The Steel Bonnets: The Story of the Anglo-Scottish Border Reivers

by George MacDonald Fraser

From the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries, outlaws reigned supreme on the contentious frontier between England and Scotland. Feud and terror, raid and reprisal, were the ordinary stuff of life—and a way of survival. Power was held by the notorious border reivers (the "steel bonnets," named for their flashy helmets), who robbed and murdered in the name of the famous clans (or "grains")—like Elliot, Armstrong, Charlton, and Robson—romanticized by Sir Walter Scott. In The Steel Bonnets, George MacDonald Fraser, author of the bestselling Flashman novels, and himself a borderer, tells the fascinating and bloody story of the reivers, their rise to power as ferocious soldiers of horse, and their surprisingly sudden fall from grace.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Scotland, British Literature, Military History, Historical, European History

434 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 28, 1972

About the author

George MacDonald Fraser is best known for his Flashman series of historical novels, purportedly written by Harry Flashman, a fictional coward and bully originally created by Thomas Hughes in Tom Brown's School Days. The novels are presented as "packets" of memoirs written by the nonagenarian Flashman, who looks back on his days as a hero of the British Army during the 19th century. The series begins with Flashman, and is notable for the accuracy of the historical settings and praise from critics. P.G. Wodehouse said of Flashman, “If ever there was a time when I felt that ‘watcher-of-the-skies-when-a-new-planet’ stuff, it was when I read the first Flashman.”

Reviews

[Dave/Maggie Bean · Rating 5 out of 5]

Had it not been for fantasy artist Frank Frazetta, I’d never have discovered Fraser. During the dreary winter of 1981, I found myself imprisoned in the Bachelor Officers’ Quarters in Patrick Henry Village (Oftersheim, Federal Republic of Germany), with no friends and f**k-all to do. Fortunately, there was a Stars and Stripes bookstore ten minutes’ walk from the glorified tenement we called "home."

I suppose my parents felt sorry for me (and reckoned that if I had spending money, I’d go somewhere else – anywhere else – and spend it), as they doubled my allowance a few days after we took up residence in that wretched, Dickensian sh**hole. (And I do mean "sh88hole": When first I saw it, I was seized by a near-irresistible urge to paint a crescent moon and stars on every door in sight…)

In retrospect, I don’t fault my folks for wanting me to f*** off now and again. Spending two months in a two-room apartment with a manic-depressive thirteen-year-old; an eleven-year-old with ADD; a huge, very opinionated tabby cat (he thanked us for his eight-hour flight in the luxurious cargo-hold of a 727 by pissing in my suitcase), and a dog couldn’t have been very enjoyable for either of them.

To what I imagine was their immeasurable relief, I did clear off whenever the mood struck me. From a realistic point of view, I suppose they were simply glad to be rid of me for a few hours. To reiterate: I don’t blame them. At thirteen, I was moody, sarcastic, irritable, and above all – irritating. (And up yours, John. I can actually hear you snickering: "Yeah, so what’s changed?")

When I wasn’t staring out the window and longing to be back in Georgia with J.R., Sandra, "Fleabag," Andy, Jeff, and my other buddies, I was committing the "solitary vice" to mental images of Lynda Carter, Barbi Benton and a chick from my eighth-grade Spanish class. The few times I actually did anything constructive and exchanged p****r for pen, I wrote awful, quasi-Lovecraftian drivel that delighted my little brother, but probably left Ma and Da doubting my sanity as much as I doubted theirs. No wonder they were so eager to have me out of the apartment…

PHV, putting it bluntly but honestly, was a human landfill. Like most military housing, then and now (from what I saw at Ft. Benning in '08 year, "supporting the troops," still doesn’t include providing them with habitable quarters), PHV’s sheer squalor left many of us envying our countrymen on the other side of "the pond," -- those who were fortunate enough to live in trailer parks and housing projects.

If this collection of three-story outhouses had a saving grace, though, it was the proximity of the library and the Stars and Stripes bookstore to the BOQs.

I spent many hours in both, but it was in the latter that I found three collections of Frank Frazetta’s paintings. Like most males, I’m visually oriented, and Frazetta knew how to appeal to that orientation. (Why do you think his book covers were so popular?) The figures in his paintings seemed alive – as if they’s spring off the page at any moment; and his use of color was simply amazing – bold, bloody reds and yellows against murky, sepia backgrounds, for example. Then there was his subject matter. Frazetta was an incredibly versatile illustrator, but he was best known for his fantasy art. If, by chance, you grew up during the ‘70s and 80’s, and read Robert E. Howard’s "Conan" series, you’re familiar with Frazetta’s work: his paintings grace the covers of all the 70’s collections.

I seldom read "Sword and Sorcery" these days, as I find the genre juvenile, reductionist, and much less interesting than the "real" world of crystal-strokers, bigfoot stalkers and UFO weenies. But then again, I have a life nowadays, and have for some years. When I was a pimply-faced, "p***y challenged" teenager, though, I didn’t have one; and I suppose that’s why I found fantasy so appealing. I read everything from Dunsany (whose work I still enjoy, incidentally) to Vardemann and Milan – for all that the pornographic nature of their offerings earns them a sub-genre of their own -- "Pork Sword and Sorcery."

I also played Dungeons and Dragons, Gamma World, Dragonquest, Traveler -- the whole nine yards. And since it’s bound to be the first question the reader asks…No, I didn’t have a real girlfriend until my senior year.

I’m not too proud to admit it: I was a geek with a capital "G". I briefly drifted away from the gaming scene during twelfth grade ("Lessee… I can finish module FU-4: ‘Search for the Sacred Skinflute of Shere Khan’ with my a**hole of a brother and the other douche-bags whose company I keep; or I can invite my girlfriend over and get the ol’ knob polished. Faith an’ begorrah! Whatever to do? Curse Dame Fortuna and my despicable friends for foisting so cruel a choice upon me… "), but for most of my teens, I was hopeless. At thirteen, I was especially hopeless, so I bought two of the three Frazetta books from Stars and Stripes on that cold, pissy afternoon in 1981, and went my merry, geeky way.

Now I’ve mentioned that Frazetta was a master of exploiting the visually oriented, male half of our diseased, evolutionary dead-end of a species. Beyond this, he was a grandmaster of exploiting visually oriented male geeks; easily the most diseased evolutionary dead-ends of all. When viewing his work, the typical, underweight (or tubby – it was always yin or yang, with no middle ground), socially inept gamer/nerd wanted to be one of the sword-swinging, muscle-bound barbarians Frazetta painted – and wanted to boink the brains out of the voluptuous pieces o’ tail his hyper-Nietzscehan supermen were invariably shown rescuing or abducting.

And with the possible exception of Boris Vallejo, nobody – but nobody – painted more voluptuous pieces o’ tail than Frank Frazetta.

I’m not sure when the sickening "waif" look became popular, although I believe Twiggy got the "Buchenwald chic" ball rolling in the ‘60s. If this is the case, she should be tried under the Napoleonic/Hitlerian "patriot act" (and why, incidentally, has no ostensibly "conservative" Republican ever accepted my challenge to discuss that statist abomination article-by-article?) and summarily executed for crimes against inherent, male, sexual proclivities -- but that’s neither here nor there.

