The Book of Deer : a Thirty Year Odyssey

"This splendid little book."

(colophon, Book of Deer)

"One of the principal antiquities of Scotland."

(Third Statistical Account of Scotland, 1951-1992)

The Book of Deer, the keystone around which I constructed The Legend of John Macnab (second sequel to John Buchan’s John Macnab) in 2015, is a 9^th or 10^th century gospel illuminated manuscript containing the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John as well as the Apostle’s Creed. It is also a Celtic work of art. In addition, it has a land grant given by David I to the clerics of Deer and the earliest known examples of Scottish Gaelic annotations. These tell the story of Columba’s legendary journey from Iona to Aberdour (now in Buchan) in the 6^th century to found the Monastery of Deer, later succeeded by the Cistercian Abbey of Deer.

The Book, composed of eighty-six folios and measuring about six inches by four in its new 1963 binding, is surprisingly compact. It’s bordered with knotwork and illuminated with decorative artwork displaying saints and pagan motifs. The art owes a great deal to the culture of Eastern Christendom, but was developed by Celtic scribes and artists. It is possibly the direct predecessor of the famous Book of Kells, in the same class as Columba’s Book of Durrow, Bede’s Historia ecclesiastica and the Lindisfarne Gospels, and widely regarded as the earliest manuscript ever produced in Scotland.

Or in other words, Scotland’s first book.

It is arguably more significant than the Stone of Destiny, one of Cambridge University Library’s twelve most important western medieval manuscripts and, to paraphrase a line from Raiders of the Lost Ark, is:

“A window for looking at God.”

To quote Raiders once again, and to try and convey the sense of awe and veneration one should have when seeing or handling a manuscript such as this, we should remember that:

“We are simply passing through history. This, this is history.”

The text of the Book is the work of a single hand while the artwork was carried out by two or three illustrators. According to Prof. Kenneth H. Jackson (The Gaelic Notes in the Book of Deer, Cambridge University Press, 1972) “five separate hands can be distinguished in the writing of the notes connected with the lands of Deer.”

The exquisite creation of all these disparate strands of transcription, art, religion and commerce were topped off with a poignant colophon composed by the nameless scribe:

"For chubus caich duini i mbia arrath in lebrán colli ara tardda bendacht for anmain intruagáin rodscribai."

(Let it be on the conscience of everyone who uses this splendid little book, that they say a blessing for the soul of the wretch who wrote it.)

The sacred Book stayed in the monastery’s scriptorium until the late 13^th century or so when it (and maybe the Stone of Destiny) might have been taken south by Edward Longshanks’ army.

As I did my best to explain in Macnab:

“Longshanks began trying to conquer Scotland. To do so, he intended to seize the symbols of Scottish sovereignty and depose their king, John Balliol, last heir to the House of Canmore. This was how he’d subjugated Wales. He would subjugate Scotland the same way.”

The Book of Deer disappeared for the next four centuries and nobody quite knows who actually took it or where it went. It may indeed have been seized by Edward, or later simply sold to John Moore (1646-1714), bishop of Norwich and noted bibliomaniac.

However it got there though, the Book turned up in London ca. 1695 in the private collection of Robert Spencer, second Earl of Sunderland and Princess Diana’s ancestor. It is mentioned in John Evelyn’s diary entry for 10^th March 1695:

10th. I dined at the Earl of Sunderland's with Lord Spencer. My Lord showed me his library, now again improved by many books bought at the sale of Sir Charles Scarborough … Dr. Gale showed me a MS. of some parts of the New Testament in vulgar Latin, which he esteemed to be about eight hundred years old; there were some considerable various readings observable, as in John i., and genealogy of St. Luke.

(extract from the Diary and Correspondence of John Evelyn, 10 March 1695)

From there, the Book of Deer was taken to Cambridge University Library and although I stress I am a commercial writer, not a historian or academic, I suspect this is why, in the wake of the Acts of Union and the 1715 Jacobite rising, the Book went to Cambridge, not Oxford:

The Acts of Union became law on 1 May 1707, creating the Parliament of Great Britain. The Scottish nation first united by Kenneth Mac Alpin in 843 was no more and Queen Anne, lacking an heir, would have to leave the united kingdom to be fought over by other Royal Houses.

