Nigel Tranter | Books | The Guardian

Nigel Tranter

For a bestselling author who wrote more than 120 books, many of them lengthy historical novels, Nigel Tranter, who has died aged 90, employed an unusual means of literary creation. Each morning he would leave his house in East Lothian and begin a long walk over the nature reserve at nearby Aberlady Bay. As he stalked out along the shoreline he was an unmistakable figure. In stout boots, flat cap and sensible tweeds, he looked just like any other bird-watcher but for one oddity: in his hands he carried small sheets of paper, protected by a polythene bag in inclement weather.

By the time he returned home some 12 miles later, he would have completed another 1,000 words of his next book. Then, with few corrections, the work would be typed up on a venerable Imperial typewriter to form part of his rich harvest of popular novels. He was carrying out the same routine into his 90th year, defying both the uncertain Scottish climate and the vagaries of literary fashion. His last novel, Envoy Extraordinary, was published just two months ago and there were others on the stocks. For those who knew him, and he cast his net widely, it is difficult to believe that this hardy battler should have succumbed to the current flu epidemic.

Tranter once told me that he began the habit of writing on the hoof when he was serving in the army during the second world war and privacy was almost impossible. But his method was more than the mere continuation of an early habit. Not only did he relish long walks over hard terrain, but he had a countryman's eye, and his ability to delineate the landscape in all weathers did much to enrich his prose.

His tenacity also encouraged him to take infinite pains with the research that went into books about characters as diverse as St Columba, Macbeth, William Wallace, King Robert the Bruce and the Marquis of Montrose. In that respect, Tranter could be compared to Sir Walter Scott, another who was passionately concerned with the presentation of Scottish history.

Born in Glasgow, Tranter was educated in Edinburgh, at George Heriot's school. After his father lost money in an unwise investment, he was obliged to follow a solid middle-class career in accountancy, but even then his heart was straying else where. Whenever he had time, he would cycle into the countryside, taking with him an artist's notepad and a vivid imagination. Entirely self-taught but unyielding in his determination to record the great architectural heritage of Scotland's Lowland baronial houses, Tranter used those expeditions to garner the material for his first book, The Fortalices and Early Mansions of Southern Scotland 1400-1650, which was published in 1937 (fortalices are small forts).

Although its publication persuaded him to follow a literary career, the war and the need to bring up a young family in the 1950s meant that his early novels were little more than potboilers, hurried and often uneven. But all the while he was honing his style to the useful instrument which would produce his most successful work, a trilogy of novels about King Robert the Bruce - The Steps to the Empty Throne (1969), The Path of the Hero King (1970) and The Price of the King's Peace (1971). Together they sold more than 1m copies. After that success, Tranter's output continued to be prodigious; he was writing at least two books a year. Admittedly, some betrayed the shortcomings of writing at speed, and critics complained about stilted dialogue and a certain discomfort in dealing with relations between the sexes, but none could gainsay his historical accuracy. His novel The Wallace (1975) is admirably free of anything to do with Braveheart, and The Wisest Fool (1974) is a well-judged and sympathetic portrait of King James I of Great Britain.

At the same time, he found the energy to complete the five volumes of The Fortified House in Scotland (1962-1971), which proved to be a worthy successor to his first work. Restless and energetic as he was in his literary output, Tranter was also a great enabler, who served Scottish PEN and the Society of Authors in Scotland as chairman. Above all he was a patriot. In the 1950s he was a member of the Scottish Convention movement, which campaigned for a Scottish parliament, and his joy when it finally came into being last year was tempered only by his friends' dismay that he was not invited to the opening ceremony. However, it was entirely fitting that one of his last awards, a silver quaich (small drinking cup) from his fellow authors, was presented to him by the first minister, Donald Dewar.

He won other honours, including an OBE in 1983, but these he wore lightly. His passions were the rigours of researching the dark alleyways of his nation's history and the joy of writing it up on a long walk.

In 1933 he married May Grieve, who predeceased him, as did his son Philip, but his last years were made happier by the loving companionship of Joan Earle. He is survived by a daughter.

Nigel Godwin Tranter, author and historian; born November 23 1909; died January 9 2000

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