I am, however, absolutely certain that I despise that androgynous, pigeon-titted look with a passion. Anorexics are eminently unattractive, and that’s that. Like most healthy, heterosexual males who’ve made Christy Canyon, Kayla Kleevage, Donita Dunes, Ebony Ayes and Minka wealthier than any human should be, I prefer women with big "tracts o' land," wide hips, butts that don’t form a perfect 90-degree angle with the floor (I don’t share the "brothas’" obsession with "junk in da trunk," but a shapely derrierre is a definite plus), and appreciable calf- and thigh-muscles.

On the world-famous, highly respected "Bean ‘E-richter’ Scale," Raquel Welch, Adrienne Barbeau, and Cassandra "Elvira" Peterson all rate a leg-wettin’ "10," while Parker Posey, McKenzie Philips and Callista (the etymology of her given name still leads me to laugh my rear off: Kαλλιστα? I don’t think so, Bubba-Jack…) Flockhart rate a schwanz-shriveling “0.”

Admittedly, I wouldn’t be in any great hurry to shag the real-life counterpart of the so-called "Willendorf Venus" (she works at a Waffle House in Bessemer, Alabama, incidentally), but with women -- as with food – I’ll take a modest surplus over a deficit any day.

Frank Frazetta, bless his horny li’l heart, painted women who were completely off the world famous, highly respected B.E.S. They were too female to be real; Jungian archetypes rendered on canvas. Every one of ‘em, it seemed, had "a little too much" -- but in all the right places. Leafing through the books as I pogo-sticked past the NCO Club on my own tallywhacker, I suddenly realized that art wasn’t the exclusive preserve of martini-swilling butthounds and palette-wielding panhandlers.

Friendless, nerdy, horny teenagers could appreciate it, too…

As I’ve said, most of Frazetta’s work was fantasy-oriented. There were exceptions to the rule, though, and one, in particular, caught my eye. It was a painting of a charging British lancer with a naked and quintessentially Frazetta-esque woman slung inexplicably (and uncomfortably, one imagines) across his horse’s withers. As it happened, the painting was entitled "Flashman at the Charge." I found it both memorable and humorous, but thought nothing more of it.

Several years later, whilst ferreting out bargains in a used bookstore in Atlanta, I spotted the same painting – on the cover of an identically titled book. My curiosity piqued, I bought it, tucked into it – and found that it was one of the funniest books I’d ever read.

George MacDonald Fraser’s "Flashman" is actually Thomas Hughes’ character of the same name -- stolen directly from Tom Brown’s School Days and "projected" into the future. He’s no less despicable in Fraser’s series than he was in Hughes’ novel, but Fraser eschews Hughes’ third person narrative and lets "Flashy" tell his own story -- with hilarious results.

It’s also worth mentioning (however loath I am to admit it, given my preference for nineteenth century literature) that Fraser was a better writer than Hughes. What impressed me the most, though –aside from the quality of Fraser’s writing – was his grasp of history. In my forty-three misspent years of life, I’ve read far too many historical novels, the authors of which obviously knew not whereof they wrote. Fraser’s meticulously researched book was a ray of sunshine piercing the stygian gloom of a (generally) dismal, anachronism-plagued genre. Shortly after reading Flashman at the Charge, I hunted down every title in the series, and have yet to read one I’ve disliked.

It’s a long way (both geographically and chronologically) from Balaclava to the Borders, from the Crimea to Cumberland. Fraser, however, successfully made the trip, departing from the historical fiction at which he so excelled to pen The Steel Bonnets.

Researched as thoroughly as his novels, The Steel Bonnets is possibly Fraser’s magnum opus. Providentially able to adopt and employ both the etic and emic perspectives (he was of Highland Scottish parentage, but born and raised in Carlisle, and writing about Lowlanders and Sassenach), Fraser was an anthropologist’s dream, an "outsider" and an "insider," simultaneously -- and paradoxically. As a Highland Scot climbing the English socioeconomic ladder (in a "bass-ackwards" part of the UK, no less), Fraser combined the dispassionate objectivity of an "outsider" with the intimate, intuitive understanding of one’s neighbors that the "insider" alone enjoys.

In short, like John Sadler, George M. Fraser knew his subject front-to-back. The subject in question is one that’s always fascinated me: the "golden" age of the reiver clans who, during their heyday, made the English/Scottish frontier a very "interesting" place in which to live.

"Not so the Borderer: bred to war,
He knew the battle’s din afar,
And joy’d to hear it swell.

His peaceful day was slothful ease;
Nor harp, nor pipe his ear could please
Like the loud slogan’s yell.

On active steed, with lance and blade,
The light-arm’d pricker plied his trade,--
Let nobles fight for fame;

Let vassals follow where they lead,
Burghers to guard their townships bleed,
But war’s the Borderer’s game.

Their gain, their glory, their delight,
To sleep the day, maraud the night,
O’er mountain, moss and moor;

Joyful to the fight they took their way,
Scarce caring who might win the day,
Their booty was secure.

-- Sir Walter Scott, "Marmion"

I grew up reading this romanticized horses**t, and I admit that I still love it – for all that it cavalierly ignores reality. I gather that Fraser loved it, too, as he never disparages Scott, even when taking a far more sanguinary (i.e. realistic) view of the subject. This is another of the book’s "selling points": without denigrating the chief dramatis personae on the Borders’ bloody stage, Fraser takes a hard, cold look at them as human beings. Perhaps ironically, he renders them all worthier of our respect in the process. ("…for the moment it is enough to say that the constant strife, or the threat of it, bred up a race of hard people along the Border line. They lived in a jungle, and they had to live by jungle rules. This is not to excuse them, if that were necessary, but to explain. If a man cannot live, and ensure that his family lives, within the law, he has no alternative but to step outside it.")

Despite the modern tendency to whitewash or mudsling; apotheosize or demonize historical figures (depending upon whether or not one approves of their causes); we "moderns" actually degrade our heroes and our villains by robbing them of their humanity in so doing.

If Kinmont Willie, for example, was (as the balladeers stopped just shy of maintaining) ten feet tall, and made of stainless steel and equally stainless integrity; why should posterity care about his adventures? Could any reasonable man expect less of such a demigod? In my not-so-humble opinion, the question answers itself.

Fraser deftly avoids this pitfall from the beginning. Better yet, he avoids it consistently, through his even-handed treatment of his subject matter. Unlike many works on Scottish history, The Steel Bonnets owes nothing to the "Blind Harry" school of anti-English polemics. In a work chronicling the rough-and-tumble, anarchic history of the Anglo-Caledonian border, this is not only sound policy: it gives Fraser’s work the authority born solely of dispassionate honesty. Without condemning or condoning either "side" (although in this context, the notion of "sides" is misleading at best and inapplicable at worst: in a microcosm characterized by endemic conflict and governed only by the lex talionis; ties of friendship, kinship and – at times – pure pragmatism often rendered nationality meaningless), Fraser examines both.

The hallmark of his genius, though, lies in his ability to remain dispassionate, while never waxing disinterested or uninterested -- he cares so deeply; he refuses to settle for anything less than the unvarnished truth, which he unearths and presents to the best of his ability.

