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The first book by professionals that advises parents how to help their child succeed in school and offers enlightened and effective solutions to more than 70 common problems that kids have in school.
Book Description
"If Jesus Christ were amongst them, they would deceive him," it was said of the plunders, raiders, and outlaws who terrorized the Anglo-Scottish Border for over 300 years. Theirs is an almost forgotten chapter of British history, preserved largely in folktales and ballads. It is the story of the notorious raiding families--Armstrongs, Elliots, Grahams, Johnstones, Maxwells, Scotts, Kerrs, Nixons, and others--of the outlaw bands and broken men, and the fierce battles of English and Scottish armies across the Marches. The Steel Bonnets tells their true story in its historical context-- how the reivers ran their raids and operated their system of blackmail and terrorism, and how the March Wardens, enforcing the unique Border law, fought the great lawless community. A superb work of scholarship and a spellbinding narrative. George MacDonald Fraser is the celebrated author of the Flashman novels, The Candlemass Road, The Pyrates, and the Private McAuslan stories.
Customer Reviews:
Thorough, well-structured, and entertaining.......2005-06-10
Until England and Scotland were united under a single king in March 1603, the border between them was, unsurprisingly, a natural place for strife and disorder. The two countries had been at war intermittently for centuries, and many armies had passed back and forth across the border counties. Fraser's history covers the last hundred years of the border, from 1503 to 1603, a period during which the decayed (and astonishingly corrupt) administration could never cope with the local gangs -- known as "reivers" -- who terrorized the district with cattle theft, murder, and arson.
The book is very well-organized. Fraser starts with a few pages on the long historical background, then takes about half the book to cover the reivers by topic: chapters on arms and armour; on reiving technique; on the key families and their alliances; on cross-border relations; on the administrative structure. Fraser gives a lot of details, and plenty of quotes from the original sources (with the original spellings!).
This painstaking coverage sets up the second half of the book perfectly: one hundred and forty pages that cover the history of the border chronologically through the sixteenth century. With the details in hand, the second half is easy to follow and put in context; the writing is also clear and entertaining.
The last section of the book details the uncompromising way in which King James I destroyed the reivers in a few short years after 1603. It is a startlingly bloodthirsty story: Fraser includes quotes from blanket pardons that King James issued to some of his enforcers, which essentially say "whatever murders you did, I'm sure it was in a good cause, and you're absolved".
There are separate chapters on some of the most famous events, notably the raid on Carlisle Castle that freed Kinmont Willie. Fraser is at some pains to dispel the romantic ideas that cling to stories of the borderers -- as he points out, they were essentially a Mafia, with little of Robin Hood about them. It's clear, though, that he finds their adventurousness and style endearing and fascinating; and he writes about them so well that you are likely to feel the same way.
The Definitive History of the Borderers.......2005-03-24
This book is the definitive history of the riding families -- the Border Reviers. It is a long scholarly look into the nature of these complex and determined families that does not pass judgment or apply modern values in the assessment of their history and deeds. This is not for the casusal reader. It uses a fair amount of old English spellings and can be an effort to decifer at times. However Fraser MacDonald combines this along with his natural story telling ability to make you feel as if you are on a foray across the border and it keeps you coming back for more. If you are a student of Border history or are lucky enough to have one of the riding names, make the effort to read this book. It has no equal in its treatment of the subject.
Fascinating book for me as a Reiver descendant........2003-03-15
I was born in Carlisle, England. The second big town of the border area other than Berwick. My father is from Longtown, Cumbria which is right next to the debateable land and I have the last name of Crozier. This book was like reading about my own history and explained a whole lot of things about my home town and the people I grew up with. Just in my neighborhood, there were Armstrongs, Taylors, Littles, Nixons, Grahams and many other Reiver names.
This is a very scholarly book and exceptionally well written. The author must have done an incredible amount of research to put this together. I read it twice, the second time noting how many references to Croziers(Crosers) there were. My father's family name is in there 26 times. Along with the Armstrongs, Nixons and Eliots, we were considered the worst of the worst of the reivers. Maybe not something to be proud of, but interesting. According to my mother(God rest her soul)her paternal grandfather was the illegitmate son of the Duke of Buccleugh(you'll hear a lot about the Scotts of Buccleugh, many of whom had the same name of Walter, including the famous one), so I have Reiver blood from there too. Fascinating book especially if you have a surname that might go back to that part of the world and those times.
What I have written here is just a taste of the whole book. A little heavy going at times, but so good that I have read it twice already and now use it as a research tool.
