In this special live episode, recorded at the Buckingham Literary Festival last weekend, the award-winning writer Flora Fraser takes us to one of the most remote places in the British Isles to witness the dramatic story of how her namesake Flora Macdonald helped Bonnie Prince Charlie escape after his failed attempt to take the throne from George II.

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Their adventure is one of the most romantic and romanticised episodes in our history, sighed over and depicted by succeeding generations seduced by Flora’s bravery and charm.

As the grandson of the last Stuart king James II, Charles was brought up in Rome believing that the throne of England and Scotland was rightfully his.

In 1745 he landed in Scotland and raised an army of supporters, but despite initial success, he was brutally defeated by the Hanoverian forces at the Battle of Culloden and fled to the hills.

By the following summer he was in hiding on the islands of the Outer Hebrides, and George II’s redcoats were closing in. A local clansman came up with an ingenious plan to get him over the water to Skye, disguised as his stepdaughter Flora’s Irish maid.

Using detailed testimonies taken by the investigators, Flora Fraser tells this breath-taking story and its aftermath, revealing how this extraordinary young woman, who had never left the Western Isles, charmed and outfoxed her captors, and went on to live a long, adventurous life in America and Nova Scotia.

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Flora Fraser is the author of Pretty Young Rebel: the life of Flora Macdonald

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Show Notes

Scene One: June 1746. The Prince comes to Flora at midnight in South Uist and asks for help. The redcoats are very near but if she will dress him as her Irish maid and take him across to Skye he will elude them. She consents from motives of clemency rather than because she is a fervent Jacobite.

Scene Two: September 1746. Flora is a captive on a Royal Navy warship in Leith harbour and a celebrity. Local Jacobite ladies get rowed out to the ship and shower her with gifts and dance on board with the ship’s officers. But Flora won’t dance. She still hasn’t heard that the Prince has got safe to France.

Scene Three: December 1746. The ship bringing Flora South from Leith reaches London. Other Jacobite rebels, male and female, are condemned to await trial in crowded jails and prison ships. But those who have had custody of her since July, unite to beg preferential treatment for Flora. Arrangements are made to house Flora with rebel Jacobite chiefs in a King’s Messenger’s house, off St James’s Park.

Memento: The handsomely bound Bible in two volumes that Flora carried down to London, where she was kept a state prisoner into the following year. Her Presbyterian faith sustained her all her life and I like to think of her drawing strength from her Bible reading.

People/Social

Presenter: Violet Moller

Guest: Flora Fraser

Production: Maria Nolan

Podcast partner: Ace Cultural Tours

Theme music: ‘Love Token’ from the album ‘This Is Us’ By Slava and Leonard Grigoryan

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About Flora Fraser

Flora Fraser is the author of several acclaimed books including Beloved Emma: The Life of Emma, Lady Hamilton, Venus of Empire: The Life of Pauline Bonaparte and The Washingtons. Her book Pretty Young Rebel, The Life of Flora MacDonald is out now in hardback.