From the first chapter onward, he paints a stark, brutal, and yet irresistibly fascinating triptych: Scotland, England, and the de facto no-man’s-land that lay between them, which, to reiterate, was a microcosm: a broad swath of ground, the residents of which -- although divided by a man-made line -- had more in common with each other than with their nominal countrymen. ("The important point is that it was not a one-way traffic, or even a two-way one. Scot pillages Scot and Englishman robbed Englishman just as readily as they both raided across the frontier; feuds were just as deadly between families on the same side of the Border as they were when the frontier lay between them; Scots helped English raiders to harry north of the line, and Englishmen aided and abetted Scottish inroads. The families themselves often belonged to both sides—there were English and Scottish Grahams, for example (and no family ever made better use of dual nationality). Add to this the fairly obvious fact that sex attraction is immeasurably stronger than national policy, and the picture becomes more complex still.")

Divided into five parts and forty-seven chapters, The Steel Bonnets leaves no stone unturned in its three-hundred and seventy-nine pages. Beginning with the construction of Hadrian’s Wall and Ending with James VI & I’s final pacification of the Borders (and the expulsion of various troublesome clans to the Ulster Plantation, where they became the ancestors of the so-called "Scots-Irish," Fraser explores every aspect of Border life and culture, and still devotes considerable space to the major "players" who worked so hard at "shaking loose the Borders."

Although the book stands on its own merits, it’s a perfect companion volume to John Sadler’s Border Fury, James Leyburn’s The Scotch-Irish: A Social History, David Hackett Fischer’s Albion’s Seed, and even James Webb’s Born Fighting and Jim Goad’s The Redneck Manifesto.

[Tim Pendry · Rating 5 out of 5]

This nearly fifty year old account of the Anglo-Scottish borderlands in the sixteenth century is still frequently reprinted for good reason and deserves re-reading today by anyone with an interest in organised crime and what we now call 'homeland security'.

The author, a journalist, creator of the 'Flashman' series of popular novels, film script writer, former soldier and part-Anglo-Scot borderer himself, writes well and has an eye for a story so the book is generally a good read - although Fraser does not sacrifice fact to fiction.

It tells the tale of the background to and the history of just over a century of state-sanctioned organised crime on the borderlands of two early modern states with a troubled history, a culture only brought to heel through the use of state terror when the two states were unified.

Fraser is not averse to occasional contemporary and wider historical references to the late 1960s and early 1970s, likening the Anglo-Scottish border to the Afghan frontier and the mythologisation of brutality to the legend of the West in America.

He holds no truck with the Scottish nationalist romanticisation of the border reivers (riders). The border ballads are often little more than the same sort of voyeuristic fascination of a laddish audience with tales ('ghosted autobiographies') of major criminals today.

However, he is no moraliser while retaining his framework of values. He goes back to the roots of local organised crime, centred on criminal family networks, and finds them in the devastation to the economy left by brutal inter-state war and the inherent administrative incapacity of states.

The century of criminality was not the normal state of the borders but was the result of borders being contested by only partially centralised polities. Men sent, or employed from within the borders, to manage affairs were frequently corrupted and part of the system themselves.

Fifty years on, the book seems more pertinent than ever in understanding why the fringes of globalisation have resulted in blow-back in a world of improved communications. The borders rarely affected the core of England, sometimes Scotland, only because of weak communications.

There are many case studies like this of what happens when emergent border areas are disrupted by war and the incapacity of states - Afghanistan frequently, Sicily, the Balkans and many others. The recent use of war as an instrument of policy by the West now appears all the more negligent.

There is much factual meat in this case study to suggest that, while no historical situation ever precisely is reproduced elsewhere, themes and clues are ever-present in history. Destroy the capacity to rule in an area and it can only be restored through terror is one lesson.

The point here is that, once a non-criminal economy is destroyed, a new economy based on illegality takes its place, whether raiding and brigandage, heroin production and distribution or trafficking in oil and antiquities, to displace farming and trade in goods and services.

Illegality creates its own violent rules and codes of conduct but also its own economic and trading logic. Powerful interests quickly emerge who understand how the new system works, how to corrupt officials, how to use terror and how to create alliances.

The modern West has one thing that Elizabeth I and the Stewarts did not, financial resources. The villains could not be bought off or bribed sufficiently, yet the West is now finding that trying to buy legality simply fuels more corruption and more warlordism. Perhaps only state terror is left.

This is certainly relevant to modern Syria, Iraq and Libya where very weak states are trying to restore order against quasi-criminalised groups creating economies to match those created in Afghanistan or Colombia or Mexico or much of the rest of the emerging world.

Western states want security and human rights but are finding that the purchase of the latter is becoming a bottomless pit just at the time when the homelands are craving some attention and disorder threatens in the cities and townships at the centre of empires.

Having disrupted the world, the current belief is that the problem can be solved with fortress operations combined with overseas safe havens for migrants but this does nothing about the criminalised survival economy in which people are being forced to live.

If the story of the Anglo-Scottish borderlands teaches a lesson, it might be a rather grim one. You either leave the bandits to fight it out and create their own warlord states (which is what IS is doing) or the matter can only be dealt with through full force directly or through proxies.

By full force we may mean the inevitability of reigns of terror like that perpetrated in the first decade or so of the seventeenth century by James I of England and VI of Scotland who finally captured control of both sides of the border and then squeezed it hard.

If he had not done so, one wonders, speculatively, if, having avoided becoming engaged in religious strife within Scotland and England in the previous century, some border political entrepreneurs might have discovered fundamentalist Protestantism or Catholicism as a tool for state creation.

The book needs a bit of attention as it is read because (as Fraser acknowledges) the complexity of clan relationships and even of the system for law enforcement is, given the sources, rife with room for misunderstandings and errors. The same family names prop up time and time again.

This is the story of clans with long histories of feud and violence, with patches or what London gangsters would call 'manors' and with ambiguous relationships to authority much like the sometimes symbiotic relationship in the past between organised crime and the Met.

One major lack in the book is any serious reference to women in the borderlands. This is of its time but it is significant that, in a catalogue of killings (sometimes of women and children), arson and dispossession, there is no mention of rape. This also fits with a cultural model of organised crime.

It is not that we want some feminist bleat about patriarchal society but we want to know more about how male criminality was sustained at home and how women played or failed to play a support function for clan operations.

There are hints that women were important in this capacity as they are no doubt important in all such societies, fiercely loyal to the clan and perhaps a motive force for crime in demanding resources for the households they ran. Was there a culture of 'nagging' men to go and steal?

Certainly marriage alliances between clans seem important although the transfer of a woman from one clan to another meant that her first duty (if I have interpreted the few references in the book correctly) was to her new husband and not to her father.

Women may have been far from passive in this economy. Destroying households seems to have been as important as killing rivals to the clans. The theft of possessions was matched by burnings of houses, often carefully selected, and sometimes whole villages. Rivalries were existential.

All in all, an interesting story closed with two appendices. The most magnificent curse from a Bishop against the reivers - a tirade of learned and vitriolic imprecation - and the misleading ballad of Kinmont Willie that warmed the hearts of border Scots nationalists.

