IT was irredeemably dull but had a limitless capacity to fascinate. Its former trait lay entirely in its lacklustre bronze appearance. The latter resided in the story it told.
It was a medal designed to celebrate a triumph in the 18th century. It also served in the 20th century and beyond as a remembrance of a lost cause, as a reminder of brutality and violent retribution and a nudge to consider what might have been both for my forbearers and for Scotland, indeed Great Britain.
It was called the Cumberland medal in my house. It emerged from its humble abode in a cigar box when ceilidhs broke out spontaneously or when someone inquired about the ’45 or when my father deemed it appropriate to discuss the impossibly romantic but irrefutably gory story of Bonnie Prince Charlie and the Jacobite rebellion of 1745.