Readable and relevant.......2002-02-05
MacDonald Fraser brings to the history of the Anglo-Scots border reivers all the exuberance and attention to detail that made his name in the Flashman novels. Readers looking for more gloriously politically-incorrect adventures from the Victorian age won't find them here, but this book does repay the extra effort needed from the reader. The Steel Bonnets is the most entertaining yet informative serious works of history I have read.
The story of the Anglo-Scots border is a complex and a bloody one. MacDonald Fraser manages to understand, without condoning, the hard men who fought and died, rode and raided across the border between the kingdoms of England and Scotland. He untangles the knotted threads of their family ties and feuds and reveals their part in the wider relations between England and Scotland prior to the union of the Crowns in 1603. He dives into the dusty depths of the written records and brings them back to us red in tooth and claw.
At a time when the border between England and Scotland looks as though it may become an international, rather than a domestic border once more, this book should be of relevence to all with an interest in and love of these two nations.
A much needed title.......2001-09-20
As a newcomer to Scottish Border history I found the many forces and families influencing events very confusing. George MacDonald Fraser has written a remarkable book in which he creates order and logic from a very complicated period and at the same time has written a book which is etremely readble.
It essential reading for anybody interested in border history and will no doubt be quoted extensively by writers who follow.
Customer Reviews:
Rousing Brilliance.......2006-11-28
With all the focus on Scotland being tied to all things tartan, the peoples of the Borderlands often overlooked. George MacDonald Fraser paints a spectacular portal into the tumultuous life of the Border Rievers and all they came in contact with. The objective writing style favors neither Scotland nor England. He does not attempt to justify one side or the others action- it just is what it is. This approach fits in perfectly with the frequency in which loyalties and rivals switched sides and waged a blood feud that is still felt in parts today. Anyone who is remotely interested in anything associated with Scotland, England, organized crime or just a good history will bask in the wonder of this spectacular book.
A history of a turbulent area and era.......2006-01-30
Most of us think of Elizabethan Britain as a reasonably peaceful place. Shakespeare and Marlowe writing plays, Edmund Spenser writing "The Faerie Queen," Sir Francis Bacon inventing science to replace natural philosophy, the English Renaissance.
However, there was one part of Britain that underwent continuous terror and warfare, the Borders. The area lying around the border between Scotland and England was an almost lawless place. Great numbers of the people inhabiting the Border Marches lived by despoiling each other. The 16th Century was when great tribes feuded continuously among themselves, when robbery and kidnapping were everyday professions, when raiding, arson, murder and extortion were an important part of the social system. This had little to do with war between the two countries, who spent most of the century at peace with each other. Much of the raiding was not cross-border, but rather English attacking English and Scots stealing from other Scots. It was a way of life pursued in peace time, by people who accepted it as normal. The seamen of the first Elizabeth might sweep the world's greatest fleet off the seas, but for all the protection she could give to her Northumbrian peasants they might as well have been in Africa.
While the monarchs of England and Scotland ruled the relatively secure hearts of their kingdoms, the narrow hill land between was dominated by the lance and the sword. The tribal leaders from their towers, the broken men and outlaws of the mosses, the ordinary farmers of the valleys, in their own phrase "shook loose the Border." They continued to shake it as long as it was a political reality, practising systematic robbery and destruction on each other. History has named them the Border Reivers.
Fraser explains, in very well written words, how the situation on the Borders came about. He describes the manner of people who lived there, who were the leading robber families, how they lived and ate and dressed and built their houses and so forth. He tells how the reivers practised such crimes as the protection racket, robbery and cattle rustling. He also explains about the feuding that went on. He describes how Border law operated under the March Wardens and how the two governments tried to quell the reivers. Lastly the book tells how the reiving ended when England and Scotland came under one king, and the older Borders ceased to be.
Makes the Balkans look like a children's sandbox.......2002-09-19
THE STEEL BONNETS by George MacDonald Fraser is a prodigious and esoteric historical narrative about the Anglo-Scottish border. The time is the 16th century. The place and players are indicated by the book's subtitle, "The Story of the Anglo-Scottish Border Reivers", reivers being raiders. The place is more specifically the six administrative areas called Marches (3 English and 3 Scottish - West, Middle, and East on each side of the line) which straddled the border to serve as a buffer zone.
