Tag Archives: Mollie Hunter

The Stronghold by Mollie Hunter – 20 Books of Summer 2023

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The Stronghold by Mollie Hunter was first published in 1974 and it is a Carnegie Medal Winner.

The setting is the Orkneys at a time when the islands were often being raided by Romans (around the middle of the first century BC) who were searching for people they could drag off to enslave. This meant that the islands were being deprived of the strongest and fittest members of their society. Somthing had to be done. When Coll was a child he had witnessed a violent Roman raid which had culminated in his mother being dragged away and enslaved, Coll was thrown on the rocks by a Roman, breaking his hip badly, and now as an 18 year old cripple he’s left behind as a look-out while other males of his age are taking a more active role in the defence of their island.

Coll has spent a lot of time thinking about how things can be improved and eventually in desperation the leader agrees to allow Coll to organise and direct the building of a huge defensive structure, called a broch. It will be big enough to house the whole community and they can safely fight against the Roman Navy from the top of the tower.

In reality nobody knows how brochs came about, there are the remains of over 500 of them in the north of Scotland and the islands to the north of the mainland. It’s thought they originated on Orkney and they have all been built to the same design. They are drystone roundhouses with outer and inner walls with a stone staircase between the two walls.

Mollie Hunter took this information and developed a plausible and entertaining tale around it, featuring some great characters, both good and evil. The Stronghold won the Carnegie Medal in 1974.

You can read a bit more about brochs here.

 

 

 

Escape from Loch Leven by Mollie Hunter

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Mary Stuart

Escape from Loch Leven by Mollie Hunter was first published in 1987 and it’s about one of the many escapes attempted by Mary, Queen of Scots after she was imprisoned by her own Scottish lords who had turned against her for many reasons, including that they believed she had had her first husband Darnley murdered, and then married his murderer Bothwell.

But she was still popular with the ordinary people and always managed to charm some of the people who were tasked with guarding and serving her – mainly the men!

Will Douglas is the young illegitimate son of Sir William Douglas who is a supporter of the rebellion against Mary. Sir William owns Lochleven Castle which seems like the ideal place to imprison the queen as it’s in the middle of the loch. Will is a page in the household and he’s thrilled when Mary recognizes him as a youngster she had encountered a few years earlier and calls him by a pet name she had given him. In no time Will is determined to help his Queen escape to link up with her supporters. It’s easier said than done.

The book seems to be very faithful to what is known about this particular escape attempt which you can read about here. Lochleven Castle is now owned by the Scottish National Trust and isn’t far from where I live. If you’re interested you can see the photos I took when I visited a few years ago here. The island is actually smaller than it was back when Mary was a prisoner as the water level of the loch has been raised over the years, but even so it was still a very small island with very little opportunity for anyone to stretch their legs.

This was an enjoyable read and if you’re interested in Scottish history it’s a painless way of learning a bit about Mary Stuart and the book has some helpful family trees at the front for anyone who is confused.

New Books

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I’ve had to resort to buying books online so here are my recent acquisitions.

Books Again

Escape from Loch Leven by Mollie Hunter is obviously about Mary, Queen of Scots. Loch Leven Castle, which is close to where I live is one of the several places she managed to escape from. This one is aimed at those aged over 11 – I come into the category!

Evelyn Finds Herself by Josephine Elder is a girls’ school book, one of the best of the genre apparently. I certainly enjoyed reading it recently, it’s unusual that it’s set in a fairly ordinary day school, rather than a posh boarding school.

Val Forest in the Fifth by Evelyn Smith is another school story, I have hope that this one will be good, the author taught at Glasgow High School until 1923.

The remaining three are all by Elizabeth Goudge.

Smoky House
The Valley of Song
Henrietta’s House

I’ve never read any of her books for young people so it’ll be interesting to see what they’re like anyway

The last book I bought for all of £1 and it was bought in an actual shop when the lockdown was lifted briefly last summer. I bought Every Woman’s Doctor Book just for the charm of the cover. It has no publication date on it but going by the woman’s hat and hair I think it must have been around the 1920s. It says in this book that women in labour should be lying on their side, that is obviously where I went wrong!

