A life without RLS cannot be said to be properly lived. This great stylist’s range even includes Ruritanian extravagances but here we have the gloriously told adventure of a young Lowlander, set in the aftermath of the last great Jacobite rebellion of 1745. It also contains one of the world’s wickedest uncles in a very gothic passage, complete with a ruined stone staircase lit only by lightning flashes, and blue-coated firecracker Alan Breck, whose entrance into the tale must be one of the most spectacular in literature.