The Borderers regarded reiving as legitimate (which is true), but that they held murder to be a crime, and consequently were reluctant to commit it—except in the heat of action or when covered by the...
You never know what to expect on encountering royalty. I've seen 'em stark naked except for wings of peacock feathers (Empress of China), giggling drunk in the embrace of a wrestler (Maharani of the P...
One thing the war ensured; whatever treaties might be made and truces agreed at the top, however often a state of official peace existed, there was never again to be quiet along the frontier while Eng...
By God, I wish that spit had been a real one, with me to turn it.
As I said to Speedicut, it’s hell in the diplomatic.
And both were more fortunate than Hecky Noble who, within a few nights of Mrs Hetherington’s widowhood, was a victim of that gay desperado, Dickie Armstrong of Dryhope,49 and his 100 jolly followers....
He was a man of his hands, and most were, he might decide to wait and plan for the day when he could raid the robbers in his turn, and get his revenge illegally with interest. Or he could decide on pu...
Blackmail was paid by the tenant or farmer to a superior who might be a powerful reiver, or even an outlaw, and in return the reiver not only left him alone, but was also obliged to protect him from o...
And it was understood that Scottish Borderers did not take kindly to outside Wardens. The oustanding example was the unfortunate Frenchman, Anthony Darcy, the Sieur de la Bastie, who in 1516 was ill-a...
When the games going against you, stay calm - and cheat.
The idyll was marred by the appearance round the southern headland of a small, waspish-looking vessel, standing slowly out on a course parallel to our own. It happened that I saw her first, and drew m...
There were solid gold and silver vessels and ornaments, crusted with gems, miles of jewel-sewn brocade, gorgeous pictures and statues that the troops just hacked and smashed, beautiful enamel and porc...
About him, and that all the signs were that he
You are a sorry creature, Flashman. I have failed in you. But even to you I must say, this is not the end. You cannot continue here, but you are young, Flashman, and there is time yet. Though your sin...
There's a point, you know, where treachery is so complete and unashamed that it becomes statesmanship.
If anything in their history demonstrates that the Scots are remarkable, it is that in spite of being physically attached to England, they have survived as a people, with their own culture, laws, inst...
That guttural, hissing mumble, with all its Tz and zl and rr noises, like a drunk Scotch-Jew having trouble with his false teeth, is something you don’t forget in a hurry. So
Most of us do not think of ourselves as criminals, but possibly there are things in our daily lives which we regard as our inheritance which will move future generations to critical disgust.
Looking back over sixty-odd years, life is like a piece of string with knots in it, the knots being those moments that live in the mind forever, and the intervals being hazy, half-recalled
I'm as religious as the next man - which is to say I'll keep in with the local parson for form's sake and read the lessons on feast-days because my tenants expect it, but I've never been fool enough t...