- The Guardian,
- Friday October 27 2000
No longer hungry for the angst-ridden confessional, editors are ravenous for historical plots, preferably set in exotic locations. So wrote Lisa Darnell in her Guardian review of Douglas Galbraith's debut novel. Galbraith, a historian by training, earned a chunky advance for this story of colonial ignominy. At the end of the 17th century, Scotland decided to make a play for a place on the world stage and emptied the coffers to finance a colonising expedition to Panama. The failure of the trip, in a muddle of rain, mud, mutiny and war, paved the way for union and, arguably, ended for 300 years Scotland's chances of independent nationhood.
The story is told through Roderick MacKenzie, superintendent of cargoes, by means of whom Galbraith indulges his fascination with the forgotten details of life in the early 18th century, from menus to medicines. As Mick Imlah pointed out in the Observer, Galbraith is also a powerfully imaginative storyteller and a stylish writer. But Christopher Harrie in the Independent detected a conflict between style and structure, which, he said, kept Galbraith out of the first rank. Imlah, too, felt the novel wasn't perfect, but he still felt Galbraith had earned a place among the very best of our historical novelists.