Which brings us to any futile attempt to tell the story of border organised crime as the story of competing nationalisms. It was nothing of the kind. People knew whether they were English and Scots but when it came to business, and this was business, they really did not care.

The point of the border was that two forms of law applied and the Scots and English law enforcement authorities would co-operate only intermittently, warily and half-heartedly, aware that at any time, they might be at war again.

This gave the reivers considerable opportunities for playing off one side against the other. English and Scots reivers raided each others' territories not because they were targeting Scots or English but because the other side was in a law enforcement zone from which they could escape profitably.

In practice, Scots or English gangsters (for that is what they were) would strike up alliances with counterparts over the border to ensure safe passage, share in the spoils and use their influence on corrupt authorities to escape justice and get 'scot free'.

Even when war came between London and Edinburgh, the competing armies could never rely on the borderers ostensibly on their side of the border. The criminal clans would pick and choose sides and alliances and sell their services according to interest and not sentiment.

Local Scottish and English nationalism are later arrivals and probably derive precisely from the settlement of the border and its final demarcation as a division between nation states. The border ballads seem to be more examples of clan pride at doing over the English authorities than anything else.

This is not to say that there was not anti-English or anti-Scottish sentiment but that this was probably to be found more clearly amongst the settled farmers most threatened by war perpetrated by the other side or by the criminal rackets and wanting central authority to be more active.

The overwhelming impression given by this book is of a period of cynical lawlessness based on the profit motive and a dog-eat-dog world where the weak would soon go under, far from romantic and certainly terrible for the vast majority of ordinary people.

When James I and VI comes into the region with the techniques of Mussolini, one finds oneself uncomfortably realising that the temporary tyranny and injustice was probably in the best interests of the majority of the people. The reivers did not use their freedoms kindly.

[J.M. Hushour · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have a lot of books. I can't remember where most of them came from or what drove me to bring them home. They sit around for years and then, every so often, my eye drawn to one in particular that I've always meant to "get around to", I'll snag it up and read the damn thing.
I don't remember why I picked up "The Steel Bonnets". Maybe it was the awesome phrase "border reivers" right there on the cover. Maybe it was its lawless color scheme? Whatever the case, it's a damn fine read. It is exactly what it says about, the old Scottish-English border that ran in a bow-shaped arc from Carlisle to Berwick. It was a rough-and-ready zone of virtual gangsterism, robbery, and raiding. It was probably the most fun place on the island.
The Border was and is inspiring. All manners of hoods, cutthroats, gallants, gallant cutthroats and throatcutters roam its history. There are Wardens, kings, queens, and other scions of political assholery who all dealt with the "Border issue" in different ways. There are numerous tales here of reivers and their ilk, Armstrongs, Grahams, Kerrs, Nixons, and the lot. Have a surname of the Border folk? Your ancestors were probably marauding shit-kickers!
The bulk of the book covers the century from 1503-1603 and how Henry VIII and later Elizabeth tried to do with this wretched hive of scum and villainy, but my favorite part was the first sections which talked about the people, their ways, their morals (sic!), their customs, and details some of the more famous raids.
Fraser, famous as a writer of fictions, is the best sort of person to write a history like this. Born and raised in Carlisle, he appreciates the peculiar character of the land and its time.

[Cameron Trost · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderful overview of the life of the Anglo-Scottish border reivers with both documental evidence and anecdotal history painting a picture of daily life and showing the broader political context between the two kingdoms prior to union.

[Daniel Polansky]

The author of the Flashman series overviews the violent history of the Scottish/English borderlands. I enjoyed mulling this bloody history of raids and counter raids from the small English cottage in which I spent most of September and which rested in the heartland of what was once violently disputed territory, entertained by the thought that the stolid English elders who drank cider in village pubs and walked glumly through the endless the rain are the descendants of such brutal bandits as Crack-spear and Hob-the-King.

[Martin Koenigsberg · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book. It's a history, written by one of my favourite authors of either Fiction or Non-Fiction George Macdonald Fraser, the writer of the "Flashman" Series, and the writer of the 3/4 Musketeers Films' Screenplays- the Classics from the 70s. Here he covers rich ground- the last 400 years of the Anglo-Scottish Border -before first union under King James 1. Apparently there was beaten zone 50-75 miles on either side of the border, where raiders attacked any settlement worth raiding- and many that were not-basically without end. Mixed in were 'Lawmen", special "Wardens" of the Border, and their royal and personal soldiers, and a strong Feuding tradition, and many cross border alliances, family and feudal complications. It's basically a festival of utter mayhem that makes "GOT" look tame. All through it, Fraser leads you back and forth through time and family/historical ties with a thrilling aplomb that entertains.

But my god what a nightmare this era must have been to live. If you were a "reiver", one of the mounted thugs who maintained this reign of terror- a life of constant wet saddle time in rusting armour and meals snatched in flickering fires. If you were anyone else, any life you built could be robbed and burned at any time. And of course, like the Vikings, a merchant or farmer in one life- could be living the other when needed or wanted. It's complicated- and entertaining- and compelling- and exhausting. Read the book- you can thank me later.

With a lot of gore, adult situations and concepts- and an intellectual level quite high, a Junior Reader should be at least 11-12 before taking this on- but will be rewarded. For the Gamer/Modeller/Military Enthusiast- purest Joy! Every few pages are a few cool minor scrapes to game/model- and every other chapter describes a major battle/Murder/Execution. There are almost enough maps, but Fraser's descriptive mastery is what drives the book into the enthusiast's arms. A Good club could derive 100 battles and skirmishes to play out of this book. A STRONG Rec.

[Peter Ellwood · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent account of an almost completely unknown and extraordinary phenomenon (there’s no other word for it) that occurred on the England-Scotland border over some 300 years, from around 1300.

Be prepared for tales of a wild and unexpected race of people who burned and plundered, blackmailed and killed, without compunction, for generation after generation, on either side of the border. This isn’t the occasional, romanticised violence of Braveheart, it’s an ethics-free culture that really existed, over centuries, in that odd, lawless no man’s land between the two countries.

Hats off to George MacDonald Fraser for his calm objectivity in telling the tale. All too many of the accounts involving old Scotland tend to get wrapped in tartan and one-sided fantasising about what an idealised ‘Scotland’ might have done. But not this book. With one irritating exception (to this reader at least), he tells it like it is/was, with glorious clarity. For example, our collective British consciousness sometimes tends to assume that most cross-border raiding was done by the Scots in ancient times; he makes the point this was not actually so: both sides were as bad/active as each other.

A key point to make too is that these people barely saw themselves as ‘English’ or ‘Scottish’ in the first place. They were reivers, and their prime loyalty lay with their family (I’m deliberately avoiding the word ‘clan’ to keep that swirling tartan at bay!). If it suited them to intermarry across the so-called border for example, then they did it; if it felt right to attack and even kill their own fellow countrymen, then they did so quite happily – over centuries. Fascinating stuff.

It is already quoted as the authoritative book on this subject, and I’m sure it earns that description too. I have a modest personal misgiving, which is not enough to drag my rating down to three stars; but which would certainly beef up any second edition, should he choose to write it one day!

