We first encounter Magdalen as a fourteen-year-old, eccentric, artistic and withdrawn, she befriends Francis Gowrie, sharing his love of art and a disdain for barbaric practices such as the burning of women considered to be witches. Daughter of the politically ambitious Lord Carnegie of Kinnaird, Magdalen consents to an arranged marriage with a young soldier, James Graham, Earl of Montrose, in order to please her father. Montrose's poetry inspires her but she soon learns that above all things he has military and political ambitions.
So begins this captivating portrait of the little-known wife of the infamous Montrose. Jenkins casts his ironic and informed eye over a host of memorable characters - from the domestic to the aristocratic - in a Scotland divided by social, military and political factions. Jenkins's appreciation of Scottish character and history and his narrative skill combine to create an effortlessly readable and engrossing novel.
