Tea at Trianon: In the Footsteps of William Wallace in Scotland and Northern England

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Sunday, August 5, 2012

In the Footsteps of William Wallace in Scotland and Northern England

A work of genuine and solid scholarship, Young and Stead’s In the Footsteps of William Wallace compensates for its dry prose with stunning photography of the places once haunted by the Scottish hero and his comrades. While tracing the Wallace legend back to contemporary sources, the authors sift fact from fiction with careful historical exegesis as with the spirit of detectives they try to determine who the real William Wallace was. That Wallace was indeed a larger-than-life character in the eyes of his contemporaries can be determined from the way he burst into the chronicles out of nowhere to avenge what must surely have been an outrage to his family. Although there are more extant accounts from his enemies than there are from his friends, it is still possible to piece together a coherent portrait of the warrior who came to represent all that was heroic and noble in the Scots and their struggle for independence. This is a work worthy of the most serious historians as well as casual lovers of history.

This review originally appeared in the August 2012 edition of the Historical Novels Review.

(*NOTE: This book was sent to me by the Historical Novel Society in exchange for my honest opinion.)

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