It is for the most part the story of the reivers in the sixteenth century. None the worse for that, but almost all the exciting detail comes from that period. It’s a shame he says so little about the first 200 years of reiving. Naturally it becomes exponentially harder to locate actual records of that earlier period, I know. But if you’re setting out to write the definitive guide to the Reivers, then that’s what you need to do.

And finally, as one might guess from my own family name, it was frustrating to see the endless references to reivers called “Elliot” throughout the book. They may have intermixed and intermingled with “Elwolds”, but they came from different roots and the Border Papers he quotes often spoke, specifically, of Elwold and not Elliot. I know, I know, it’s a pretty parochial matter. But you try reading about how Neil Armitage landed on the moon when you KNOW that his name was Armstrong!

[Stevie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have always had an interest in the Border Reivers as my family, the Trotters, were a reiving clan in the Eastern March. The Steel Bonnets by George MacDonald Fraser is now in my top five history books of all time. A fascinating read which really dissects the subject at hand. Fraser was a Scottish Borderer who lived in Carlisle and it really comes across he has a real sense of the people, place and culture on both sides of the Border. I am from Dumfries and was totally engrossed in the Maxwell-Johnstone feud which ravaged my hometown for several decades in the 16th century and which the book goes into in some detail. There is some great and shocking stories of characters and events from the period such as Kinmont Wullie Armstrong, Geordie Burn and the various family feuds which tore the borders apart. The book is also well-balanced, understanding why the Reivers blackmailed, stole, extorted and murdered but never glorifying their activities. The Warden's good and bad who tried to hold in check the reivers also makes for interesting reading, from the talented and determined Robert Carey to the old mafia boss John Forster. The last chapter on the destruction of the Graham clan by the Scottish and English governments makes the blood run cold. It reads like the ethnic cleansing of a lost tribe of the amazon and despite the Graham clan being notorious reivers I felt deeply angry at their treatment by the central authorities.
I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the subject it is by far most detailed, well-written and expert account of the Border Reivers.

[Sherwood Smith]

Reread: On this read, it struck me how many times Fraser sees fit to remind the reader that the Borderers were not romantic at all--that in fact they caused more mayhem than the mafia or like groups. I wonder if the impetus behind this book was the proliferation of romantic border stories inspired by Dorothy Dunnett.

Whatever the impetus, it's a fascinating study of a small group of people whose descendants have had a proportionally enormous impact on the English-speaking world. Not English, not Highland, the Borderers were a culture distinct unto themselves, refining guerilla warfare into a way of life. Fraser goes into detail, right down to the clans and their complicated inter-relations.

Reading this then listening to rousing folk tunes such as "Lock the Door Lariston" is an interesting exercise.

[William Sariego · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fraser was an excellent writer of historical fiction, as 'The Flashman Papers' will attest. And this book is proof that fact can be stranger than fiction! As a historian GMF weaves a fantastic tale of villains and heroes (or slightly less villainous villains) during a formative era of British history, specifically the unification of England and Scotland under one crown. Like Garret Mattingly's "The Armada," this is history how it should be written but rarely is. Highly recommended.

[Mike Futcher · Rating 4 out of 5]

[This review was written in November 2016, hence its reference to certain political events in the present tense.]

A bold and roaring history, The Steel Bonnets is George MacDonald Fraser's ambitious attempt to impose some sort of order on scholarship of the lawless Anglo-Scottish border region of the 16th Century. Naturally, the author of the Flashman stories brings a novelistic flair to large parts of this story. Not only does he delight in all the various stirring episodes of the Border (horseback pursuits, blood feuds, raids by moonlight, larger-than-life scoundrels) but also provides his usual humour and élan to a manuscript that might have otherwise become plodding.

It is not a specialist, academic sort of history: Fraser freely concedes he is more interested in the 'human interest' angle: "The Scottish policy of Henry VIII [for example] is a fascinating thing… but I am less concerned with the effect that it had on, say, Franco-Scottish relations than with the more immediate and dramatic impact which it had on the good wife of Kirkcudbright who, during a skirmish near her home, actually delivered her husband up to the enemy for safe-keeping" (pg. 7). Nevertheless, despite this dramatic interest he does provide a great historical narrative of the Borderlands in that turbulent century, and it adds up to an accomplished and very readable history that makes a good fist of explaining what that remarkable time must have been like to live through. The central hook, as I understood it, was that this crime-ridden society considered itself normal: "… great numbers of the people inhabiting the frontier territory (the old Border Marches) lived by despoiling each other, when the great Border tribes, both English and Scottish, feuded constantly among themselves, when robbery and blackmail were everyday professions, when raiding, arson, kidnapping, murder and extortion were an important part of the social system. This had very little to do with war between the two countries, who spent most of the century at peace with each other. It was a way of life pursued in peace-time, by people who accepted it as normal" (pg. 3 – my emphasis). Getting to the root of this peculiar mindset is, as a reader, quite fascinating.

However, whilst Fraser clearly admires the reivers (outlaws) and the other roguish figures of the Border, he is no sentimentalist or romantic. Indeed, he stresses that in his research "a different picture of the Border reiver emerges. He can be seen for what he very often was, not at all heroic, but a nasty, cruel, mean-spirited ruffian, who preferred the soft mark provided by small farmers, widows, and lonely steadings" (pg. 98). He tells the story of one captured reiver who "was burned alive because he had himself burned a house containing a woman and her children; it is worth remembering things like that, when considering the heroic eminence that folk-lore has given" to the likes of these (pg. 239). He points out that the legendary – in all senses of the word – jailbreak of Kinmont Willie from Carlisle Castle was "made possible by informers, traitors and fifth columnists" (pg. 340). Above all, he notes dryly, if the old folklore myth that reivers avoided unnecessary homicide is true, "one can only comment that they seem to have found homicide necessary with appalling frequency" (pg. 122). It is prose like this – so typical of Fraser in his fiction – that makes The Steel Bonnets so engaging at times.

This is not to say that the book does not have its faults. As mentioned, the book is ambitious and tries to impose orderly scholarship on a century of events in a large and fluctuating region defined by lawlessness, oral history and violent turbulence. It is a weighty task and sometimes threatens to get the better of a writer even of Fraser's talent. Many of the raids are so similar they become indistinct. Many of the names and familial ties of the clans are hard to untangle (in a footnote, Fraser laments the 'heart-breaking complexities' of the Border relationships, "fit only for the computer" (pg. 347)). In an oft-cited criticism of the book, he quotes at length from contemporary sources – in hard-to-penetrate dialect and with, shall we say, liberal attitudes to spelling – which drags the pace of the book down as the reader is forced to switch gears to try and decipher the quotation. This latter point is exacerbated by the general structure of the book, which goes into detail about how raids were fought and how the land was governed before even providing a narrative of key events. This not only results in a first hundred pages that struggle to get going but also means Fraser is providing examples to illustrate his arguments that have no context. In this early section, he uses phrases like 'as we shall discover later' or 'which we shall discuss later' with unnerving frequency, and it does little to engage the reader. The scope of the history doesn't become apparent until near half the book has passed. Many readers won't have the patience or the stamina.

