Rules for Readers: The Steel Bonnets

To recap: Rule #1 is

If you like what an author writes for money, seek out what he writes for love.

George MacDonald Fraser was well-known for his Flashman series of historical adventure novels. I read a couple, and enjoyed them, but didn't feel compelled to binge them all. Then a friend recommended his McAuslan stories, which I liked a lot, and I started picking up more of his non-Flashman books, like his WW2 memoir Quartered Safe Out Here. (More on these, maybe, in a later post.)

And this, The Steel Bonnets: The Story of the Anglo-Scottish Border Reivers:

Most Americans, even history buffs, know little about The Borders and their wars, except as the source of some fine ballads. Fraser addresses the history with easy, colorful narrative, with obvious love for the land and its people, and with love, too, of telling a good story.

The Debatable Lands were not large, and their people were not numerous, but they cast a long shadow into the modern world. Here is a snippet from the first graf of the Introduction:

At one moment when President Richard Nixon was taking part in his inauguration ceremony, he appeared flanked by Lyndon Johnson and Billy Graham. To anyone familiar with border history it was one of those historical coincidences which send a shudder through the mind: in that moment, thousands of miles and centuries in time away from the Debateable Land, the threads came together again; the descendants of three notable Anglo-Scottish Border tribes -- families who lived and fought within a few miles of each other on the West Marches in Queen Elizabeth's time -- were standing side by side, and it took very little effort of the imagination to replace the custom-made suits with leather jacks or backs-and-breasts.

Of Nixon, he writes:

The blunt, heavy features, the dark complexion, the burly body, and the whole air of dour hardness are as typical of the Anglo-Scottish frontier as the Roman Wall. Take thirty years off his age and you could put him straight into the front of the Hawick scrum and hope to keep out of his way. It is difficult to think of any face that would fit better under a steel bonnet.

I paid thirty-five dollars for my copy, back when you could get an ounce of "lawyer weed" that was real money. Since then it seems there have been several new editions, including paperbacks. Numerous copies are on sale at Abebooks for pocket change.