Scratch even the modern coquette and you will find the comely mediaeval wench. Noble yet brutal men of lineage and spirited yet yielding damsels populate Tranter’s world. Rider Haggard and Edgar Rice Burroughs were seminal influences?) While he never actually says his heroes are hung like donkeys, it would be perverse to imagine them any other way (could it be that H. It never takes long for Tranter’s heroes and heroines to strip down to their gender essentials.
That which must be obeyed, or rue the day. ‘Either way, or both, down the years the harsh heritage travels…’ We are now primed for the appearance of the strange wild daughter of the last of the Macarthy Neills and that other mandatory Tranter ingredient:destiny. Or would not a strain of insanity, imagination and coincidence, provide a more rational solution?’, the jacket blurb bizarrely demands. ‘Could a curse dog successive generations of the Macarthy chiefs? Elspeth Macarthy, dying at the Clearances, said it would. In his third novel, Harsh Heritage, he is already turning to Scottish history to give a spine to his tales. Nigel Tranter could spin a tale out of the air. In Trespass, hero-holidaymaker David Scott ‘takes the law into his own hands’ over a boundary issue (Leylandii wars transposed to the Scottish Highlands.) In his second novel, Mammon’s Daughter, a Yorkshire millionaire estate owner is defied by Highland crofters, who, preferring ‘to continue in the ways of their forebears’, see off his latter-day ‘improvements’. In the early Tranter novels, men well-endowed with pipes, trilbies and testosterone, lock antlers over territorial disputes. ‘An absorbing story, blending adventure and romance, set in picturesque highland scenery’: Trespass, the first Tranter novel, summed up on the jacket blurb in words that could apply to any and all of the succession of novels that poured from his pen.
Nigel tranter novels full#
It is a particularly useful feature of Mills’ book, launched in Wigtown Book Town last spring, that it contains 293 full colour reproductions of wrappers and covers. Perhaps symptomatic of Tranter’s spectacular mass-market popularity and the fact that his books were read to bits, his first editions tend to surface bereft of dustwrappers.
According to Colin Mills, compiler of The Tranter Bibliography, the first edition of Columba (1987) goes for about £200, and Cable from Kabul (1967) has exchanged hands for as much as £600. Some Tranter titles are fetching pretty high prices these days. This is reflected in the number of websites and chat groups dedicated to him, including where collectors are offered a book search service. Modern adventure story, incorporating some of the ideas Tranter used in his Westerns, but set in Scotland.There is no doubt that in his lifetime Nigel Tranter established himself as one of the most warmly regarded Scottish writers. Inspired by a real-life dispute over wildfowl shooting rights in Aberlady Bay. This differs from 'costume dramas' (where the setting impinges little on the plotting or characterisation within the story) and 'serious historical fiction' in which the writer interprets real people and events (such as Tranter's own historical fiction). Nigel Tranter identified some of his works as 'period pieces': fictional plots and characters fitting firmly within their historical context. For books published under his pseudonym Nye Tredgold, see Westerns. Historical novels by Nigel Tranter set before 1286 or Historical novels by Nigel Tranter set after 1603.įor his other books see Children's books or Non-fiction books. This article discusses his contemporary stories, 'period pieces' and adventure novels. He is best known for his Scottish historical novels and his five-volume work The Fortified House in Scotland, but he also produced many other novels, particularly early on in his career.
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