Having grown up in Carlisle, the former bastion of the English West March, Fraser has written a work of love divided into five parts. In the first three, Fraser describes the genesis of the Border Marches, the Wardens, one per March, that were responsible for the maintenance of order, the raider families that lived there, and the culture and practice of violence that characterized the area. The author's catalog of depredations, based on research of contemporary records, includes murder, arson, blackmail, kidnapping, rustling, racketeering, feuding, plunder, and banditry - all made infinitely worse by the indifference and/or cynical scheming of the English and Scottish central governments which tolerated the not-infrequent participation in the mayhem by the Wardens themselves. Part 4 is a sequential narrative history of events along the Border during the 16th century, the last before James VI of Scotland united the island's thrones as James I of Great Britain. Part 5 describes this monarch's brutal suppression of both the violence and raider families of the Marches during the first decade of the 17th century, an effort that finally brought peace to the region.
THE STEEL BONNETS offers a surfeit of detail. At times, as Fraser brings on stage the multitude of principal characters and attempts to unravel the maze of ever-shifting family alliances and feuds (Scot vs. Anglo, Scot vs. Scot, Anglo vs. Anglo, everybody vs. everyone), the reader may decide the author went over the top. However, the story is never uninteresting, and the social chaos is appalling.
If the reader was delighted by the humor in Fraser's other books, e.g. the McAuslan and Flashman series, there may be some disappointment as this narrative is relatively straitlaced. However, even here the author's dry wit occasionally shows. Regarding the assumption of the English East March Wardenship by Henry Carey in 1588:
"... his notion of Border justice was that the only good reiver was a dead one - a point of view which has much to be said for it. Possibly the fact that he suffered from gall-stones made him irritable, for he started in office as he meant to continue, by hanging Scottish thieves."
And, as always, Fraser's prose is a joy to behold, as demonstrated by his closing remarks:
"Only now and then, if your romantic imagination is sharp enough, there can come a little drift from the past ... most vivid of all, perhaps, in a little fellside village at night, when there is a hunter's moon and a strong wind, and the black cloud shadows hurry across the tops, and beasts stamp in the dark, and an inn door down in the village opens and slams with a blink of light, and the rough Norse voices sound and laugh and die away ... The old Border is buried a long time ago, and there is hardly a trace now to mark where the steel bonnets passed by."
Back-stabbing,double-crossing,treacherous,thieving.................2002-08-08
barbarous,murderous,anarchic, happenings on the Anglo-Scottish borderlands from the 13th through 16th centuries. It was Afghanistan with kilts.
How Do You (Not) Spell "Elliott"?.......2002-06-26
In this wonderful look at a dark and fascinating period in Anglo-Scottish history, Fraser brings the same quirky attitude and deep appreciation of man's inherent rascality that make the "Flashman" books and his novel "Mr American" (q.v.) so iminently readable to the explication of the complex and violent history of the Border reivers.
Beginning with a Foreword that, among other things, describes the jolt he got watching Richard Nixon's Inauguration on television, when he saw Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon and Billy Graham standing together on the platform, he explains, in typical fashion, that Johnson, Nixon and Graham are all names that figured strongly in the reiving years, and thateach, as well, wore faces that might well still be seen in the Border country today.
He delves into the history of Hadrian's Wall ("Any Englishman can tell you why it was built -- 'To keep the Scots out!'"), and speculates how Anglo-Scottish history might have been changed were the Wall a few milse north or south.
And then he dives off into the history of the Border and the Reivers.
This is *not* a standard, dry history text, laying everything out in a straight line,with dates and battles to memorise and all the juice sucked out of it.
No, Fraser skips around; first giving us an outline of the whole period, he then, in subsequent chapters, cover different aspects of the history in depth, and not necessarily chronologically.
He gives us fascinating details, such as why the spiral stairs in the watch towers built by the Kerr family tended to spiral anti-clockwise instead of the usual clockwise, in the process defining and explaining the origin of the term "correy fisted".
He writes of the great feuds among the reiving families, many of whom were to be found on both sides of the Border, of the practise of blackmail (somewhat different than the meaning the term has today) and in what manner one might legally pursue raiders back across the Border to attempt to retrieve one's property.
Explaining the administrative setup of the Border, he describes the careers and personalities of several of the more prominent Border Wardens, lawmen assigned by both England and Scotland to keep the peace, but never given the budgets or forces they needed.
He introduces us to several of the prominent reivers, including some of Sir Walter Scott's ancestors, and recounts their deeds.
He analyses the economy of the Border and the reiving system, as well as anyone can, at this remove and from extant records, and shows howthis all affected the overall history ofAnglo-Scottish relations.
And, for good measure, he includes the truly "Monition of Cursing" issued by the Archbishop of Glasgow against the reivers, a masterful piece of vituperation that runs four or more full pages depending on the edition.
