Genius Fan

Take a guess: How many biographies are there of Flora Macdonald? (My guess is at the bottom of this post.) She sealed her fame as one of Britain’s most romantic heroines when she chose to help Bonnie Prince Charlie evade capture by government soldiers in June 1746. He was on the run because of his failed Jacobite uprising the year before. I learned the song about their exploits, The Skye Boat Song, at school in the Seventies (“Speed, bonnie boat, like a bird on the wing, Onward! the sailors cry…”) and then forgot anything I ever learned about her…until that is, she popped up as a character in James Boswell’s brilliant book, The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides (1785). Boswell and Samuel Johnson were welcomed at her home in Kingsburgh, Skye, on 12 September 1773. I didn’t know that was going to happen and couldn’t quite believe what I was reading – she’d seemed so distant and so mythical, and her adventures so scant of detail. But there on the page was Bozzy, charming as ever, describing their meeting:

“Miss Flora Macdonald (for so I shall call her) told me, she heard upon the main land, as she was returning home about a fortnight before, that Mr Boswell was coming to Sky, and one Mr Johnson, a young English buck, with him. He was highly entertained with this fancy.”

Typical of Boswell to record fun chat like that. In Johnson’s account of the same meeting (in his A Journey to the Western Isles), he says of his hostess:

“We were entertained with the usual hospitality by Mr. Macdonald and his lady, Flora Macdonald, a name that will be mentioned in history, and if courage and fidelity be virtues, mentioned with honour.  She is a woman of middle stature, soft features, gentle manners, and elegant presence.”

I’ve read bits and pieces about her, and of course there’s more to Flora Macdonald than her escapade with Charles Edward Stuart, playing hide and seek in the Highlands. She was born in the Hebridean island of South Uist, was arrested after Prince Charlie, spent time in London, some of it in the Tower, married and made a home in Skye, emigrated to North Carolina, America and then returned to Scotland and Skye. Hers is a fascinating story. Hence the biography.

Biographies of Flora Macdonald
• Flora MacDonald a History, No author (1916)
• The Life of Flora MacDonald and Flora MacDonald in Uist, Alexander MacGregor and William Jolly (1932)
• Flora Macdonald: Her Life in the Highlands and America, Elizabeth Gay Vining (1967)
• Flora Macdonald Story, Alexander MacGregor (1989)
• Flora MacDonald: The Most Loyal Rebel, Hugh Douglas (1993)
• Flora MacDonald: The Jacobite Heroine in Scotland and North America, Ruairidh H. Macleod (1995)
• Wee Guide to Flora Macdonald, David Macdonald, Valerie Hall (2004)
• Two Lives of Flora MacDonald : The Life of Flora MacDonald, and Her Adventures with Prince Charles, Alexander Macgregor, J. P. Maclean (2016)
• Pretty Young Rebel: The Life of Flora Macdonald, Flora Fraser (2023)

As you can see above, I found nine titles which appear to be biographies of Flora Macdonald…and that took me 10mins on Ebay. My experience with James Boswell is there’s always another biography waiting to be discovered!