Honorary Fellow: Association For Scottish Literary Studies
“If we investigate only by physical and chemical means, we can only get physical and chemical answers.”
Handful of Rogues
Written on spec. Published by Argyll Publishing, Glendaruel, 2005.
[ISBN 1902831896]
Two centuries after his death, Scots historians still having failed to deal with
the story of Thomas Muir, the research I had done for a historical novel was redirected
into this work. Neither a biography nor a conventional piece of historiography, it
is a partially-
After the book was published, a Scot living in France brought to my attention a recent
work about another important figure of the period, only briefly mentioned in Handful
of Rogues. The story of John Oswald, with Muir and many others in Paris a “citizen
of the world”, is told in Commerce des Lumieres, David V. Erdman, University of Missouri
Press, 1986. [ISBN 0-
Important to Scots history as Oswald is, this first biography is again not the work of a historian. It had to wait till Erdman, Professor Emeritus of English at the State University of New York, could find time in retirement to bring years of research to fruition.
Both Muir and Oswald are key figures in a much neglected period of our history.
“passionate portrayal of the Scottish reformers clustered around Thomas Muir of Huntershill in the late 18th century” The Scotsman
“history written from a new and Scottish perspective .. the first book on Muir that has been properly researched” Scottish Review of Books.
“political and historical analyst of very great ability” Glasgow Herald