Charles Edward Stuart: Life and Times of Bonnie Prince Charlie

Biography of Charles Edward Stuart, drawing heavily on historic sources, recounting the best and the worst of a flawed hero. Whatever else, I heartily agree with David Daiches that BPC's finest hour was the period immediately following Culloden - when he was hounded throughout the highlands and islands of Scotland, with an enormous price on his head, he coped successfully with the weather and other hardships.

1609 The Last Stuart: The Life and Times of Bonnie Prince Charlie, by David Daiches (read 30 Dec 1980) The subject of this biography was born Dec 20, 1720, in Rome, and died Jan 31, 1788 (tradition says Jan 30 and that the date was changed so it would not coincide with Jan 30, 1649--the date his great-grandfather, Charles I, lost his head). While the book relies only on old printed sources (ignoring apparently both old unprinted materials and modern printed ones), I found the book a delight. Particularly new to me was the detailed account of the Prince's time in Scotland from the time of the defeat at the battle of Culloden (16 Apr 1746) till he boarded a French vessel on Sept 20, 1746., and left for France, and the sad story of his show more subsequent life. For instance, I had not known he became a Protestant about 1750 (in London, yet) (he returned to his Catholic Faith in the mid 1760's) and the scandalous behavior of his wife (whom he married in 1772). I was very impressed by this book, and of course my sentimental feeling for the Stuart cause was reinforced by the very pro-Stuart views of the Scottish author of this book. The last paragraph of the book: "And if we stand in Glenfinnian looking up at his lonely monument, or walk through the still infinitely mournful battlefield of Culloden, or listen to a Scottish folk song or dance tune in some way associated with him, or even look at some of the ridiculous tartary laid out in Edinburgh or Inverness for tourists, we may perhaps catch a glimpse of some of the contradictory feelings awakened by this strangely fated man."' A truly amazing story, surely stranger than any fiction. The monument in St. Peter's is not the tomb of Bonnie Prince Charlie--he is buried in the Cathedral at Frascati (where his brother, Cardinal Henry, was Bishop). A very interesting story and a great book. show less