As every student of British history is aware, Bonny Prince Charlie made a right cockup of the Battle of Culloden. However, a secret known to only a select few historians is that the berk who brought disaster upon the highlanders in 1745 was not the Prince, but a player impersonating him, while the Prince, himself, lived in Cornwall in the guise of a humble cheesemonger. In "Song of the Highwayman; or, The Smuggler's Opera: The True Secret History of Charles III's Near Restoration to the Throne of England," medievalist Stanley Lombardo reveals how identical twins separated at birth changed the course of English history. Therein, the reader shall meet players, smugglers, gamblers, Earls, Countesses, whores, Jacobites, redcoats, renegades, taverners, Sidhe enchantresses, Herne the Hunter, and King Herla's Wild Rout -- and, above all, the enigmatic highwayman known as the Fen Tiger! If Alexandre Dumas ("The Corsican Brothers"), Henry Fielding ("Tom Jones"), and Russell Thorndyke ("Doctor Syn: The Scarecrow") had collaborated on a tale of thundering hooves and flashing steel to create the opus maximus of their careers, the result would have been "The Song of the Highwayman; or, The Smuggler's Opera"!
