Darwin's Sacred Cause

The life and battles of James Graham, Marquis of Montrose, Charles the First's loyal King's Lieutenant in Scotland until his capture and execution in 1651, have been well documented, yet his wife is inevitably a much more shadowy figure. This absorbing novel by Robin Jenkins (described by The Scotsman as 'the greatest living fiction writer in Scotland') looks at the life of this wife, Magdalen. What was it like to be married to a man both revered and reviled? What was it like to be a wife, a mother, a woman, in the 17th century, when only men were regarded as able to understand the concept of honour and women's opinions and wishes counted for nothing? Expected by the conventional attitudes of the time to restrict herself to domestic matters, frail and modest Magdalen, with her passion for truth, shows where real courage lies. Her husband has a destiny to fulfil and great deeds to perform: handsome, proud and ambitious, he thirsts for glory in the service of his unreliable king. When Covenanters and Royalists fight and die as they disagree about the role of the Scottish Kirk and the Divine Right of Kings, Magdalen sees only how strife destroys Scotland; left behind, lonely and unsupported, it is the women with their vital sustaining role who must endure. Robin Jenkins' novel is a compassionate account of a relationship that could be so much richer: the lack of connection between the gentleman-soldier and his humorous, kind wife is not merely a product of the era but of character. Jenkins' splendid achievement is to reveal Magdalen's strength of will behind what to the world are her apparent weaknesses; in the tragic conflict of Church and State she and Montrose are both victims of an idealistic cause. (Kirkus UK)