This interview with D. K. Broster—the only one that I’m aware of her ever having given—was published in the Sunday Post of 1 July 1928, which I accessed via the British Newspaper Archive. Unfortunately the first part of the scan is quite badly obscured by the folding of the page; I’ve indicated doubtful and illegible words with square brackets and question marks.
See also Miss Broster Comes to the Highlands; this interview evidently took place during the same holiday discussed by that article.
“Who the devil, damn him, is this man Broster who has got such an inside knowledge of the Highlander?”
This is the question a famous [?Scottish] historian in Venice wrote to D. K. Broster’s publishers [?on] the appearance of that [illegible] young writer’s first [?Jacobite] novel, “The Flight of the Heron,” and it was a similar [?question]—though I would have [?expressed] it more politely—that I [illegible] to answer for myself and “The Sunday Post” readers [?when] I learned that Miss Broster [?was on] holiday at Kinloch Rannoch.
Before I set out, however, I had [?discovered] a little more about this [illegible] than the historian had [?done]. I knew that “this man Broster” was Miss Dorothy Kathleen Broster, the writer of “The Flight of the Heron” and “The Gleam in the North,” and several [?other] historical novels, and a [illegible] historian of Oxford, and [?must] confess I was just a little [illegible] at the prospect of meeting such a learned person.
Miss Broster is the typical [?“blue] stocking” neither in [?appearance] nor in manner. She [?is of] medium height, dresses [illegible], has brown, shingled hair, eyes that are keen and penetrating, yet always seem to be twinkling with fun. Her voice is [illegible] and has the cultured accent of Oxford.
[?Her] greeting was very unlike [?the expected] greeting of a learned [?Oxonian].
“You haven’t got half enough [?clothes] on for this cold corner of the Highlands,” she scolded as she wrapped me round in a warm blanket coat of her own before settling down to tell me about “this man Broster,” who seems to fill the role of Sir J. M. Barrie’s M‘Connachie.
Miss Broster was born near Liverpool, and was educated at Chiltern College for Girls and St Hilda’s College, Oxford, where she took her degree in history. For several years afterwards she acted as secretary to Sir Charles Firth, Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford.
When there she had little time to write novels, although she was always determined to do so some time. Her first books—the first appeared in 1911—were tales of the gay French period before the Revolution, and she might have gone on dealing with that period of history had she not ventured into Scotland for a holiday in 1923. Her first visit, she told me, was certainly in the nature of a venture, and it was only when she counted up her bill of expenses at the end of it that she realised that things were not so bad as she had feared.
By this time I had discovered that the most conventional questions called forth the most delightfully unconventional replies from Miss Broster.
When I asked her if she came to Scotland first because she had been fired with enthusiasm by the romantic story of the Jacobite risings she looked at me in astonishment.
“Good gracious, no,” she replied. “Am I really expected to feel like that? I just came up for a holiday, and I would have come years before if Scotland had not had such a dreadful reputation for being expensive. A friend, however, told me it was not so bad as it was painted, so I decided to risk it. But when I came I had no intention of writing about your Jacobites.”
“Then what did inspire you to do so?” I asked, this time sure that I would get a romantic answer.
“Five weeks of continuous rain in Lochaber,” came the lugubrious answer. So I gave up questioning then, and left Miss Broster to tell her own story in her own bright and breezy way.
“I don’t suppose for a moment that five weeks of sunshine would have had the same effect on me,” she said. “It was certainly the rain that did it. One morning I went down to breakfast and told my friends that I had thought out a lovely scene in a Jacobite story—it was the scene in ‘The Flight of the Heron’ where Keith Windham arrives just in time to save Ewan [sic] Cameron from being shot in front of the deserted shieling after the Battle of Culloden. Where the idea came from I do not know, but that started me off, and before I left I had the whole book plotted out.
“When I went back to England I studied up the histories of that period, and discovered the movements of all the regiments, and threaded as many of them as I could into my story.
“It is certainly no easy job writing historical novels. You cannot let your characters gallop off on their own as they always seem to want to do. The movements of all the troops have to be historically correct, yet I don’t support half of my readers realise that when they read my books. And I don’t suppose they care a damn whether they are correct or not. It would worry me, however, if they were not.”
Miss Broster said she had often been asked how she, an Englishwoman, had managed to get such a wonderful conception of the Highland mind. It was a question she could not answer herself, because she had no idea how she had managed it; in fact, she did not know she had succeeded until she got so many letters of congratulation after the publication of her books.
A friend of Miss Broster’s, who is on holiday with her, interrupted the proceedings here to say that it was no puzzle to her. She had seen Miss Broster at work on this burrowing process often. She had tremendous powers of assimilation, and when anything interested her she would not rest satisfied till she had got down to its root. As soon as she made up her mind to write Jacobite novels she proceeded to study the Highlanders’ history and geography, their thoughts and their lives, and she did not rest until she had finished.
“No, I don’t suppose I did,” continued Miss Broster, “but you must not think that although I appear to have got into the Highlanders’ minds I am now of their way of thinking. To you it may seem a dreadful thing for me to confess, but I am not the least bit interested in Prince Charlie except merely as a symbol, but the people who followed him interest me intensely.
“Since that first holiday I have come back very often—in spite of the weather! The amazing thing about Scotland to me is the way every single day of sunshine makes you forget the miserable days that go before. It is a case of spending three days cursing and the next rejoicing, and the rejoicings are so great that we forget about everything else.”
Miss Broster has never written a book with an English hero, although she can lay no claim to belonging to any country but England.
“There may be a tiny spark of Welsh blood in my veins,” she said, “but the Welsh are not a Celtic branch about which I am very keen. I would rather have had real Celtic blood from Scotland.
“Now there is really nothing more to be said about myself. I have never been lost on the mountains, and I have never had any real adventures in Scotland or elsewhere, although the fact must have been a great disappointment to a lady in Florida, who, after reading some of my books, wrote—‘Do write and tell me all about your adventurous life.’ She made me wonder if she thought I had lived through the Jacobite rebellions and the gay French days as well!
“I work regularly and hard, but it takes me at least two years to finish a book, because I put a great deal of hard study and research into everything I write. I do all my own typing, and although I must have typed millions of words my typing shows no signs of improvement.
“And now,” she concluded, “you know all there is to know about ‘this man Broster.’”