it deserves a writer who can really bring it alive.

[Melisende]

That's the one!

Thanks Margaret!

[Margaret]

I just found out that Nigel Tranter's Druid Sacrifice was not published until 1993, in which case it couldn't possibly be the novel I was remembering. This is quite mysterious - perhaps it was published in the 1950s or 1960s under a different title? Or else we are thinking of two different books?

[Melisende]

Maybe its was published with a new company in 1993 - otherwise there must be a very similar book covering a very similar subject.

[sweetpotatoboy]

I've wanted to like him but the only time I tried he completely failed to engage me and I gave up (which I rarely do).

[Margaret]

Me, too, SweetPotato. I'd love to give him a second chance - but would like to do it with one of his best books. Alas, writers that are this prolific are not always as good as, say, Ellis Peters with her Brother Cadfael mysteries.

[Carla]

Well, for what it's worth, I think the three Robert Bruce novels are his best historical novels. I've read a lot of Nigel Tranter's novels - though not by any means all of them - and I'd say his style is to take a chunk of Scottish history and mildly dramatise it. When the underlying history is stirring stuff or when the reader has a special interest in it, the result is a good read. When the underlying history is, ahem, a bit dull or confused, the same applies to the associated novel.

I'd say the 'best' Nigel Tranter novel is one that covers a historical figure or period you're especially interested in.

He has some style quirks that don't particularly annoy me, such as long sentences and staccato dialogue, but which I could see might drive some people up the wall. Love scenes range from so-so to dreadful - fortunately they are usually short and easily skipped.

More detailed article here: (http://carlanayland.blogspot.com/2006/10/nigel-tranters-historical-novels.html).

[Margaret]

Thanks for a very helpful analysis, Carla. Loved your article, which is not only insightful but fun to read (several LOL spots). I've added a link to it from the Medieval Celts page at www.HistoricalNovels.info.

I'm going to put Tranter's Robert the Bruce novels on my TBR and skip the rest, at least for now.

[Carla]

Cheers, Margaret - glad to hear the review was useful, and thanks for the link!

[Cuchulainn]

The Bruce Trilogy is a genuinely excellent read. It was the first thing I read by Tranter; I couldn't put it down and was really excited that I had found a new author for myself.

And then I read some of his other books.

They were horribly, horribly dry.

I started reading "The Stone" which was supposed to be a thriller in line with Buchan but I stopped reading it at the scene when he tried to create suspense out of the hero's inability to do a three point turn in the motor car he was driving in the dark to avoid the imminent approach of a bunch of archaeologists from the university.

Then I tried "Hope Endures" which reads as though he had a history book open beside his typewriter (or whatever) and just sort of transposed the history into a kind of fictional narrative. I put that one down, too.

Since then I've been shy of Tranter. I really, really wanted to like his books. Maybe one day I'll try his book on Wallace, and I think he has one on MacAlpine who was, I think, a Pictish king (and there is so little written on this place and period, both fictional and non-fictional).

[annis]

Jack Dixon has written a book about the origin of the Picts, their arrival in Scotland and the incursion of Roman forces under Agricola. It's called "The Pict". (http://www.amazon.com/Pict-Jack-Dixon/dp/0595689469)I found it a good read- only complaint, it was a bit short and a tad scanty. Jack Dixon said that as it was his first effort he didnt want to get too carried away in case people didn't like his work. Now that he knows they do like it, he'll try something longer!

[Margaret]

LOL, Cuchullain. It's unusual for an author's work to be so variable in quality. A lot of authors have a real winner and a few near-misses, or get steadily better from their first not-so-great efforts, but it's rare for someone who writes a really good novel or two to also write some amateurish ones after they've written better. Maybe Tranter was just super-inspired by Robert the Bruce and/or got away with a lot because Bruce's story is just so exciting in and of itself.

[Ariadne]

I've also found Tranter's work to vary considerably in quality. I enjoyed his Master of Gray trilogy a lot, and even found myself getting used to his clipped dialogue, though that style is certainly not my preference. But I found some of his later novels to be very dry; they also had stereotypical depictions of women. This seemed especially odd in a novel such as Price of a Princess, where a woman was the main character. His skills in characterization seemed to slip as he got older.

[EC2]

Carla, I enjoyed your summary of Tranter, thank you. As always you're wonderfully even handed.
He is definitely variable. Perhaps if I'd read the Bruce trilogy to start with I'd have had a less dismissive view of Tranter. I did get through part of the Master of Grey trilogy and it was indeed a cut above the other two I'd tried - David the Prince (I think that's the title) and some other one I forget that only lasted a chapter.
Interesting what you said in your article about Tranter being true to the history rather than fitting the history into the needs of a novel. I can respect him for that - although I do think that it is possible to do both.

[Carla]

Carla, I enjoyed your summary of Tranter, thank you. As always you're wonderfully even handed.
He is definitely variable. Perhaps if I'd read the Bruce trilogy to start with I'd have had a less dismissive view of Tranter. I did get through part of the Master of Grey trilogy and it was indeed a cut above the other two I'd tried - David the Prince (I think that's the title) and some other one I forget that only lasted a chapter.
Interesting what you said in your article about Tranter being true to the history rather than fitting the history into the needs of a novel. I can respect him for that - although I do think that it is possible to do both.