But these faults pale beside the force of the book. It is a remarkable period of British history – well-told by an accomplished writer and native Borderer – but, more than that, it is an under-reported period of our country's history. For it was in this period that the modern Anglo-Scottish partnership catalysed, whilst also providing good evidence of why the rivalry persists. In a magnificent passage on pages 22 to 24, Fraser sidebars to discuss this relationship and why it is a truly unique one, in geopolitical, social and, indeed, familial terms.

The narrative among modern tartan-wearing, Twitter-storming little Bravehearts pushing for ruinous 'independence' from English oppression shows a basic and frankly insulting ignorance of history and the nature of Anglo-Scottish fraternization. Bannockburn, Flodden and so on were largely – though not completely – tribal or regional; the ideas of nationalism and populism as we understand them now were constructs that came centuries later. People back then didn't give a damn – they had more important things to worry about: Fraser's book shows us that Scot killed Scot and Englishman killed Englishman just as often as one killed the other, and people didn't care whether the reivers burning their homes or killing their families or extorting blackmail money were Scottish or English, when they could have been either, and often were both. The border was porous, permeable, an incestuous cauldron of violence: certainly not noble Scots vs. evil English. At the end of Fraser's book, it is a Scottish king ascending (peaceably) to the English throne after the death of the childless Elizabeth Tudor. Hardly English oppression. This merger – rather than alliance – set the stage for the Act of Union and all the resultant fruits of Empire, and a relationship that continues to fire a healthy nation today. When I read in Fraser's book of a hostile pre-Union Scotland "offering a stepping-stone to England's enemies, and not infrequently joining in against England when the latter was busily engaged on the Continent" (pg. 23), I cannot help but think of Scotland's – or rather, the SNP's – recent opportunistic and cynical attempts to undermine the country's Brexit result and negotiations; exploiting the country's vulnerable moment for unfair short-termist political advantage and for the shallow satisfaction of poking their 'oppressive' English kinsmen in the eye.

For kinsmen is what the two peoples are. The border is porous. There are no longer any battle-lines, and even when there were, Scots and English fought on both sides. The modern politicisation of history (by self-serving charlatans who want to get their names into the history books by foul means or fair) reduces this fascinating tinderbox of bloodlust and begrudging respect to a bland and one-note (and intellectually unsound) narrative, ignoring its richness, variety and flavour. But, fortunately, for those who are willing to seek clearer shores there are people like Fraser and books like The Steel Bonnets that are prepared to deal with these things with a cool and even hand, delighting in the fraternity and the immediacy of history. We are much the better for it, and indeed for a unified country where the violent "extremities of the old kingdoms were now the centre of the new realm" (pg. 362).

[Mysti Berry · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fraser's writing is a treat. He helps even a daft American like me feel like I understand the Border Wars and the terrible events that created modern-day Scotland.

[Kirsty Twidale · Rating 3 out of 5]

Tough Read

[Tom Nixon · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's been gathering dust on my bookshelf for years, but finally, I sat down and read The Steel Bonnets, which tells the story of the border reivers that dominated the border between England and Scotland for centuries- their peculiar, rough and tumble way of life reached it's peak in the 16th Century before being swept aside by the forces of political unification that united the two kingdoms when James I took the throne of a united kingdom following the death of Elizabeth I.



Why read a book about what to many would seem to be a relatively obscure subject? Well, it's sort of where my people are from. The Nixons ran along the Middle March of the border with the Armstrongs- but also mixing with the Elliots and Croziers as well. As the borders grew more wild and unruly over the centuries- the clans developed sort of a rough code that sort of governed their raids- and every cross border raid to steal horses or rustle sheep would provoke a response in one form or another. They were horsemen without peer, somee of them would probably be considered criminal masterminds by today's standards.



Both England and Scotland divided their respective sides of the border into marches: the west march, middle march and east march. Each march had it's own warden and together- when they were getting in on the action of raiding and reiving themselves, they would coordinate in keep some semblance of order in both sides of the border. They would meet in appointed places and times to settle claims that people had on folks from the opposite side of the border- these 'Days of Truce' came to be large gatherings, almost fairs and folks from either sides of the border could meet with relatives/friends/family they didn't normally get to see because of being on the opposite side of the border-- the 'Days of Truce' were most inviolate, but violence did break out at some of the Truce Days now and again as well.



Probably the most famous raid of them all was the raid that broke Kinmont Willie Armstrong out of Carlisle Castle itself, which at the time was considered damn near impregnable-- it sent Kinmont Willie into the realms of legend and songs are still sun about him today. In fact, a quick check of the Googles and YouTubes will find you a veritable catalogue of border ballads, songs and poetry. They were the inspiration for a lot of the works of Sir Walter Scott.



The politics of the 16th Century also saw the borders getting caught in the middle. In the various conflicts between England and Scotland over the course of the century or two prior to the union of crowns, borderers served in both armies and occasionally would see each other on opposite sides of the battle and were pretty open about saying 'hello' to one another when they saw each other.



Fraser (who was screenwriter on one of the most underrated Bond movies, Octopussy) obviously knows his material and knows it well. This book feels like it's meticulously researched- but it also probably helps that Fraser himself knows the area and knows it well. He describes the landscape in such detail that you know he spent extensive time travelling the region and learning it's history in person, which lends the overall narrative an air of authenticity that just makes the book that much better.



Between the history of the border, Fraser also takes the time to explain the rules and customs of the border as well as trying to give the reader an idea of how ordinary life looked for everyday borderers. What results is a remarkably complete portrait of a land and it's people and it was a great read that helped me feel a little more connected to my own family roots. My Grade: **** out of ****

[Kirsten · Rating 4 out of 5]

Die Steel Bonnets terrorisierten das Grenzgebiet zwischen Schottland und England zwischen dem 15. und dem Anfang des 17. Jahrhunderts. Ihr Name leitet sich von der Kopfbedeckung ab, die die Reiter dieser der organisierten Banden trugen und der oft mit einer umgedrehten Salatschüssel vergleichen wurde.. Es ist die Geschichte der großen Familien, die die Gegend in Angst und Schrecken versetzten: der Armstrongs, Elliots, Grahams, Johnstones, Maxwell und Nixons (ist es ein Zufall dass uns viele der Namen aus der Politik bekannt sind?). Aber es ist auch die Geschichte von zusammengewürfelten Banden von Outlaws die glaubten, sich durch kleinere Überfälle ein kleines Stück vom großen Kuchen abschneiden zu können. Der Autor erzählt wie die Border Reivers ihre Plünderungsaktionen mit militärischer Gründlichkeit durchführten und wie die Verwalter auf beiden Seiten der Grenze dagegen kämpften. Es handelt sich um einen eher unbekannten, aber nicht weniger interessanten Teil der schottischen Geschichte.

