The Scottish Connection

More "behind the scenes" footage from The Falling Fire.

The Science Fiction author, Jerry Pournelle, once wrote that there are two ways of dealing with science in writing SF. One is to stick as closely as possible to real science; the other is to make up your own. I don’t believe that what I do is Science Fiction; but I do put a lot of history into my books. The reason for this is simple: I love history.

I read far more history nowadays than I do fiction (actually, I read far more Asterix The Gaul nowadays than I do fiction); and, just as science-fiction writers use science as the inspiration for their books, so do I often use history as an inspiration for mine.

The thing I learned about history in fiction, though, is that you can’t go making it up. Science is fine; nobody minds the odd warp-drive or time-machine and very few people are all that bothered that, actually, you wouldn’t be able to hear the really huge spaceship going past in the void of space. Try stuff like that with history and you will quickly find yourself in hot water. You start getting emails. Emails that sound like they were written by history teachers (in some cases history professors), and which tell you that, actually, the Webley Service Revolver was not standard issue for British Officers toward the end of the Second World War, and that far more officers carried….you get the idea.

This is why, when it came to dealing with Scottish history in writing the Shattered Land trilogy, I became Somewhat Circumspect. I didn’t want to piss off any more proper historians, and I certainly didn’t want to piss off any Scots – partly because I have great respect for Celtic culture and partly because, well, they’re harder than me.

The whole Scottish Connection started accidentally. Way back when I’d just started The Last Five Days, I was working as a purchase ledger clerk, processing invoices for payment. I came across one for waste disposal. The thing about this invoice was that, at the bottom, it had a list of the government-approved waste disposal agents for different regions of the country. The agent for the Highlands of Scotland was:

MacLenaghan of Slamanen Limited.

I mean, look at that. What a glorious name for a company! I would love to be able to pick up the phone and say: “Good morning, MacLenaghan of Slamanen Limited, how can I help you?”

This was never going to happen. So I thought: I’m having that for the book. I changed Slamanen to Slaith (a rather obvious corruption of Sleat, on the Isle of Skye), and came up with a character. I originally thought he would be a huge, warlike Highland warrior, blooded in the Rant, and wielding what may or may not be correctly referred to as a Claymore. Then I thought: nah, too obvious - make him a little old bank manager type. And so, The MacLenaghan of Slaith was born.

Curiously, as the series went on, MacLenaghan became, in point of fact, more like the warlike Laird I had first imagined; as if the power of history and story were forcing him back into a more romantic shape. The story of the Clans is romantic. Sometimes, as a writer, it’s good just to go along with things like that. You don’t have to turn everything on its head.

In real history, there was no such thing as “Clan MacLenaghan”. MacLenaghan is simply an alternative spelling of MacLennan or MacLennon (or other variations thereof). The real MacLennans were septs (allies) of the MacKenzies, and were decimated in the Civil War, playing very little part in the Jacobite risings of the 18th Century. All of this was ideal to my purposes. I could create a fictional Clan MacLenaghan, with their own history and tradition. For practical purposes in telling the story, I mentally placed their stronghold of Slaith on the mainland west coast, a little to the north of the Isle of Skye.

Very little of the clan’s fictional history made it into the final version of the books. They were not, in my mind, passionate Jacobites; but they were passionate Scots, driven by a loathing of the high-and-mighty English invaders, and by a deep and almost mystical bond to the Land which they – as they saw it – held in trust for future generations. As a consequence, the men of the Clan rose in both ’15 and – even more dramatically – in ’45, where virtually the entire male component (and more than a few of the females) came out for the Bonny Prince.

Such was their downfall.

They were in the front line at Culloden, their leading elements being at the forefront of the wing of the Scottish army that came within yards of the English line before being driven back. Scant few of them escaped the slaughter. Those that did fled to the stronghold of Slaith which, legend had it, was inviolate and, in some way ‘hidden’ or ‘protected’.

Patrick Given’s view of this legend is documented in the book – it’s even on the back cover of the paperback edition – but, as is seen at the end of The Falling Fire, Slaith is both well-concealed and eminently defensible, and it may be that the Fat Prince’s Redcoats, knowing that the MacLenaghans had been all but destroyed on the field of Culwhiniac, never came there. But, as happened to so many of the Clans in the wake of the Clearances, its identity became diluted, lost in a failing tradition and the inevitable diaspora to the New World…

Until along came Aengus, the last true Laird of Slaith, possessed of a sense of destiny and history; and his two red-haired grand-daughters, twins, raised in the old traditions, and steeped in the pride and the warlike nature of their forebears…

For those of you who would like to know how the history of Clan MacLenaghan plays itself out, about their last great battle, and their part in the final confrontation of the Shattered Land – well. Jerusalem, the third book, will be out in the spring of next year…

And for those who’d like to know more about the real history, I first came across the story of the Clans in a volume entitled Culloden, by the late John Prebble (actually an Englishman), which I bought at Glasgow airport in 1997, and which sustained me admirably through a three-hour delay to board my flight back to Manchester. Prebble’s academic reputation is, I gather, somewhat diminished nowadays; but he was – as he himself might have put it - a bonny writer; passionate, engaged and evocative. If you can find a copy on Amazon, I’d recommend it.