Culloden, Battle & Aftermath by Paul O’Keefe

The Battle of Culloden lasted in total not much longer than the 90 minutes of a football match. But it proved decisive. It ended all hope of a Stuart Restoration. What followed destroyed the traditional clan society of the Highlands. It was the last pitched battle in Scotland, but it wasn’t, as some obstinately suppose, a battle between

Scotland and England. There was indeed more Scottish than English support for the Jacobites, but there was also more Scottish support for the established Hanoverians than for the Stuarts.

If you are looking for the romance of the ever-thrilling story of the Flight through the Heather, this work of deep and diligent research isn’t the book for you. Nor does Paul O’Keefe spend time pondering the might-have-beens of history.

Yet this is a fascinating book. O’Keefe describes the battles succinctly; more to the point he is interested in the technology of war, discussing for instance, the importance of the

British Army’s adoption of the ring-bayonet. There is no romance either in his account of fighting; wounds are horrible and the dead are stripped of their possessions, their bodies humiliated.

O’Keefe is concerned with much more than the military campaign of 1745-46, though he recounts this with authority and in great detail, drawing on numerous accounts by participants and observers. He pays more attention than most who have written about the Rising to the immediate responses of contemporaries: to the panic in London, which sparked wild rumours and a run on the Bank of England, before giving way to first relief, then rejoicing and the lust for revenge. This supplements his meticulous narrative of the pacification of the Highlands and the building of roads