After the success of his trilogy on Robert the Bruce, he concentrated far more on such heroic figures. His enthusiasm for history is obvious from his books and you can’t help feeling that if school history had only been taught Tranter’s way, it would have been far more popular.Īlthough Tranter was best known for his famous Scottish historical books, he also wrote factual books about Scotland and the Scots, novels set in Scotland and other countries, even Westerns, albeit under a pseudonym, and a series of books for children.
Compared to the traditional, dry textbooks, Tranter’s books display a vivid imagination and appealed to ordinary readers, not only in Scotland, but around the world. However, his approach didn’t go down too well with professional historians, but maybe they were only jealous of his popular success. Although he lectured on history, Tranter disliked ‘conventional history’ and sought to bring the past to life through his storytelling. It has often been said that the only history many Scots know was learned from reading Tranter's stories, and in the context of Scotland’s history, spanning the 6th to the 18th Centuries, Nigel Tranter certainly told its story. It was his ability to tell stories, combined with a wealth of knowledge of Scotland’s history, which gave him his lasting fame.
Nigel Tranter was undoubtedly the most prolific Scottish writer of all time, producing over one hundred and thirty books, and was well qualified to be known as ‘Scotland’s Storyteller’. Nigel Tranter, the historian and novelist, was born on the 23rd of November, 1909.
0 kommentar(er)
