Rob Roy: Walter Scott

A Superb historical novel set in the late seventeenth century, Rob Roy is also an adventure story. Using his favourite device of contrasting characters and places, Scott sets romantic rural Scotland against the prosaic cities of Glasgow and London. In his tragic portrait of Rob Roy MacGregor, he shows the feudal world of the Highlands withering away under the onslaught of new commercial and political realities. With his own sympathies equally balanced, he is perfectly quipped to portray the struggle between them. Rob Roy has been made into a film, starring Liam Neeson, John Hurt, Jessica Lange, Tim Roth and Eric Stolpz.