Nantucket, Massachusetts – Award-winning historical biographer and former Siasconset resident Flora Fraser will speak on her latest book Pretty Young Rebel: The Life of Flora MacDonald at the Nantucket Atheneum on Friday, July 12, at 6:30pm.

Pretty Young Rebel is a captivating biography of Fraser’s namesake, a remarkable young Scotswoman whose bold decision to help Bonnie Prince Charlie—the Stuart claimant to the British throne—evade capture and flee the country in 1746 has become the stuff of legend.

Fraser’s lecture is co-presented by The National Trust for Scotland Foundation USA, the American friends group of Scotland’s largest conservation charity. Among the properties in the care of the National Trust for Scotland is Culloden Battlefield, where Prince Charles Edward Stuart was decisively defeated in the last pitched battle on British soil. In less than an hour, around 1,300 men were slain – about 1,250 of them loyal to the prince.

A man on the run, Charles found an unlikely ally in Flora MacDonald, a young woman in her early twenties, who disguised the prince as an Irish maid and conveyed him by boat to Skye. But her story does not end there. Arrested for treason, Flora eventually fled the impoverished Scottish Highlands for the mountains of North Carolina, utterly unaware of the burgeoning revolution that would upend their lives there.

Speaking about her upcoming event, Fraser writes, “It is always a privilege and an honour to present my books at the Atheneum, and I look forward to exploring with guests Flora MacDonald’s charm and canny ways that helped her to navigate a path through civil war on either side of the Atlantic.”

Kirstin Bridier, executive director of NTSUSA added, “I cannot imagine a more appropriate location in the US to share the story of this bold and courageous 18^th-century woman, born and raised in the islands of the Outer Hebrides, than at the Nantucket Atheneum.”

Flora Fraser’s previous historical biographies include: Beloved Emma: The Life of Emma, Lady Hamilton; Princesses: The Daughters of George III; The Washingtons: George and Martha, which won the 2016 George Washington Book Prize. She is the daughter of Lady Antonia Fraser.

Previously a Trustee of the London National Portrait Gallery, Flora is a member of the Royal Historical Society and has an honorary Doctorate from King’s College London. The Elizabeth Longford Prize for Historical Biography, which Flora co-founded with Peter Soros in 2003 in affectionate memory of her late grandmother, the biographer of Queen Victoria and the Duke of Wellington, is now in its 21^st year.

Link to Register for Flora’s Talk!