JACOBITE history enthusiasts are to challenge screen portrayals of their hero Bonnie Prince Charlie as a wimp.

TV series Outlander portrayed the Young Pretender two years ago as a fop.
Produce Ron Moore called him "a hot mess" and Scots actor Sam Heughan, who plays Jamie Fraser in the series, summed up the show's view of Charles Edward Stuart as "useless". 

Heughan said at the time: "He was completely ineffectual and led these Highlanders to their doom."

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Now the non-political 1745 Association, which exists "to safeguard the Jacobite heritage" is to host a lecture at Culloden which aims to prove the Prince could march miles through the heather so must have been tough after all.

Association chairman Michael Nevin said their aim was to target Outlander, and what he called "the notorious 1964 'docudrama' Culloden".

He said today: "This year's NTS/745 Association Lecture, held on the eve of the annual Culloden commemoration, will challenge the caricature of Prince Charles Edward Stuart as the effete figure represented in the notorious 1964 'docudrama' Culloden and more recently in the TV series Outlander.

"Whatever you may think of the Prince's abilities or otherwise as a military commander, these portrayals are a travesty of the man he must have been.

"The popular picture of the Prince as an effeminate weakling is a hangover from eighteenth-century Hanoverian propaganda.

There is no way that such a man could have mobilised the support he did or completed the gruelling odyssey from the Highlands to Derby and back."

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Speaker Steve Lord, author of the book "Walking with Charlie: In the Footsteps of the Forty-Five" says clues to the Prince's character are provided by the journeys that he made across Scotland in 1745/46. 

Ten journeys will be covered in the talk, including a "very arduous journey" of 20 miles from Loch Arkaig (Strathan) through Glen Pean to Oban and Meoble on April 18th and 19th 1746 in the immediate aftermath of Culloden.

Mr Lord said: "This walk must not be undertaken by anyone other than a confident and well-equipped walker."

Mr Lord's talk is at the NTS Visitor Centre at Culloden at 1:30 PM on Friday, April 12th 2019.