![]() ![]() What I am pointing out here is that I had some knowledge of the way things would go, popular reaction, how the official mind would be apt to work, etc., if the true Stone of Destiny was indeed to turn up in Scotland today. ![]() But that is another story ã and one which one day, perhaps, may be written. No one, I need hardly add, was more shocked than I was when, in fact, the Stone was whisked away over the Border in the back of a police car, non-stop, within 24 hours. What Might Happen If the Real Stone Was Found? Giles Cathedral, Edinburgh, for at least a month while tempers cooled and a dignified decision taken as to its ultimate resting place ã given all that, I believe that I would do the same again. #NIGEL TRANTER PLUS#I have been blamed for my share in that but given the circumstances prevailing then, plus the promises that had been given that the Stone would be allowed to remain in Scotland, possibly in St. That took me a lot of talking-out-of! But I was involved in the bringing of the errant Stone to light at ruined Arbroath Abbey that April day in 1951. I knew no more than other and more respectable citizens until the press began telephoning me with the news, demanding comment, information, names:- for it so happened that I had published a novel called The Freebooters barely a year before, in which I rashly made some of my wild characters propose to do this very thing :- bring the Stone back to Scotland. I had nothing at all to do with the abstraction thereof. For my sins, I had been slightly involved in the rumpus about the Stone that came back to Scotland so dramatically and in unorthodox fashion. I did not start, as it were, quite from scratch. Columba's altar, holy relic of our ancestors? Is the lump of red sandstone at present so jealously guarded in Westminster Abbey by electric eyes, chains and burglar alarmsãis that the Stone of Destiny at all? Or just a 700-year-old phony, a piece of local Scone scenery that Edward the Hammer of the Scots took south with him when he could not lay hands on the real stone in 1296ã and which Ian Hamilton and his student friends abstracted in 1950, believing that it would be more fittingly kept in Scotland ã and thereby set Scotland Yard, Scotland and much of England, by the ears? And if so, where is the other, the original, the ancient Liath Fail, talisman of Scotland's kings, pillow of Jacob, St. ![]() But which Stone of Destiny? There is the rub. The Stone of Destiny has been news for 700 yearsã and may well be so for as long again. In my novel, The Stone, I did not so much work on research as research rather worked for me. Since then, of course, the so-called Stone of Scone has been returned from Westminster to Edinburgh Castle but that doesn¼t answer the question, does it? This article is an example of its companions that you will find in SCOTTISH BOOKS including NIGEL TRANTER NEWS. This article first appeared in The Scots Magazine for August 1960. Here is the background for that work and some of the mystery that surrounds the real Stone of Destiny. Tranter believes that his novel The Stone has caused more public interest than any other. All rights reserved.Īn Liath Fail - But Which Stone is that of Destiny? Tranter died on 9 January 2000 at the age of ninety.Nigel Tranter Article: Which Stone The following article is Copyright by the Estate of Nigel Tranter. He received an OBE for services to literature in 1983 and was named Scot of the Year in 1989. Tranter wrote more than 100 books of fiction and non-fiction, with some titles under his pen name Nye Tredgold. His work on his non-fiction books, which involved substantial research into Scotland's history, was also to inspire many novels, including The Queen's Grace and the Master of Gray Trilogy. #NIGEL TRANTER SERIES#His subsequent five-volume series The Fortified House in Scotland covered the history and structure of more than 650 Scottish castles. He published his first book, The Fortalices and Early Mansions of Scotland, in 1935 at the age of 25. ![]() Tranter was educated at George Heriot's School in Edinburgh and first trained as an accountant, before joining the Royal Artillery during World War Two - continuing with this writing during his wartime service. Scottish author and historian Nigel Tranter OBE was born on 23 November 1909 in Glasgow. ![]()
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