I think that bookshops will be opening again on April 26th, so not long now.

The Spanish Letters by Mollie Hunter

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The Spanish Letters by Mollie Hunter was first published in 1964 but my copy is a Puffin book dating from 1972.

The setting is Edinburgh and the year is 1589, the end of January. Young Jamie Morton is a caddie in the city – that means he earns his living by doing messages for people, whatever is needed, maybe delivering a note to someone, a sort of odd job person who has to know the city inside out. He has been trained up by ‘the Cleek’ a much older caddie. There are a few hundred such males of all ages in Edinburgh, it might be a bit of a precarious living but Jamie likes it because he’s his own boss. He isn’t so keen on being starving half the time though.

When a young well known musician goes missing Jamie is asked to help track him down and so begins a tale of adventure, murder and kidnap with the Earl of Huntly – a favourite with King James involved.

There’s a ship from the Netherlands docked at Leith, Edinburgh’s port, and there’s a suspicion that it has Spaniards on board. Is there a Spanish plot afoot? A second Armada attempting to topple Queen Elizabeth. For once the Scots and the English are on the same side, well most of the Scots are.

This was a really enjoyable read, my first by the author but I’ve recently bought a couple of others. Her writing reminded me of Dorothy Dunnett’s adventures which is high praise indeed, but obviously not as convoluted (or long) as Hunter’s writing is aimed at youngsters. Her books are apparently all well researched so it seems like a painless way of learning history.

For anyone who has already read this book you might be interested in this blogpost that I wrote earlier, when I visited Huntly Castle in Aberdeenshire.

More book purchases

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More Lovely Books

I’ve often seen copies of King Albert’s Book but as they’re over 100 years old they’re quite often in bad shape with torn pages, missing illustrations (they’re sort of tipped in) or drawn on. The book was sold in aid of the Belgian refugees at the beginning of World War 1 and published by The Daily Telegraph in conjunction with The Daily Sketch and The Glasgow Herald so there are quite a lot of them about. Basically it contains words of support for the Belgian people from many of the great and good of the day. There are illustrations by Edmund Dulac and Arthur Rackham to name a couple, pieces of music written by Elgar and Debussy and others. I bought it for all of £3. Beside it was a copy of Queen Alexandra’s Christmas Gift Book which I’ve never seen before. Again, this was sold for charity, but was published in 1908. She was apparently a keen photographer so it’s full of paper copies of many of her photos, tipped in as if they were in a photo album. There are a lot of family groups – the Empress of Russia appears a lot, but there are also photos of fjords and other places she visited and ships, including The Nimrod which was Captain Shackleton on his way to the South Pole in 1907. Another three quid – what a snip!

also:

Books, Books, Books

The Glory of the Garden – snippets from Country Life magazine over the years.

The Strongest Weapon by Notburga Tilt (an Austrian Resistance member in WW2 – signed.)

Dunbar’s Cove by Borden Deal. I’ve never even heard of this book but it seems to be well liked on Goodreads. I’m shocked to see that a copy with the dust jacket just like mine is on sale on Amazon for over £220. Mine cost £1.

Now comes a clutch of crime fiction.

The Mystery of the Blue Train by Agatha Christie
Peril at End House by Agatha Christie
Penhallow by Georgette Heyer (I’ve already read this one but I didn’t have a copy)
The Doomed Five by Carolyn Wells

Lastly some children’s books.

The House in Cornwall by Noel Streatfeild
The Spanish Letters by Mollie Hunter
The Sprig of Broom by Barbara Willard
These Happy Golden Years by Laura Ingalls Wilder

Three of those are Puffin books and I have a feeling that I might just have inadvertently started a bit of a collection as I think I bought a couple a few weeks ago.