Scottish orphan David Balfour is betrayed by his wicked uncle Ebeneezer, who arranges for David to be kidnapped and sold into slavery so that he cannot claim his inheritance. The boy is rescued and befriended by Alan Breck, a Scottish rebel fighting on behalf of his country's independence from the British.
Scottish highlander Jamie Durie falls into a life of piracy after joining the failed rebellion of Bonnie Prince Charlie against the British crown.
Culloden, Scottish Highlands, April 16th, 1746. It was one of the most mishandled and brutal battles ever fought in Great Britain. Its aftermath was tragic. The men responsible for such a disaster must be exposed. The men, women and children who suffered because of it must be remembered.
When Scottish young gentleman David Balfour's father dies, he leaves school to collect his inheritance from uncle Ebenezer, who in turn sells the boy as a future slave to a pirate ship. When staunch Stuart dynasty supporter Alan Breck Stewart accidentally boards the ship, he takes David along on his escape back to Edinburgh. They part and meet again repeatedly, mutually helpful against the Redcoats and respectful, although David is loyal to the English crown, but learns about its cruel oppression. Both ultimately face their adversaries.
The story of Highland children who help Bonnie Prince Charlie to escape to France after the battle of Culloden. Serial in 8 episodes: 1. Journey into the past (15mins; 1367 feet) 2. The traitor (16mins; 1423 feet) 3. The league in action (14mins; 1290 feet) 4. The ambush (15mins; 1385 feet) 5. The prince must be warned (14mins; 1292 feet) 6. The rescue (17mins; 1542 feet) 7. The enemy closes in (15mins; 1322 feet) 8. Over the threshold (20 mins; 1782 feet)
Scotland, 1745. After decades of exile, Prince Charles Edward Stuart secretly lands with the purpose of revolting the Highland chieftains against the German House of Hanover, ruler of Great Britain.
Robert Louis Stevenson's hero David Balfour joins rebel Alan Breck Stewart in 18th-century Scotland.
The Jacobite Rebellion of Scotland, and thirty years after the first battle, Bonnie Prince Charlie and his army make a stand at Culloden.
In the Jacobite Rising of 1745, the Young Pretender Bonnie Prince Charlie leads an insurrection to overthrow the Protestant House of Hanover and restore his family, the Catholic branch of the House of Stuart, to the British throne.
Stretching from the Stone Age to the year 2000, Simon Schama's Complete History of Britain does not pretend to be a definitive chronicle of the turbulent events which buffeted and shaped the British Isles. What Schama does do, however, is tell the story in vivid and gripping narrative terms, free of the fustiness of traditional academe, personalising key historical events by examining the major characters at the centre of them. Not all historians would approve of the history depicted here as shaped principally by the actions of great men and women rather than by more abstract developments, but Schama's way of telling it is a good deal more enthralling as a result. Schama successfully gives lie to the idea that the history of Britain has been moderate and temperate, passing down the generations as stately as a galleon, taking on board sensible ideas but steering clear of sillier, revolutionary ones. Nonsense. Schama retells British history the way it was--as bloody, convulsive, precarious, hot-blooded and several times within an inch of haring off onto an entirely different course. Schama seems almost to delight in the goriness of history. Themes returned to repeatedly include the wars between the Scots and the Irish and the Catholic/Protestant conflicts--only the Irish question remains unresolved by the new millennium. As Britain becomes a constitutional monarchy, Schama talks less of Kings and Queens but of poets and idea-makers like Orwell. Still, with his pungent, direct manner and against an evocative visual and aural backdrop, Schama makes history seem as though it happened yesterday, the bloodstains not yet dry.