Not a history text in the classic sense, not a novel, because it's all true, Fraser has presented the reader with a corking good reading experience that opens the window on another time and place whose influences still reverberate in the world today.
((About the spelling of Eliot... or Ellet ... or Eliott...: The family seemed to not mind how their name was spelt -- Fraser lists a large number of variant spellings with various permutations of "L"s and "T"s. He then points out that almost any were acceptable -- *except*, for some reason, the double "L" and double "T", a spelling the family affected, for some reason, to despise...))
Book Description
From the 13th century until early in the 17th century the Border Marches of England and Scotland were torn by a vicious and almost continuous cycle of raid, reprisal and blood feud. The Border Reiver was a professional cattle thief, a guerilla soldier skilled at raiding, tracking and ambush and a well organised ‘gangster’. Including eight superb full page colour plates by Angus McBride, as well as numerous other illustrations, this text by Keith Durham explores the colourful history of these remarkable people.
Customer Reviews:
Well illustrated and written............2002-06-27
I convene a Scottish Clan Tent at various Highland Games, and this is always prominantly displayed on my table.
It gives a quick, but thorough history on the Scottish Border Reivers for those of use who don't have time to read the Steel Bonnets. The illustrations alone are worth the price of the book.
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Border Reivers
Godfrey Watson
Manufacturer: Sandhill Press Ltd
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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Scotland
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ASIN: 0946098352 |
Book Description
A ripping good yarn of a historical novel, set in the outlaw country between England and Scotland in the late 16th century.
Customer Reviews:
A dark adventure at a break-neck pace.......2003-07-08
In little less then 24 hours, the 16th-century young Lady Dacre arrives at the castle she has inherited on the Scots/English border, compels a wandering stranger to defend her tenants against roving brigands, falls for him (almost) and watches him leave.
Although this sounds like a bodice-ripper romance, it's rather the opposite - a fierce, violent, even macho story of the terribly violent world of the "Border Counties" of the 16th century, told in an authentic dialect by Father Luis, a retainer of the Dacre family.
McDonald-Fraser's novella (barely 150 pages) is remarkable for its economy; within a few paragraphs we have the main characters compellingly described and developed; within a few pages Waitabout (the stranger who defends her) has dashed off to save the village, within a chapter or two a terrible violent battle has erupted. The pace is breathtaking but not at the expense of fully realized characters.
I will say, though, that the archaic Scottish dialect is not easy going at first; stick with it though, if you get in 10 pages you will not be able to put it down!
Fraser in Top Form.......2002-11-26
There really is no feeling like that of picking up an as-yet-unread novel by George MacDonald Fraser. It is one of delicious certainty: you will be entertained, you will be informed, and you will be charmed. Unfortunately I can only expect to have this experience a couple of more times in my life, as there just isn't that much left of his that I haven't read anymore. Alas, alas, alas.
The locale in this one is the wild English/Scottish borderlands in 1598. Although England was mostly settled and Scotland was mostly settled, the midlands--under the jurisdiction of neither--were not, and bands of thieves and brigands--reivers--roamed about, terrorizing the countryside.
For characters there is Luis Guevara, the teller of the tale and the meek priest of the Dacre estate, located in the middle of these badlands; there is Lord Ralph Dacre, the white-haired, crimson-clad Red Bull, Lord of the Estate, and scourge of the thieves; there is Lady Margaret Dacre, sharp-witted, fire-breathing, and newly come to the estate after the untimely death of her father; and there is finally Archie Noble Waitabout, a broken man, thief, and he who proved to be the Great Lady's protector.
For plot there is the death of the Red Bull, "shot . . . through with calivers, nine balls in his body, and he let die by the roadside." Lady Margaret, bred in courtly London, comes to the estate and on the date of her arrival finds that the thieves are already attempting to reinstitute their filthy blackmail on her timid villagers. Those charged with helping her find excuses not to, for various reasons, but primarily because of their unstated fear of the dreaded Nixon clan. She turns to the imprisoned Waitabout, who in exchange for his life, agrees to go to the village and defend it.
For language, there is the incomparable GMF, this time using the lingo of an educated Scot of the 16th Century, duplicating the feat of his bravura linguistic performance in Black Ajax. And there is his descriptive power, here, the narrator's first view of the village: "A sorry pack they were, the men-folk stout enough but dirty and ill-clad, the women as slatternly as I ever saw, and if there were three pairs of shoon among them it was enough."
And the description of the battle itself, enough to make your blood run cold: "There was a great commotion about the bearded Nixon, him that was the leader and called Ill Will, and they tugged him all ways, some saying he should hang and others for having at him with their blades . . . they dragged him to the great dunghill that lay beside the cattle pen, and there heaved him up, and drave him down head foremost into the filth, and held him there."