I think it's possible to do both, too, and indeed I'd argue that that's what historical fiction is for. It takes time, though, at least with history that's not as obviously epic as the Bruce Trilogy. Nigel Tranter wrote an awful lot of novels (not as many as Jean Plaidy under her various pen names, but getting on that way), and logically there must have been limited time available to research and write each one. Some of Jean Plaidy's output has the same 'history book with dialogue' feeling as Tranter's drier novels, perhaps for the same reason. With both of them you know pretty much what to expect, a slice of mildly dramatised history, and that must have helped establish a readership that could be relied on to buy the next one, and the next, and the next, as fast as the author could write, so why change a winning formula?

[Volgadon]

Hmm, with Tranter I feel as if I'm reading a nationalist textbook.

[Kveto from Prague]

I read the bruce trilogy. i remember thinking it was ok but not feeling any need to reread it. i think if you are a big fan of scots history and that period in particular you may fancy it. it did seem overlong at times but the history feels solid. especially the point where robert bruce was literally down to about a dozen men serving him.

dont know its availability in the states. i got my copy on discount in Edinborgh

keny from prague

[LiteratusGuru]

I know people have stopped writing on this thread, but I found Nigel Tranter's work to be some of the strangest, most challenging, and historically informative there is. Also, I'm new here. So, I wanted to chime in. I seldom see Tranter's books for sale here in the U.S. at any type of bookstore, used or new. I believe that the only way to get them is via an online merchant. At least they aren't expensive.

Tranter frequently wrote in series format. I began his Stewart triloogy with the first book, Lords of Misrule, and can recommend that one as a good read if you are trying to get into Tranter. Set in 14th century Scotland, the novel has as its backdrop the intrigues of the power struggle that took place as various factions wrested for who would take the throne once Robert the Bruce's grandson, now feeble, blind, old and dying finally moved on. What I liked about the novel was how the protagonist, a minor nobleman named Jamie, crossed family lines to try to assist who he thought was the more deserving of the factions, while not getting killed for doing so. Particularly interesting was trying to figure out if the person he was helping 1) truly needed the help or was just using Jamie for some hidden purpose, 2) was a decent enough person to be deserving of Jamie's loyalty, and 3) whether the right person really won the throne in the end. The romantic interests, though not a major part of the novel, worked well for me, and I think Tranter did fine with Jamie's love interest.

Nevertheless, Tranter's writing does seem slightly misogynistic to me, based on my reading of this one novel and two others I began but was diverted from. Tranter's female characters tend to come in two varieties 1) vacuous-headed powerful men's sexual playthings who don't have "no" in their vocabulary, and 2) Macbethian wives, all after power but using manipulation of a male idiot to acquire it.

I am not sure about what people refer to when they call Tranter "dry", or say that his dialog is "choppy". I saw no evidence of that in Lords of Misrule. For me, the real challenge was to try to keep all Tranter's many characters straight. Minor ones flow into the narrative and back out in less than a page only to reappear 140 pages later. Tranter tends to assume his reader remembers every character, even if he mentions one just in passing as sitting at a dinner table along with ten others in the same paragraph. Not only are we to remember the character, but he also expects the reader to remember the character's political position, previous role, associations and motivation; Tranter seldom provides reminders. The good point of this is that the narrative can speed along. I keep a character chart with page numbers and often refer back in the text when reading Tranter.

[Margaret]

It's always possible to revive a thread! Thanks for adding your perspective, Literatus. I've only read one or two Tranter novels and did find the ones I read disappointingly dry. My sense is that his work could be quite uneven. Also, he was dedicated to presenting the full sweep of Scottish history in his novels, and some periods of Scottish history lend themselves particularly well to the storytelling form while others are less dynamic. (I haven't read Tranter's Mary Queen of Scots novels, for example, but I think it would be hard to write a dynamic novel about a woman who seems to have been rather whiny and was locked up for much of her adult life. On the other hand, Susan Higginbotham's The Traitor's Wife really blazes to life and becomes rivetingly interesting after the heroine is imprisoned, so one can't really generalize.)

Anyway, I will keep Lords of Misrule in mind, because I feel that Tranter was a writer of some significance and would like to feature a review of one of his better novels on my site. Alas, my library doesn't have a copy, nor does Powell's, and I tend to have bad luck with used novels at Amazon, because they frequently arrive saturated with someone's perfume, which I'm allergic to. Tranter's novels can be awfully hard to find in the U.S., and unfortunately, his better ones (at least by repute) are often among the hardest to find.

[Ariadne]

I haven't read Lords of Misrule but looked it up on Fantastic Fiction and see it was first written in the 1970s. As is the case with Jean Plaidy, I find that his earlier novels were better written, and with less stereotypical characterization, than the ones published toward the end of his life. The clipped dialogue was very apparent to me in the books he wrote in the '90s. His characters spoke in very short sentence fragments, which took some getting used to.

