The Hunt for Rob Roy

Book excerpt: This is the first time that Rob Roy's life has been written with a full range of sources. The picture that emerges is indeed striking, but not heroic. A man deeply wronged and oppressed, forced into outlawry, has to be modified by the clear evidence that he was only outlawed after undertaking a careful plan to swindle his creditors. With this book Scotland may lose a hero of the old-fashioned and unreal sort, but it possesses a Rob Roy whose life-story emerges as one that was dramatic and certainly more human. This radical revision of popular views on Rob Roy is based on much recently discovered material and is the first new biography for thirty years.