There you have it, another great GMF novel, this one without the romantic playfulness of the Flashman novels, but still with the driving narrative, expert use of the language, and superb research. You cannot go wrong with this author. He has easily reached the stature of his heroes: Stevenson, Doyle, Sabatini, and Dumas. Indeed, he may stand above them.
a great short novel.......2000-04-09
After reading QUARTERED SAFE OUT HERE, the best personal world war two recollection I have ever read about the British campaign against the Japanese, I was extremely interested in learning more of the history of the people he led, the Borderers. (The Engish charged and the Germans ran. The Germans charged and the English ran. The Kings Own Borderers charged and everybody ran.) I then read STEEL BONNETS, Fraser's history of the people he had led in that war. It was fascinating. I wondered why he didn't write one of his great stories based on what he had researched. Then I found out about CANDLEMASS ROAD. I ordered it and awaited it with great anticipation. When it arrived, I went through it in an afternoon. I have rarely been so disappointed by a favorite author. I want the publisher to slap Fraser on both cheeks and tell him to " march right back into that room and finish the book". What was written is better than anything Fraser has ever written I know, from my reading, that Fraser admires CAPTAIN BLOOD as a great adventure novel. I agree with him. The story he wrote here is as good as anything written by Sabatini and it left me with a feeling of great dismay when it ended before its time. What he sets up here is one of the great hisorical novels.
But it ends up feeling like what could have been an appendage (here's what I think it might have been like) to STEEL BONNETS. If you are a Fraser fan, order it and enjoy. If you are a Border fan, order it and enjoy. If you are an historical novel by a reliable author fan, write to the publisher and demand that the author be required to to tell us the end of the story of Lady Dacre, the Broken man, Wattie and the Bailiff. The use of the English language is some of the best I have ever encountered ( I am an O'Brian fan) and the rendering of the Scottish the most accessible since Farnol.
The Candlemass Road - Fraser's best.......2000-03-09
This is both a review of The Candlemass Road and a sharp disagreement with the previous reviewer. I have read all of Mr. Fraser's books, (save only Quartered Safe Out Here), and count Mr. Fraser as one of my favorite writers. He is a master storyteller, who grabs readers and pulls them along, with breakneck action alternating with insightful looks into humankind - often in the same sentence. And, of course, Mr. Fraser is funny. The Pyrates may be one of the laugh-out-loud, funniest books ever written.
The Candlemass Road is by far George MacDonald Fraser's most powerful book. In a few short pages, Mr. Fraser sets the premise, the scene and the characters. While loaded with tense action sequences,this is primarily a study of character and of situational ethics. It is a study of a uncertain land in an uncertain time, told through the eyes of an aged, flock-less priest. The story is based on the horrors faced on a daily basis by the inhabitants of the Borderlands between Scotland and England at the end of the sixteenth century - the history of which was ably explored in Mr. Fraser's The Steel Bonnets. (If you enjoyed that book, you'll love this one.)
The protagonist, young Lady Margaret Dacre, must use all of her wit and power to protect her folk from a band of Scots reivers - on the very day she returns to her ancestral seat after seventeen years at Court. Lady Margaret uses the tools available, and learns a valuable lesson about life on the borders, and the "custom of the country".
The previous reviewer felt that the story ended just when it was getting going. I could not disagree more strongly. The book ended because the story ended. One paragraph more would have been too much. The reader does not need to be told what happens next.
The characters are fully developed; the action is intense; the interplay between the main characters is electric. This book grabbed me on page one, and left me shaking at the last word. This is a fabulous book. Buy it so Mr. Fraser will write more. Then read it. Then read it again. Five stars.
Can Fraser Be Slipping?.......1999-12-11
I am a longtime George Macdonald Fraser fan, in particular the Flashman Papers. I have read most of his books a half dozen times, and have not tired of them because of Mr. Fraser's fanastic talent for storytelling. "The Candlemass Road" began as no exception. However, just as the main characters became fully developed, the story ended! I felt as if I had read part of a terrific GMF novel, only to be denied the ending. It grieves me to give less than five stars to my hero, but I must!
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Gurkha Reiver: Walking The Southern Upland Way
Neil Griffiths , and
Joanna Lumley
Manufacturer: Wilson & Associates Publishing Services
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 0954441605 |
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Reiver Blues: A New Border Apocalypse
John Murray
Manufacturer: Flambard
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 1873226217 |
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