Stephen Boardman has steadily contributed an impressive stream of scholarship over the past decade to a much better understanding of late medieval Scottish history. This work is a thoroughly exhaustive chronological and political narrative of Clan Campbell with one chapter devoted primarily to economics. Although exceedingly insightful, this long-anticipated assessment of the family's history upon their kingdom's development is at most times a very difficult read. The problem lies primarily in the myriad of both personal and place names that even a curious genealogist or specialist in the subject might overlook or find at best tolerable. Yet, this might be an unruly criticism as a large amount of history is covered in a book so relatively brief. The author, however, is not so helpful as he is given to quite large paragraphs—some as long as over two pages often dealing more with Clan Douglas than his topic. This account of the significant Highland clan is nevertheless refreshing. The traditional negative reputation of the Campbells brought about primarily through intimidation of their opponents is successfully challenged by the author. The almost meteoric rise of the clan into political prominence—usually explained in terms of ruthlessness and duplicity in suppressing their fellow Gaels, MacDougalls and MacDonalds in particular, on behalf of the Stewart dynasty—is clearly disputed in the book. Boardman sees the dominant Campbell lords as merely individuals intertwined in complicated relationships with both Scottish monarchs and the ordinary Gaelic-speaking residents of the western areas and isles of the kingdom. By no means were the Campbells mere puppets of the crown or converts committed to the Lowland aristocratic culture.

Lapses in medieval historical records and the paucity of important source material in certain significant areas necessitate a larger than desired amount of suppositions, which, although certainly present, are not troublesome but understandable. An example of this is a helpful “conjectural genealogy” alongside three other tables and three maps of the western region of the kingdom that are very helpful amid the plethora of personal and place names. To cut to the chase, of particularly important note in this family survey is Gillespic Campbell, who was responsible for establishing the lordship on which his descendents would build. His son, Colin, and his own descendants were known as the “Lords of Argyll.” A thorough examination of “Friendly Duncan” Campbell who dominated the clan for some forty years in the midst of palace intrigues involving the Albany Stewarts and James I culminates in the ascendancy of his grandson, yet another Colin Campbell officially recognized as the first earl of Argyll, during which the clan went into “overdrive.” Boardman writes, “Over the next four decades Colin Campbell would take the family in policies and ambitions into the very heart of royal government” (159). Indicative of his appealing writing style, “In the west the argent and sable banners of the Campbells came to flap and flutter over new sea- and landscapes. Duncan could sleep easy under the marble at Kilmun” (159).

Having survived the intrigues of James II's and III's courts, including regicide of the latter, and the earliest years of James IV's own turbulent minority, it was during the last four years from 1488 until 1492 that Earl Colin was at the height of his power and influence. The author describes him as a chancellor who apparently enjoyed the support of a large cross-section of politicians and a regional lord whose interests allowed him to dominate the western region's affairs. Following the first earl was Archibald, his son. This second earl's almost constant attendance on James IV from 1495 onward made him like his father a virtual absentee lord. The Campbells’ “Edinburgh” household was composed of Scots from the west, and the earl himself was certainly not detached from his own province's affairs. This underscores a main tenet of this rewarding book—that Clan Campbell was not intent upon conversion of the Gaelic west to the ways of a more sophisticated lowland aristocratic culture like that of the “auld” enemy England, which held sway at Flodden Field in 1513 where the dead Gaelic earl lay nearby his dead king.

This work, although tedious at times, provides the serious student of late medieval Scotland with a very important tool. Drawing upon a vast array of primary sources and the latest impressive scholarship of the era, such as that of Roland Tanner's The Late Medieval Scottish Parliament (East Linton, UK, 2001), Boardman provides at the end of each chapter a very lengthy list of citations and elaborations. The book as a whole leaves the reader with hope for more scholarship of this nature to come from such a talented craftsman. The author should follow his own suggestion that “the role of royal hunting expeditions in allowing Scottish kings to fraternize with and cultivate the loyalty of their Gaelic-speaking subjects should perhaps receive greater emphasis” (325).