![]() ![]() ![]() The details Fraser offers are often fascinating - from the "hot trod" ("the right to recover one's property by force, and in practice to deal with the thieves out of hand") and the cold (i.e. He doesn't romanticize the reivers (as many do), making clear that they could be brutal, lazy, and didn't always have much sense of honour (or, at best, a very skewed such sense).Īs Fraser puts it: there is "not much evidence to suggest that the Borderers were, for robber, unusually humanitarian." Much of reiver history has to do with their constant raids on each other, and Fraser covers this subject in painstaking detail. He introduces the various clans and families that dominate the region, and the various customs, traditions, and expectations of the Border-folk. The reivers were a different breed, regardless of their nominal nationality.įraser introduces the history of the region - from ancient times - and the people who lived there, focussing then specifically on the tumultuous 16th century. ![]() There has always been enmity across the two sides of the border, but, as Fraser points out, the whole region is also one that kept its distance from the rest of both Scotland and England, the reivers often closer to each other (certainly in spirit) than to distant Edinburgh or London. It is an odd border that divides England and Scotland, set in stone (Hadrian's Wall) in Roman times and enduring to this day. The Steel Bonnets is a broad survey of the Border reivers: "the tribal leaders from their towers, the broken men and outlaws of the mosses, the ordinary peasant of the valley" who plundered, robbed, and destroyed each other's lands back and forth across the Anglo-Scottish border. (Fraser did also go on to use much of this material in his 1993 novel, The Candlemass Road.) The Steel Bonnets, however, focusses almost exclusively on history indeed, it passes easily as a history textbook (though certainly not a dryly academic one). History dominates his books - most notably in the Flashman-papers (see our review of the first installment), but also most of his other fiction, and even his wartime memoirs, Quartered Safe Out Here (see our review). The Steel Bonnets is one of George MacDonald Fraser's more unusual books. The Archbishop of Glasgow's "Monition of Cursing" against the Border reiversī : solid, broad survey of Border reiver history.The Story of the Anglo-Scottish Border Reivers.General information | review summaries | our review | links | about the author Trying to meet all your book preview and review needs. The Steel Bonnets - George MacDonald Fraser ![]()
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