In 1714 Queen Anne died and George I of the House of Hanover was crowned on the Stone of Destiny in West Minster Abbey. His new Parliament had a large Whig majority, one of whom was the third Earl of Sunderland. Another was Charles, Viscount Townshend, Secretary of State for Scotland and friend of John Moore. Townshend had the King's ear and most influence over the new administration. John Moore, by then bishop of Ely, had died in July 1714 and his remarkable library, which now included the Book of Deer, was being fought over by Oxford and Cambridge. The bishop, however, had been educated at Cambridge. Townshend and Sunderland were also Cambridge men. In 1715 George I bought John Moore's library and gave it to the University of Cambridge.

Did Townshend and Sunderland influence the king to choose Cambridge instead of Oxford, and if so, why?

Perhaps Townshend and Sunderland, both players in the creation of the Acts of Union and both learned men who’d realised the value of the Book of Deer, had become enraged by Scottish attempts to wreck the great work which would be their legacy. James VII and II had died in 1701 but his son, James Francis Edward Stuart (later known as the Old Pretender) continued to claim the throne and had tried to invade in 1708. He’d intended to dissolve the Act and restore the Scottish Parliament, but failed even to set foot on British soil. In 1713 a motion to rescind the Act had only very narrowly been defeated in the Lords and only George I's creation of a majority Whig administration in 1714 over which Townshend held the whip hand had saved the Union.

When the Old Pretender's ally, the 11th Earl of Mar, began to rally an army in Scotland early in 1715, enough was enough.

 If the Scots could not behave themselves, the Stone of Destiny would never be returned, and by God, neither would the Book of Deer!

So the king donated the bishop of Ely's collection to Cambridge. It was the largest single gift ever made to the University. Criticism of the House of Hanover was silenced at a stroke, the collection gave Cambridge a position of national importance, and Townshend and Sutherland’s relations with their old university doubtless benefited.

(The Legend of John Macnab, pp. 153-154)

(Further details can be found between pp. 148-159 of Macnab)

Much as the Old Pretender's heritage was being buried beneath books at Cambridge, so were his officers and men being rounded up by troops of horse. Townshend relentlessly crushed the rebellion and by November 1715 the Jacobite army was no more.

(Macnab, p. 155)

This may indeed have been the specific two-pronged intent: kill the rebels, bury the national icon.

Then everybody forget about it for another 145 years until 1860, until young Henry Bradshaw came to work at Cambridge University Library.

Bradshaw is a legendary figure at Cambridge University Library, but I noticed that:

Although Bradshaw was from Lancashire, his father had left him a large collection of rare Irish books and the younger Bradshaw's first teaching post had been at St Columba's College outside Dublin. He would definitely have no trouble identifying ancient illuminated manuscripts.

(Macnab, p. 171)

The library had an: urgent need for a new catalogue and also [for someone to] sort out all those books and manuscripts - some of them part of George I's gift in 1715 and still not properly catalogued - lying around in the disused Divinity School on the ground floor.

(Macnab, p. 171)

At first, though, it seemed Bradshaw had been misplaced. He carried out his everyday duties competently but they made him miserable. In truth he was more bibliomaniac than librarian, and compared to the feverish fascination he always felt when he found old books, shelving stock and checking bills bored him to bloody tears.

He spent more and more time poking around the old monographs piled in the Divinity School, putting off the moment he’d have to do the administrative work he hated. The Syndics wanted the space the Divinity School could provide for periodicals and Parliamentary papers. Bradshaw just liked searching through the dust of ages.

(Macnab, pp. 171-172)

Quite simply, Bradshaw made a find and the Book of Deer was finally catalogued:

As a result of Bradshaw's finds he was charged with editing the listings of the four thousand western manuscripts finally being catalogued after one hundred and forty-odd years. He did so meticulously, ensuring that the manifest importance of the Scottish Gaelic notations in the Book of Deer was made absolutely clear.

The fifth and final volume of the manuscript catalogue was published in 1867. A few days after its publication Bradshaw became University Librarian, a post he held until he died in 1886. The catalogue he helped create was the best in the Britain of its day, and after being lost for nearly six centuries the Book of Deer had literally re-entered the pages of history, becoming MS Ii.6.32 in one of the greatest libraries of an enlightened state.

(Macnab, pp. 175-176)

Then everybody forgot about it again, which seemed to be becoming a habit.

Apart from John Stuart’s limited edition reprint of the Book for the Spalding Club in 1869, a translation of the Book’s Gaelic entries by Dr Whitley Stokes featured in Goidelica (London, 1872) and a few partial appearances in a smattering of academic articles over the next century, the splendid manuscript remained stubbornly stuck in obscurity until Professor Kenneth Hurlstone Jackson published The Gaelic Notes in the Book of Deer (Cambridge University Press, 1972), finally producing a taut and comprehensive account of the Book, its history, language, land grants and annotations.

