Shakespeare didn’t let facts get in the way of a good story – but as Fiona Watson’s Macbeth: A True Story proves, his play would have been ever better had he done so.
Thanks to the Bard, Macbeth has become a byword for political ambition realised by bloody violence. But what Watson has uncovered, buried between layers of myth, is a history different from – and even more remarkable than – that recounted by Shakespeare.
Macbeth ruled over Alba (Scotland), one of Western Europe’s longest-established thrones. Friend of the Church and valiant protector of his people, he quickly made a name for himself. Watson’s biography of this formidable Celtic warrior-king is as impeccably researched as it is compelling.