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regshoeI found this in a shop near Ballachulish and thought it would be fun to read another book about the Appin Murder, so here we go. James Hunter is uniquely well-placed to write such a book, being both a professional historian and originally from Duror; in the introduction to this book he describes playing as a child in the ruins of Acharn farmhouse and being told by his older neighbours that someone called James of the Glen once lived there, and then reading Kidnapped and being thrilled to find places he knew well in real life in a book.
And this book is a good complement to The Killing of the Red Fox and Walking with Murder: where the former is a historical investigation closely focussed on the murder and the latter is all practical geography and Kidnapped fandom meta, The Appin Murder (2021; originally published as Culloden and the Last Clansman, 2002, and honestly the original title is far more accurate) is a wider-ranging historical study. Most of the book is about the background: there are eight chapters in chronological order and the murder takes place partway through chapter six. It feels like a history book, discussing context and causes and significance, rather than what one might call historical true crime; Hunter never actually explicitly states his conclusion on the murder, which he certainly could have made some controversial noise about had he wanted to, because his conclusion is that James of the Glen was guilty (albeit not quite guilty as charged).
So those first five and a half chapters go through the historical background. There wasn't much new to me in the bits about the '45 itself, but I enjoyed the bits on the earlier history of Appin, the origins of the Appin Stewarts and their enmity with the Campbells, as well as the detail about what exactly happened in Duror in between the '45 and the murder. The point of setting all this up so meticulously, it eventually becomes clear, is to argue that all the leading Stewarts of Appin had very good reason, grounded not just in the Rising and its aftermath or the particular round of evictions he was trying to carry out just then but in long clan history, to want Colin the Fox dead; and based on some more specific evidence about events surrounding the murder, Hunter argues that they were probably all conspiring to kill him. That there was a plan involving multiple people is I think convincing (it also dovetails nicely with Carney and Nimmo's judgement that at least two people were present at the scene of the murder), and I was especially intrigued by the discussion of the idea that it was Allan Breck's planned role in this conspiracy to be a deliberately obvious suspect making a dramatic (and effective) getaway to distract attention from both the real gunman and the other people involved (that bit is even kind of compatible with Kidnapped, if you squint). That everyone including James of the Glen was in on it, I am not convinced at all.
Also Hunter has some annoying habits which probably prejudiced me against his arguments. He's far too fond of making [clarifying edits] to quoted sources (some of them are just unnecessary; some are, surely it would be easier to explain the convention of referring to landowners by the names of their estates once and then you don't have to keep putting '[Colin Campbell of]' before every such quoted use of 'Glenure'). He keeps saying 'Maybe so' and 'Perhaps it was, perhaps it wasn't' to express scepticism about some source, which I find an annoying sort of non-committal smugness. There's too much 'surely...' speculation about what people 'must have' been thinking or feeling at some historically important moment. He mixes Gaelic and English spellings of names inconsistently (in the case of Ailean Breac, whose name is almost always given in Gaelic even alongside other names spelt in English, this is perhaps an attempt to get round the Alan or Allan problem). He keeps using 'transpire' to mean 'happen'. And I noted a couple of small errors: at one point Mungo Campbell's name briefly changes to Murdo; at one point Hunter cites The Killing of the Red Fox for some information (Allan Breck's age) which he gets wrong in a way that Carney literally warns against and corrects on the page cited. Does this sort of thing actually undermine the book's central argument substantially? Perhaps it does, perhaps it doesn't. Personally my favourite theory is still the 'Mungo Campbell did it' one, but if I had to make a sensible guess at the murderer's identity I would probably go for one of the younger Stewarts of Ballachulish or Fasnacloich, and I do think James was innocent.
And this book is a good complement to The Killing of the Red Fox and Walking with Murder: where the former is a historical investigation closely focussed on the murder and the latter is all practical geography and Kidnapped fandom meta, The Appin Murder (2021; originally published as Culloden and the Last Clansman, 2002, and honestly the original title is far more accurate) is a wider-ranging historical study. Most of the book is about the background: there are eight chapters in chronological order and the murder takes place partway through chapter six. It feels like a history book, discussing context and causes and significance, rather than what one might call historical true crime; Hunter never actually explicitly states his conclusion on the murder, which he certainly could have made some controversial noise about had he wanted to, because his conclusion is that James of the Glen was guilty (albeit not quite guilty as charged).
So those first five and a half chapters go through the historical background. There wasn't much new to me in the bits about the '45 itself, but I enjoyed the bits on the earlier history of Appin, the origins of the Appin Stewarts and their enmity with the Campbells, as well as the detail about what exactly happened in Duror in between the '45 and the murder. The point of setting all this up so meticulously, it eventually becomes clear, is to argue that all the leading Stewarts of Appin had very good reason, grounded not just in the Rising and its aftermath or the particular round of evictions he was trying to carry out just then but in long clan history, to want Colin the Fox dead; and based on some more specific evidence about events surrounding the murder, Hunter argues that they were probably all conspiring to kill him. That there was a plan involving multiple people is I think convincing (it also dovetails nicely with Carney and Nimmo's judgement that at least two people were present at the scene of the murder), and I was especially intrigued by the discussion of the idea that it was Allan Breck's planned role in this conspiracy to be a deliberately obvious suspect making a dramatic (and effective) getaway to distract attention from both the real gunman and the other people involved (that bit is even kind of compatible with Kidnapped, if you squint). That everyone including James of the Glen was in on it, I am not convinced at all.
Also Hunter has some annoying habits which probably prejudiced me against his arguments. He's far too fond of making [clarifying edits] to quoted sources (some of them are just unnecessary; some are, surely it would be easier to explain the convention of referring to landowners by the names of their estates once and then you don't have to keep putting '[Colin Campbell of]' before every such quoted use of 'Glenure'). He keeps saying 'Maybe so' and 'Perhaps it was, perhaps it wasn't' to express scepticism about some source, which I find an annoying sort of non-committal smugness. There's too much 'surely...' speculation about what people 'must have' been thinking or feeling at some historically important moment. He mixes Gaelic and English spellings of names inconsistently (in the case of Ailean Breac, whose name is almost always given in Gaelic even alongside other names spelt in English, this is perhaps an attempt to get round the Alan or Allan problem). He keeps using 'transpire' to mean 'happen'. And I noted a couple of small errors: at one point Mungo Campbell's name briefly changes to Murdo; at one point Hunter cites The Killing of the Red Fox for some information (Allan Breck's age) which he gets wrong in a way that Carney literally warns against and corrects on the page cited. Does this sort of thing actually undermine the book's central argument substantially? Perhaps it does, perhaps it doesn't. Personally my favourite theory is still the 'Mungo Campbell did it' one, but if I had to make a sensible guess at the murderer's identity I would probably go for one of the younger Stewarts of Ballachulish or Fasnacloich, and I do think James was innocent.
no subject
Date: May. 10th, 2026 05:53 pm (UTC)Does this sort of thing actually undermine the book's central argument substantially? Perhaps it does, perhaps it doesn't.
Ha, you made me laugh out loud here.
The [clarifying edits] sound pretty annoying...
How cool that the author has such a close personal connection to the subject, though!
no subject
Date: May. 10th, 2026 08:31 pm (UTC)Since it's been around 275 years since the murder, it seems a bit hopeless, but I guess there's still a chance some new material from the archives could be turned up? Well, maybe not a signed confession, but something of relevance.
As I write this, I'm remembering volunteering in a big Special Collections department jammed with rolling stacks of archival shoe boxes. And when a local history trust closed down, hundreds more shoeboxes arrived ... They found a seal of Elizabeth I in one.