Tales and Traditions of Scottish Castles

I've read dozens of ghost books, even about Scotland; I've seen many programs on ghosts and castles (including the trilogy Prince Charles's brother produced several years ago on England, Ireland, Scotland). Yet, few of these stories were known to me when this arrived. I found it very informative. Pictures of many of these castles are included only as drawings, but photos are easily available on the Internet.

I absolutely loved this book. It was fresh and light, yet full of spice and all things of Scotland. Nigel Tranter takes different castles from all over Scotland and gives us a little sketch of the castle for one to visualize then some history and a tale or two about some of its owners or stories. A few are more commonly known but many were not. And the stories were amazing. Very Tranter but fact not fiction. Each chapter on each castle is a little story completely separate from the next. It makes you feel like you are sitting on your Grandfather's lap and hearing stories of old Scotland and the people who made it great. I read this book twice and completely loved it. You can read it in bits as you need a little story or like I did from cover to cover in one night because I enjoyed it so. Nigel Tranter gave us so many gifts in his historical novels and this is another fine addition to his legacy.

This book has short tales of the many Castles in Scotland - great little gossipy historic tales. The language used and the method of writing were different than I'm used to, it took a few tales to get aquainted with it, but was I did, I very much enjoyed the book. Certainly worth a read if you are headed for a visit!