Midwinter

Midwinter finds John Buchan abandoning the modern world of motorcars, telephones and international conspiracies in favour of 1745, when conspiracies travelled on horseback, messages were hidden in saddlebags and political disagreements were liable to conclude with somebody being pursued across a frozen moor.

Alastair Maclean is a loyal Jacobite soldier returning from exile in France to assist Bonnie Prince Charlie’s advance into England. The Prince urgently needs English supporters, money and men, all of which have apparently been promised and none of which are arriving—a logistical difficulty which, in the eighteenth century as now, suggests that someone has been lying in a meeting. Maclean is sent roaming through an wintry England of lonely inns, ancient estates and uncertain loyalties to discover why the expected support has failed to materialise.

Along the way he encounters Midwinter, the mysterious leader of the Spoonbills, a secret brotherhood of ordinary country people who possess an extremely useful knowledge of roads, hiding places and other people’s business. He also meets spies, double agents, cautious aristocrats, Bonnie Prince Charlie himself and an impoverished young tutor named Samuel Johnson, who has not yet written his famous dictionary but is already quite capable of producing several paragraphs when a shorter answer might have sufficed.

Unfortunately for Maclean, his mission becomes entangled with Claudia Grevel, a beautiful and devoted young woman married to a man whose conduct does not improve under examination. Maclean therefore finds himself choosing between love, honour and the Jacobite cause, three things which ought never to be placed together unless an author intends serious trouble. Treachery is uncovered, loyalties are tested and history continues its remorseless march towards Derby and disaster, despite everyone’s strenuous efforts to persuade it otherwise.

First published in 1923, Midwinter is a rich historical adventure filled with secret journeys, political intrigue, doomed idealism and Buchan’s customary suspicion that civilisation is only temporarily in charge. It is a novel of misty roads and lost causes, in which brave men behave honourably, dishonest men behave profitably and England itself seems to be waiting in the cold to see which king turns up.

This 1981 Hodder and Stoughton edition is in As New condition—remarkably fresh, clean and apparently untouched by Jacobite cavalry, government agents or two and a half centuries of dynastic resentment. An excellent copy for readers of historical fiction, Buchan collectors or anyone who prefers their espionage conducted by candlelight, with horses outside and Dr Johnson arriving unexpectedly to complicate matters.6

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