The Hanging Tree: A Romance of the Fifteenth Century

by Allan Massie

A story featuring a 15th-century Scottish Border family. Few families were wilder than the Linsdales. Caught up in a web of violence and treachery, they shared in the rise of the mighty house of Douglas and struggled to escape its fall.

Genres: Fiction, Historical

320 pages, Paperback

First published November 26, 1990

About the author

Allan Massie is a Scottish journalist, sports writer and novelist. Massie is one of Scotland's most prolific and well-known journalists, writing regular columns for The Scotsman, The Sunday Times (Scotland) and the Scottish Daily Mail. He is also the author of nearly 30 books, including 20 novels. He is notable for writing about the distant past.

Reviews

[Robert Hepple · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Hanging Tree, described on the cover as a ‘15th century romance’, is a tale about divided loyalties in a setting around the Scottish lowlands. The style of the novel complements the period setting extremely well, reminiscent of the style of Walter Scott but with a lot more sex and violence, which I suppose is just one aspect of it being written in more recent times. There were a couple of instances where I thought some expressions were used which seemed anachronistic, but I couldn’t be certain. The story itself is complex, long-winded and multi-threaded. The concentration that this demands is rewarded by the richness of the settings, and ultimately makes for an engrossing tale in a colourful period of Scottish history.

[Carrie Kotcho · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm currently re-reading this book. It has to be one of the best I've ever read. If I was going to make one film in my life, it would be of this book.

If you can get your hands on this book it is well worth the search. There are few books that evoke a culture and time as vividly and brutally as this nove. If you ask REALLY nice, I would lend it to you!

[Debara Zeller]

Frankly, I lost interest about 3/4 of the way through, but I think it had more to do with what was going on in my life right then than the quality of the book itself.