Magadalen, the fourteen-year-old daughter of Lord Carnegie of Kinnaird, shares with her childhood friend, Francis Gowrie of Mintlaw, a love of art and beauty, and a horror of barbaric practices such as the burning of women thought to be witches. But, with civil war brewing and family alliances paramount, Carnegie arranges her marriage to an ambitious young soldier, James Graham, Earl of Montrose. So begins this captivating portrait of the little-known wife of the infamous Montrose. Jenkins casts his ironic and informed eye over war-torn 17th-century Scotland, juxtaposing the feminine and domestic with the political and military ramifications of the era. An effortlessly readable novel from a vintage storyteller.

His uncompromising, deeply ambivalent analysis of human idealism has established him as the greatest living fiction writer in Scotland. Jenkins is the Scottish Thomas Hardy. * * The Scotsman * *
Like all the great masters, his skill is lightly worn, his sentences singing with what he does not say . . . he is the great old man of Scottish letters. * * The Times * *

Robin Jenkins was born in Cambuslang in 1912. His first novel was published in 1951 and more than 25 works of fiction have followed, many of which have been graced with literary awards and have remained in print for decades. He lives in Argyll.