This is the first time that Rob Roy's life has been written with a full range of sources. The picture that emerges is indeed striking, but not heroic. A man deeply wronged and oppressed, forced into outlawry, has to be modified by the clear evidence that he was only outlawed after undertaking a careful plan to swindle his creditors. With this book Scotland may lose a hero of the old-fashioned and unreal sort, but it possesses a Rob Roy whose life-story emerges as one that was dramatic and certainly more human. This radical revision of popular views on Rob Roy is based on much recently discovered material and is the first new biography for thirty years.

Rob Roy MacGregor, Scotland’s most romantic, elusive hero, was an outlaw and a life-long enemy of Montrose. So well-known was he that no one thought to write down a physical description of him, or any direct record of his childhood and youth. Thus tracking down Rob Roy today is to embark upon a painstaking search through archives, estate records and folk myths, enriched and confused by the romantic yarns that have grown up around him.W. H. Murray brings together new interpretations of Rob Roy’s life and times to produce a new understanding of the character, actions and motives of a man who became a myth and symbol of Scotland. Murray shows that Rob Roy’s renown stems from his remarkable force of character, rather than his politics or his place in the writings of Sir Walter Scott. His political mission outwardly failed, but his extraordinary resolution in adversity has earned him his place in history and legend.