Die Grenze zwischen England und Schottland und das darum liegende Land war in der Zeit der Steel Bonnets eine Grauzone. Sowohl die Engländer als auch die Schotten setzten in den einzelnen Landstrichen Verwalter ein, doch deren Verweilzeit war oft von kurzer Dauer. Entweder sie erledigten ihre Arbeit gut und wurden aus dem Weg geräumt oder sie ließen sich auf das Spiel ein und wurden schnell wieder ersetzt. Raubzüge auf beiden Seiten der Grenze wechselten sich ab mit Kämpfen zwischen den Familien, wobei der Anlass oft nur ein falsches Wort sein konnte. Die Banden hielten nur zusammen wenn sie gegen Regierung kämpften. Dass die englische bzw. schottische Krone nicht eher versuchte der Situation Herr zu werden lag schlicht und einfach daran, dass es für die Herrscher auf beiden Seiten wichtigere Dinge gab und dass die betroffenen Landstriche zu weit weg waren um eine Bedrohung zu sein. Die Dreistigkeit, mit der die Steel bonnets ihre Raubzüge durchführten hat den selben Grund. Maria Stuart besuchte die Border Region zwar einmal während ihrer Herrschaft, doch sie hinterließ keinen bleibenden Eindruck bei ihren Untertanen. Anders als ihr letzter Ehemann Bothwell, der sich mehr als einmal an deren Aktivitäten beteiligte. Auch die Herrschaft James VI und die Ausrufung des Königreichs Großbritannien brachte keine Ruhe. Erst in der Mitte des 17. Jahrhunderts wurden die Überfälle weniger und hörten auf, nachdem den Köpfen der führenden Banden der Prozess gemacht wurde.

Mir gefiel der kleine Ausflug in ein mir bis dahin unbekanntes Gebiet der schottischen Geschichte sehr gut. Der Autor erzählt die Geschichte dieser Räuberbanden ausführlich, ohne dabei langweilig zu sein.

[Dennis Sisterson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Phew. After a couple of previous attempts to get through this megalith I've finally finished it, and my native land will probably never look quite the same. This is probably still the definitive history of the Border Reivers, and although it's incredibly thorough it does give a sense that it's only told the tip of the iceberg of what could have been told, which in turn is the tip of a greater iceberg, most of which is long lost in the mists of time, not least because there was no-one recording it. Everyone was too busy either raiding each other's cattle, or perpetuating scores and rivalries that went on for centuries. There are a great many stories here and if there's a problem to be found with them it's that so many of them are the same old story with different players and places, but that just adds to the cumulative effect of revealing the Border country in the time of the Reivers as a hopelessly lawless and tangled moral wilderness in which only the toughest and most ruthless came out on top, and seldom for very long, no matter which side of the nominal law or government authority they happened to be on. The wonder is not only that it ever became the peaceful place it is today, but that the whole era is practically lost to folk memory, with only the odd museum display to remind anyone that it ever happened. But having read this, the echoes of this time are still there to be found, in the landscape, the ruined towers, the names of many of the remaining natives and, just possibly, in the slightly gritty and defiant local culture.
Growing up in Northumberland, we were taught in school about the Romans, the Anglo-Saxons, the Vikings and the Normans, all of whom left their stamp on the area, but never a word about the Reivers, despite the classrooms being filled with Armstrong, Storeys, Elliots, and many other familiar names from these pages... one wonders whether this was an oversight or a deliberate policy. This book fills a huge gap. It takes a bit of getting through but leaves the reader with a vivid sense of a lost age.

[Lucy Cummin]

This is another Did Not Finish -- not because anything is wrong with the book, but because there was no reason for me to continue. The appeal for me was really to know more about the area after reading Dorothy Dunnett's marvelous series about Lymond of Crawford (The Lymond Chronicles). MacDonald is outlining the history of the Border 'Troubles' of the 15-17th centuries and those who participated in the mayhem, both sides, with almost shattering detail. Well organized and readable, it is nonetheless information that I cannot absorb or really justify spending hours reading. To anyone who lives near the old Marches and is has a family interest or an abiding historical interest, I have no doubt this would prove deeply fascinating and rewarding. The scope is too tight for me -- I've paged through the whole and I think I have grasped the essentials: Reiving has been romanticized, on both sides the violence became a way of life, making it harder to sustain consistent ethical stances, and albeit at the expense of Scotland's full independence, the problems faded away within a decade of England's absorption of Scotland. Maintaining that border as a border was impossible at that time in that place due to the precariousness, really, of the agricultural existence of the people who lived there. Now there could a border much like ours with Canada, I expect, as the economic pressures make that border irrelevant. I was, in some ways, saddened by the cold facts, but not surprised. Those who revere 'the cowboy' really don't know that hard and brutal that life could be. Perhaps it is human nature to fasten on these outlier cultures that are so hard and romanticize them, who knows why? I adored the image, at the start of Richard Nixon, Lyndon Johnson and Billy Graham, all descendants of some of the worst of the worst 'riding' reivers in a photograph together. Still reiving?

[Joshua Green · Rating 2 out of 5]

Fraser's book gives an extremely detailed account (more an anthropological view) of the life and times of the relatively lawless Anglo-Scottish border c 1200-1600. He mostly focuses on the 16th century. In short, I would have given this book three or more stars if it weren't for the damned length.

I found that, for the casual reader of English and Scottish history like myself, the author made his main points about the reivers and their society within the first 150 pages or so, and then more or less reiterated points over and over ad nauseam. Don't get me wrong, it certainly served to drive home just how long-lasting and all-encompassing this banditry was, but I didn't enjoy reading about innumerable similar raids. At some points later on in the text, Fraser nearly goes year by year in the later 16th century recounting the minutiae of raids, counter-raids, double-crosses, feuds, and so on. Again, it re-enforced the barbarity and depth of the reiving lifestyle, but it delivered diminishing returns for me as a reader.

With all of that negativity aside now, I feel like there's a helluva good slim little volume hiding in this overgrown beast. By turns, Fraser writes evocatively and with humour. He also paints a clear picture of how the deeply engrained reiver lifestyle came to a fairly abrupt end when the two nations were welded together (often violently) by James VI and I with the union of crowns. Some of his countless raiding anecdotes stick out in my mind, but the sheer number and sameness of the rest just crowd on top of one another and, for me, smother the exciting and brutal central idea of the book.

Some great maps included in this edition.

[Caro · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was drawn to this by Dan Jackson's The Northumbrians: North-East England and its People - A New History, which quotes from Fraser's book extensively. The reivers have been romanticized over the years, but Fraser is careful to describe how terrible both sides really were: murder, torture, setting houses on fire with the people trapped inside, and killing killing killing. The three hundred years of their flourishing were terrible times. He lightens the mood, or at least adds some spice, with lively descriptions of the people (men plus Queens Mary and Elizabeth) involved, and if you can't keep track of which Buccleuch he's talking about - many generations all named Walter - it doesn't really matter. Of course, I read this partly for the Dunnett connections, especially The Game of Kings, and was happy to find a more thorough description of a hot trod as well as references to Pinkie, Janet Buccleuch, Lord Grey, and Herries. I could only have wished for a character list, but apart from that, this was just about perfect.

[Kevin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was surprised to see that George MacDonald Fraser, the author of the Flashman series of books had done an historical book covering the reiving families along the English-Scottish border in the late 1500s. It is a subject that I have been interested in learning about for quite some time. Not sure how that interest developed. Quite possibly from friends who had an interest in gaming the period, and I just got the bug from there. Anyway, I was keen to read on the subject. After doing a few searches, one book seemed to come up in every discussion, as THE book to read on the subject. of course it was this one.