[Misfit]

Alas, my library doesn't have a copy, nor does Powell's, and I tend to have bad luck with used novels at Amazon, because they frequently arrive saturated with someone's perfume, which I'm allergic to.

It's always the cigarette smoke that kills me. Have you tried Thrift books? I've had good luck with them and their main shipping location is in south Seattle so even media mail comes pretty quickly. And they do have copies of Lords available, http://www.thriftbooks.com/viewDetails.aspx?ISBN=0340223030

If you are on Paperbackswap they have at least one available as well and you can add requestor conditions (no perfume, etc.) to your books.

[LiteratusGuru]

(I haven't read Tranter's Mary Queen of Scots novels, for example, but I think it would be hard to write a dynamic novel about a woman who seems to have been rather whiny and was locked up for much of her adult life. Tranter's novels can be awfully hard to find in the U.S., and unfortunately, his better ones (at least by repute) are often among the hardest to find.

Thank you everyone for your kind words to this newbie. My favorite site for locating that next-to-impossible-to-obtain book is www.bookfinder.com. If the book is not listed there for sale, it's probably not available anywhere other than through the author directly. I also like how their database lists things in price order, cheapest to most expensive. It is necessary to check all the links of the various different editions to get that best price for book condition though.

It's funny you mention Tranter's Mary Queen of Scots novel. It is titled Warden of the Queen's March, and is one of the two I put down after beginning. (The other one I put down was A Folly of Princes, the second one in the Stewart trilogy. Tranter's misogyny in the beginning of that novel, however historically accurate it may be, was nevertheless offputting. So many of Tranter's sex scenes seem so purely gratuitous.)

Anyhow, Warden of the Queen's March, if you decide to try it, will be a real challenge, not only for the reason you mention -- that is, how much action can there be with someone stuck in a castle the entire book? -- but it also has some of Tranter's more sterotypical difficult features. I count 33 different characters mentioned in the first 12 pages alone, almost none of them properly introduced. Also, the writing technique he employed has the obvious problems other posters mentioned.

To provide a typical technique example, look at this excerpt which comes before page 1, it begins the splash page of the book, the page that is supposed to entice readers into the novel: "There was a surge forward of the waiting crowd, so that the lofty ones at the front were in danger of being pushed off into the water, to their outraged cries, these lost however in the general cheering, as Mary paused in midgangway to smile brilliantly and wave." The sentence may be long, but I suspect even Henry James would cringe. Or, take this section, just a few lines down: "Standing there, however, radiant, lovely, lissome, graceful and so obviously vivacious and mettlesome, she certainly showed no other aspect of mourning or sadness, joyful expectancy rather, and eager anticipation. That smile was a delight. Thomas, for one, was fascinated, quite smitten. Perhaps romantically inclined anyway, he decided there and then that here was the most delicious creature it had ever been his fortune to set eyes upon."

Too funny, isn't it? After all this consideration of the book, I suddenly find myself inspired to give it another try. If I can't make it through this time, I will trade the book away on www.frugalreader.com.

[Kveto from Prague]

hi Guru,

Im kinda lukewarm on tranter myself. I enjoyed "black douglas" and the bruce trilogy. disliked his later efforts like "balefire". hes not an author id seek out but if you put a book by him in my hands ill probably read it through.

one thing i expected to find in his novels i read but didnt find was overt nationalism. you kind of figure he will write "scots good, English bad" type of stuff but he was pretty good about avoiding that. he had at least as many "bad" scots. like in the bruce trilogy which would lend itself to making the Edwards I and II cartoonish bad guys from the scots perspective, he was pretty even-handed even if showing they were doing some dirty rotten things.

[Margaret]

Thanks, guys! I snagged a copy of Lords of Misrule at Thriftbooks. The site is really easy to navigate, and they don't charge extra for S&H, which always wins my heart.

[Carla]

Warden of the Queen's March was one of the Nigel Tranter novels I mentioned as being rambling and with not much of a story (http://carlanayland.blogspot.com/2006/10/nigel-tranters-historical-novels.html). I must say I'd forgotten how cringeworthy some of the style is until you posted the quotes, Literatus. Let's say it's not high on my list to re-read :-)

I don't think I've tried Lords of Misrule. Thanks for the recommendation!

[princess]

"Lion Let Loose" (about James I of Scotland) was the first Tranter I read and I absolutely loved it :) I can say the same about "Kenneth" (MacAlpin) too. I agree with the others, considering Scotland's history with England (and vice versa), I don't think his books come across as overly nationalistic.

[BrianPK]

I've read most of N. Tranters historical novels over the years and have enjoyed all of them.They are not all great but all are very interesting reads.Some are outstanding such as "The Master of Gray " trilogy which I finished a few weeks ago to quickly follow up with "The Wisest Fool" and currently am reading "Poetic Justice".Both of these stories tell of different characters who actually existed and were involved in various intrigues and dealings with King James I. Tranters portraits of Elizabeth I and James I are brilliant.It makes for fascinating reading. No day is complete for me without spending a few hours in N.Tranters world. Discovering him years ago when I first read the thrilling "Bruce" trilogy was the beginning of countless hours of enjoyment.