73 books like Clanship, Commerce and the House of Stuart, 1603-1788

I am a retired history professor with over forty years experience working in the field of eighteenth-century history and Jacobitism in particular. I got interested in Jacobitism when I was an undergraduate and the more I have researched and written on the subject the more fascinated I have become with it. By reading about it you can glimpse the alternatives to the present that might have been. What if the great Jacobite rising of 1715 had succeeded? What if Bonnie Prince Charlie had marched south from Derby and captured London in 1745? The permutations are endless and will certainly keep me engaged for the rest of my life.

I am a retired history professor with over forty years experience working in the field of eighteenth-century history and Jacobitism in particular. I got interested in Jacobitism when I was an undergraduate and the more I have researched and written on the subject the more fascinated I have become with it. By reading about it you can glimpse the alternatives to the present that might have been. What if the great Jacobite rising of 1715 had succeeded? What if Bonnie Prince Charlie had marched south from Derby and captured London in 1745? The permutations are endless and will certainly keep me engaged for the rest of my life.

I am a retired history professor with over forty years experience working in the field of eighteenth-century history and Jacobitism in particular. I got interested in Jacobitism when I was an undergraduate and the more I have researched and written on the subject the more fascinated I have become with it. By reading about it you can glimpse the alternatives to the present that might have been. What if the great Jacobite rising of 1715 had succeeded? What if Bonnie Prince Charlie had marched south from Derby and captured London in 1745? The permutations are endless and will certainly keep me engaged for the rest of my life.

I am a retired history professor with over forty years experience working in the field of eighteenth-century history and Jacobitism in particular. I got interested in Jacobitism when I was an undergraduate and the more I have researched and written on the subject the more fascinated I have become with it. By reading about it you can glimpse the alternatives to the present that might have been. What if the great Jacobite rising of 1715 had succeeded? What if Bonnie Prince Charlie had marched south from Derby and captured London in 1745? The permutations are endless and will certainly keep me engaged for the rest of my life.

My GameLit stories like The Mad Immortal are inspired by the fun I've had playing RPGs such as World of Warcraft and Dungeons & Dragons. It’s that same sense of adventure that I seek out in other stories and that I feel these five books I selected demonstrate. In their own way, each of them inspired my own series as I worked to develop the rules for its magic system and to come up with compelling ways the characters could interact within those established restrictions. I love reading about clever applications of magic to solve problems, especially when it’s not immediately obvious how a given spell would help!

I write historical fiction and survival adventures, but I’m a historian at heart. The past fascinates me and provides the best fodder to explore age-old questions about life, love, and the hero and heroine’s journey to greatness. History has sparked inspiration for some of the most beautiful fictional and reimagined stories I’ve ever read, and transports readers to places long forgotten and unknown—and all without cell phones and internet at the core. Perhaps that’s what I love—a crueler but more hard-earned, simpler life. I hope you enjoy these epic tales of love and adventure as much as I did, and lose yourself in the magic of story. 

I dropped out of law school to pursue a PhD in music at the University of Glasgow and to write the history of the flute in Scotland. Essentially, I wanted to know that if Scotland was a leader in Enlightenment thought, and if there were hundreds of publications with flute on the title page, and since the flute was the most popular amateur instrument in the eighteenth century, why was nothing written about the flute. I obsessively read Scottish mythology as a child, and was always drawn to the stereotypical wild misty landscapes of Scotland without knowing much about it. 

I’ve always been an avid reader and loved different genres from the beginning. I started out reading historical fiction as a child, including the Little House books, Anne of Green Gables, and Where the Red Fern Grows. I soon discovered that science fiction and fantasy did the same thing, transporting me to different words and places instead of times. Many of my favorite books have elements of these as well as action, tension, thrills, and romance. These things transcend genre, and by reading books that combine genres, I find some of the most interesting and original stories. 

Growing up in the former Jacobite heartland of Aberdeen, I've had an interest in the Jacobites for almost as long as I can remember. When I was about six, my father was explaining to me on a bus in King Street in the city that Charles Edward could never have won, when another passenger walked the length of the top deck to contradict him. Lost, excluded, and alternative histories fascinated me and still do. History’s winners still too often present partial and excluding stories. Even in Scotland, Jacobitism is still misunderstood, but understanding is much better than it was thirty years ago, and I'm pleased to have done my bit to change that.

I am an award-winning author and journalist, specialising in social history and gardening. I have an M.A. in Modern History from Cambridge University and a Diploma of Horticulture from the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. I have written for many British newspapers and magazines, most notably The Spectator, The Observer, The Independent, The Sunday Telegraph, The Daily Telegraph, and The Garden.