While well written, the book is not written strictly chronologically, but, the author outlines this early on and gives his reasoning for they way the book is written. It can cause a little confusion in timelines when reading, but it didn't really take away from the story. And what a story it is. These folks were land pirates in the sea of the border area with virtually no opposition, just raid and counter raid. It certainly had to be a horrible place to be living for the farmers of that area. With little recourse to the lawlessness that occurred. The book covers the period well, and thoroughly discusses the raids, repercussions, supression, and resettling of the reiver families.

I highly recommend it. It will be a keeper for me.

[Roger]

Although certainly an impressive repository of knowledge about a niche subject, some stretches of the book were dry as a textbook to me. It wouldn’t be fair to leave a lower rating than it deserves because I wasn’t the intended audience, so I’ll simply leave it unrated. However, I wouldn’t recommend the book to anyone not from the UK, unless you have ancestors from the reaver clans mentioned in this book and a burning desire to learn more about the history of the Anglo-Scottish border in the 16th century.
While well-written, the book is not chronological, and most chapters focus on a general description of a particular facet of border life. This tends to feel a bit disjointed, as a reader finds themselves skipping around in time and location and reading about the same events and characters multiple times, sometimes after said historical figure became deceased at an earlier point in the book.
The most compelling chapters in the book are the ones which focus on a specific historical figure, clan feud, or raid. These are easiest to follow and tell a complete story, rather than overwhelming us with a list of villains, villages, towns, and plunder. I personally would have preferred if more chapters were on a smaller scale, telling of the rising and falling of clans and notable figures and the events they took part in.

[Liz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fraser does an amazing job of with this forgotten (but fascinating) episode in British history involving explosive family feuds and international intrigue. He tells the story largely through the first-hand accounts left by Wardens (who were charged with the almost-impossible task of bringing order to the English-Scottish border in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries). To this he adds informed guesswork of his own, based on his deep familiarity of the personalities involved. The larger-than-life figures who feature in this book are compelling enough on their own, but Fraser's droll take on their schemes and double-crossings really brings the story to life. Still, he makes a point not to romanticize the subject, and definitely acknowledges the violence and brutality of Border raiding, especially on the non-raiders caught in the middle. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in Scottish/British history, or fans of Dorothy Dunnett's Lymond Chronicles (since this fills in some of the background for the turbulence/family feuds in Scotland).

[Brian Gowthorpe · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was published 50 years ago but has probably not been bettered. George MacDonald Fraser was rightly fascinated by this somewhat overlooked period in history during which the borderlands between the two kingdoms of England and Scotland was the scene of pretty much incessant guerrilla warfare between the family clans on either side of the border, much of which was rugged and difficult country for incomers to traverse, making control all but impossible. Bitter warfare in the late 13th century ravaged both sides of the borders and created the conditions for a 300-year upheaval, which reached its nadir in the 1500s. Only the uniting of the crowns under James VI & I made it possible to break this terrible cycle of feuds, blackmail, kidnap, arson, cattle rustling and the despoliation of crops and habitation. The story is well told and carefully researched; it certainly put the bleak fortresses and peel towers in their context, often remote valleys dominated by one or two families: they are still there.

[Geoff Boxell · Rating 5 out of 5]

The definitive book on the reivers and moss troopers who inhabited the borderlands of the English/Scottish marcher lands from the 1300s to the 1600s. For 300+ years mayhem, mischief and malevolence ruled the border country with the riding families on both sides raiding each other and anyone else with loyalty to "family" rather than country and all with little regard to any "law".
The final solution, once Scotland and England had the same monarch, James VI - I, was just as bloody and as lacking in any justice as the previous 300 years but, it is hard to see what else could be done to stop the lawlessness and violence being inflicted by the criminal gangs of the Marches.
This book should be a compulsory read for any who want to return to having a hard border between the two countries.
Second read after it was returned to me by a workmate who came originally from Carlisle in the borderlands.

[Mike Hall · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author starts by describing a photograph of Richard Nixon's inauguration, also in the photograph is Lyndon Johnson and the Reverend Billy Graham. The Nixons, Johnsons and Grahams were all notorious Reiver families. A somewhat later comparable operation was the Wild West though that had a better division of the "goodies" and the "Badies". The Reivers were either depending on the circumstance that day.
But it is well worth reading about the little known Reivers that often operated in hundreds at a time, they operated on the Scottish English border in the 16th Century. The brutality was extreme, even the Wardens that were expected to exert control often sided with one of the families. Drowning as a form of execution had some degree of popularity because it was cheaper than buying rope.
There is a wealth of detail, too much for me but the overall story came over well.

[Crissy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I knew very little of the Border Reivers, but what a story and not necessarily what I expected, as I naively thought it was a Scots versus English thing. It is very obvious that the author is deeply interested in this topic and he presents facts about individuals, families, feuds, raiding and politics, almost to the point that it is overflowing. However, he is very careful not to repeat himself and there are many references to 'elsewhere in the book' where you can remind yourself of characters and battles already described. His description of raids and battles read like novels (of this he is an established and well liked author) and his sense of humour shines through extremely well. I have another, printed much later book on the Border Reivers but I rather think it may not be as enjoyable as this one!

[Bryan Kerr · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the definitive work on Scottish border clans. Fraser does a great job bringing ancient tales back to life, as well as connecting contemporary figures with their familial place of origin and ancestors. One can actually get a sense of the attitudes and personal characteristics of folks living 500 years ago. Throughout the book I felt myself relating to historical individuals that Fraser mentions, despite the gulf of time separating us. Thanks to Fraser, I had little trouble imagining my life tempered by the war-torn, Anglo-Scottish border and living life accordingly. If you or your ancestors hailed from this part of the world, you will definitely enjoy this book.

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was induced to read "The Steel Bonnets" after enjoying Patricia Finney's "A Famine of Horses", first in a fictional series inspired by the memoirs of Robert Carey, English Warden of the Marches in late 16th C England. Although "Bonnets" is well-written and exhaustively researched, I found many of the sections to be a tad repetitive, and I had eye-crossing difficulty in keeping all the clan names straight and which side - English or Scottish - of the dreadful Borderlands they hailed from. All said and done, however, I did enjoy reading this historical essay and if you're fascinated by this time and place in English-Scottish history I highly recommend Fraser's book.

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

When reading a novel titled "A Famine of Horses" this book was recommended background reading. The sixteenth century on the English - Scottish border was characterized by unending violence, with raids and counter raids, stealing and murder. The Border Reiver is defined as robber, raider, marauder, plunderer. The term is obsolete but lives on in words like bereave. Clans were organized to protect themselves and to take revenge as appropriate. As history, the book does a great job of highlighting the period and explaining the continuing animosity between the Scots and English.

[Gary Fellows · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gary Animosity between Scots and English only exists in the minds of those wishing to look for such; and perpetuated by trash media and gratuitous patriarchal ignorance.
GMF has actually countered those lazy superficial notions, not with opinion, but rather with fact; no doubt to the annoyance of misguided “romantics” who cannot possibly be certain of their own ancestry,
If you want unbiased historical facts, then this is the book for you. If not, then you probably haven’t even read this far into this review.