I have good reason to be grateful to Professor Jackson’s scholarship. Although I made much use of Roy Ellsworth and Peter Berresford Ellis’ informative The Book of Deer (Constable, London, 1994) to help grind the Book’s exotic and obscure history into succinct and readable shape, Jackson’s diplomatic translations of the Scottish Gaelic annotations were for me the centrepiece of the Book’s importance and I sweated blood in 2015, accurately transcribing them onto a Word document of the time which didn’t really have all the necessary symbols.

And believe me, I looked.

And now the story changes.

The previous thousand years dealt with the Book of Deer from a religious, academic and historical angle: Columba, the nameless scribe, Edward Longshanks, John Moore, Robert Spencer, Charles Townshend, Henry Bradshaw, John Stuart, Whitley Stokes and Kenneth H. Jackson.

However, my father, born into the Lancashire Fusiliers in India, knew an old quote of Muhammad’s, passed down orally through history since the time of the Book and before:

Allah the Merciful the Compassionate, weaves the threads of men’s destinies into many strange tapestries.

I was Aberdonian by descent on my mother’s side, but grew up with an appreciation for the art and culture of the East. I came to know Glenfinnan and the West Highlands in my own right, and in the 1990s somehow ended up with the unique job of rare books cataloguer in a Scottish stately home.

And one fine day in 1994 or thereabouts, fourteen centuries after Columba founded the Monastery of Deer, ten or eleven centuries after the Book of Deer was written by the nameless scribe and two centuries after that splendid little book was buried in Cambridge, I came upon John Stuart’s Spalding Club reprint of the Book.

I catalogued it, and something in Stuart’s preface must have struck a chord. The Book of Deer stuck in my mind and the threads of history and my destiny began to gather round it. I had a strong spiritual connection with Glenfinnan, and had been incensed to hear some punks from Fort William had recently vandalised the church. At about the same time, Roderick Wright, Roman Catholic bishop of Argyll and the Isles, ran off with a divorcee. Separately, a sequel to John Buchan’s classic novel John Macnab, The Return of John Macnab by Andrew Greig, was published.

Although I was a religious sceptic, I’d had a gentle and subtle introduction to religion at the stately home. If you catalogue Newman’s Dream of Gerontius, something rubs off on you. And that ancient house was a modern-day counterpart to Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead, complete with ageing Catholic family and property in Venice.

It is as near as anyone can get to travelling back in time and seeing that other country, where things are done differently.

Even though I was a sceptic, hearing about the vandalism of the church and Roddy Wright’s scandal (both of which took place in an area of great spiritual importance to me) was too much to bear. Add the newly minted knowledge of the Book of Deer and John Macnab’s return in another tale woven deep into the tapestry of West Highland life, and I had an exotic mix of ingredients out of which a novel might possibly be fashioned.

So I sat down to write in 1996 and, slowly and painstakingly, threads began to come together. I found out Columba’s mentor had been called Finnan of Moville, which tied Glenfinnan into the narrative. I discovered Dunadd, the ancient stronghold on the Moine Mhor where the Scots sea kings were crowned, and worked out some of the possible reasons why Columba came to Iona and crossed Druim Alban (the Ridge of Alba) in order to found the Monastery of Deer.

Just as painstakingly (and with little knowledge of history), I began to comprehend what a gospel illuminated manuscript actually was, how the art of illumination had come out of the East and where Books like Deer fitted into the long brawl of Scottish, English and Royal history.

On top of all that, Scotland was careering towards the 1997 devolution referendum and I’d just found out Robert Spencer, second Earl of Sunderland, had been Princess Diana’s ancestor.

I also had to resurrect John Macnab!

If all this sounds confusing, it was.

I spent twelve or thirteen years (1996-2009) manacled to a word processor, trying to make seamless sense of a scenario in which a modern-day Scotsman took on the mantle of John Macnab, stole the Book of Deer, used it to symbolically reconsecrate the battered church in Glenfinnan and tied all that into the history of Royal Houses vying for power. The story climaxed with the 1997 devolution vote and Princess Diana’s funeral, both of which actually happened that September, less than a week apart.

And not surprisingly, I couldn’t make it work.

