by Paul O'Keeffe (Bodley Head £25, 432 pp)
On a bleak moor near the village of Culloden, just to the east of Inverness in the wild Highlands of Scotland, the final pitched battle to be fought on British soil began just after 1pm on April 16, 1746.
It was all over in 40 minutes, less time than half a football match, with mangled, stricken bodies strewn across the mud.
If you are looking for the over-romanticised Scotland of whisky and oatcakes, aristocratic mistresses, flights across the misty heather and sailing over the sea to Skye, this is not really the book for you.
Instead, as vivid as the Ten O’Clock News, it is a fascinating, meticulously researched, often brutally detailed account of a short episode in British history, the repercussions of which are still felt hundreds of years later: just look at the headlines. After all, the Scots have long had a fondness for the sweet melancholy of the lost cause.