Despite a 2002 diagnosis of Asperger’s syndrome which enabled me to concentrate on a project like Stanley Kubrick and enough years on the word processor putting in “the sustained, focused effort it takes to achieve extraordinary mastery” (How To Be A Genius, New Scientist, 2006), I couldn’t make it all coherently come together. An early attempt to see the Book at Cambridge had met with a polite but firm refusal; and an unwise decision to show the manuscript of Macnab to a Glasgow writers group who hanged, drew and quartered it brought me to a battered halt in 2009.

I felt like I’d done two PhDs worth of work, I was creatively exhausted and that seemed to be the end of it. Metaphorically speaking, Macnab was buried beneath several feet of reinforced concrete and that was that.

Then fate or destiny intervened.

I was swept up into an amazing real-life adventure featuring a character from Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the actress who’d played her, crossed America overland to meet the actress on Sunset Boulevard and wrote the book on it. I was then miraculously discovered by Amanda Field of Chaplin Books, even more miraculously published and unbelievably well-reviewed on BBC Radio 4. I’d inadvertently achieved my life’s ambition to become a published author by 2012 but John Macnab’s body, it seemed, still lay a-molderin’ in the grave, and with it was buried any chance of commercially publicising the Book of Deer.

Or so anyone rational might think.

7^th May 2015. The night of the last UK general election before the Brexit vote.

I was at my publisher’s book launch in the Southbank Centre, it was indeed election night and from my Scottish perspective the UK seemed to be staggering through a thicket of convulsive political change made up of never-ending referendums and elections: devolution, independence, Brexit and so on.

As I’d studied the 1997 Scottish devolution referendum in excruciating detail for Macnab’s climax, I suppose I had become particularly sensitive to political events, so I made one single casual comment to Amanda Field that night.

I can’t remember the exact wording, but it went something like this:

“I’ve got this old thing. It’s full of Scottish history, politics and referendums. It doesn’t work, but with all that’s going on these days, maybe we can make some money out of it.”

“Okay. Well, send it down to me and we’ll see.”

“Okay, but it doesn’t work.”

So I went back home, levered the old Word file out of the back of the computer and emailed it to Amanda without any suspicion at all that anything might happen.

Macnab was dead as a doornail, the Book of Deer was chronically obscure, and that was all there was to it.

Looking back at it, I’m still amazed that fate could turn so strongly and swiftly on such a tiny fulcrum. A few casual words at the Southbank Centre, nothing more.

About four days later, I got an email from Amanda and when I read it my jaw hit the floor like something out of Looney Toons.

Hi James.

I've just finished what I admit is only a speed-reading (very high-speed!) of your Great Scottish Novel. Actually, I think it has a great deal going for it: very well-written of course, and full of interesting stuff - and Sandiman is a good character. And, strangely enough, its setting in 1996/7 is more interesting now than it probably was when you wrote it, because of developments since. … I think it's too good just to gather dust in your cupboard and I'd suggest that it would be worth your while issuing it (at least) as an ebook - and maybe having it up your sleeve if and when you talk to any literary agents.

(Amanda Field, 12^th May 2015)

Hi Amanda

You liked it!

If you could perhaps point me in the direction of the worst bits … , I'll take a moment to say "oh wow" a few times and then get into it.

I'll join the Society of Authors shortly, but once Macnab is in shape I suppose I can try a few literary agents as well..?

I'd better reiterate for the record that, as far as I am aware, John Buchan's works are out of copyright.

(James Christie, 12^th May 2015) 

With the tune Too Good to Be Forgotten by Amazulu looping giddyingly in my head, I gaily re-edited and revised The Legend of John Macnab. John Macnab shot out of the deepest of deep graves with astonishing alacrity, and it’s important to stress that as John Buchan had sadly died young in 1940 due to a fall, more than seventy years had now elapsed, John Macnab was indeed now out of copyright and the way ahead was clear.

And woven into Macnab were the details and history of the Book of Deer, poised to be commercially (as opposed to academically) publicised.

Hi James.

EIGHT PAGES of lists of corrections??!! I am completely flabbergasted.

(Amanda Field, 25^th September 2015)

Just thought I’d better do the best job I could do…

(James Christie, 25^th September 2015)

Go back to bed James! I should think you could sleep for a week after that!

(Amanda Field, 25^th September 2015)

50 Macnabs just arrived (we were out, thank God the cleaning lady was in), pretty amazing it's all come true after all these years, and I may not be an artist but I like the cover.

Well, wow, a bit like seeing a 1,000 to 1 outsider winning the Derby. It will be interesting to see if it's a surprise hit...

(James Christie, 6^th October 2015)

Macnab review

“Thought it one of the best works of literary fiction I’ve read for quite a time. I remember those times so well. I look forward to your next book.”

(John Bainbridge, author. 2018)

Macnab didn’t hit the big time, though I’ve always thought it should have been the next Outlander. However, its publication in 2015 validated my life’s work and delivered an obscure but priceless part of Scottish history to a country clamouring for independence and recognition of its culture, history and heritage only a year after the independence referendum itself. It was packaged in a clear and commercially saleable format, but still didn’t seem able to help the Book of Deer bridge the gap from obscure manuscript to popular cultural icon.

But I felt I’d done my bit, and for that and many other reasons I drew a line under it all and moved back to Shropshire, where I’d been born, in 2019.

However, fate and destiny weren’t done with me yet.

In 2022, the Book of Deer Project brokered a deal with the National Lottery Heritage Fund and Cambridge University Library to bring the Book back to Scotland for the first time in seven centuries or so and display it in Aberdeen Art Gallery for three months.

I flew up to Aberdeen in July 2022 and, after twenty-eight years, looked upon the Book of Deer.

I felt like Heinrich Schliemann gazing upon the face of Agamemnon.

Truly.

I sat in the display hall and communed with the Book of Deer for two days. The staff were kind enough to take numerous photographs of me with it, and I was able to frame one.

It felt like a satisfactory culmination of a life’s journey, even though the Book itself, encased in an atmosphere-controlled casket, could not be touched.

I had notified the Scottish media I’d be there, and as usual they hadn’t taken a blind bit of notice. I was profoundly unimpressed with that, but I was used to it.

So it goes, as Kurt Vonnegut used to say.

It still wasn’t the end of the story, though…

Two years later, in August 2024, I dropped off some vintage comics at an autistic bookshop in Huntingdon and casually decided to spend the night in Cambridge. I hadn’t seen the university city in over twenty years and wanted to renew my acquaintance with it. My ties to rare books and history still ran deep. I got a room at Christ’s College and, almost as an afterthought (much as it had been that night at the Southbank Centre in 2015), I called Cambridge University Library just in case there might be some chance of seeing the Book of Deer.

I genuinely expected to get another polite but firm refusal, and my jaw once again hit the floor like something out of Looney Toons when the library virtually rolled out the red carpet for me.

I guess there’d been a change in management.

Thirty years after I found the Book of Deer reprint at the stately home, I walked the last league of the long road to my destiny, and came upon Cambridge University Library.

My appointment was at 1.00 pm. I was there by 10.00 am, but was ushered in immediately. Dr. James Freeman, the medieval manuscripts specialist, showed me into the manuscripts room and the Book of Deer was placed in front of me.

Uncased.

We discussed exactly what its claims to fame were, and the good doctor confirmed that:

The Book contains the earliest known examples of Scottish Gaelic.

It is one of the twelve most important western medieval manuscripts in the library.

I am the first person in history to have written a novel inspired by the Book of Deer.

Then I remembered something else.

Over fifteen years earlier, I’d added one seemingly innocuous sentence to Macnab's final pages:

The splendid little book was back in Cambridge but moves were afoot to transfer it to Aberdeen University Library.

At the time, I was juggling so many themes I didn't know exactly what I was doing but I think my general idea was quietly to implant the suggestion in peoples' minds that (while bypassing nationalist hysteria) why not just move the Book from one special collection to another?

This was a lot less dramatic than stealing the Stone of Destiny as Ian Hamilton and his chums had done in 1950, but I'd already had John Macnab fictionally filch the Book so all that was left to do was suggest that perhaps it might be loaned out and/or returned?

So that's what I did.

After thirty long years and standing mere feet from the actual Book of Deer, I suggested to Dr. Freeman that Cambridge get in touch with Aberdeen and maybe do something like this. 

He seemed quite open to the idea and I think that little bit of quiet diplomacy, if you will, was the most important thing I've done in my life. Funnily enough, it exactly equates with a recent comment of the late Ian Hamilton's:

"To do something for your country that spills not a drop of blood is, I think, something to be proud of."

I don't know what else will come to pass, but I think I've done my bloodless best for Scotland and fulfilled my destiny.

I walked through a city of aquatint serene in late summer sun. Where, like Brideshead’s Oxford, it seemed that men still walked and spoke as they had done in Newman’s day.

And so the splendid little Book’s story goes on.