In the year 1745, the Jacobite rebels are marching to the south, to England. In 'Midwinter', John Buchan tells the thrilling story of Alastair Maclean, the intimate confidant of Prince Charles Edward Stewart, as he leaves on a dangerous and secret mission to raise support for the Jacobite cause in the west of England.Alastair Maclean, a Scotsman who lives in France with the Stuarts in exile, arrives in England to join the Scottish army towards London. But along the way, he discovered that agents supposedly to aid the Jacobite cause are actually paid by the English and pass the letters of the English government of these noble Charles Stuart and his men, promising money. These agents act purely as mercenaries, hoping to gain some of the estates that the nobles will confiscate for the benefit of the Crown when their betrayals are revealed.Maclean falls in love with Claudia, the wife of Jacobite Norreys, and is torn between his mission of using his own knowledge of Norreys' betrayal of the Jacobite cause to kill Norreys and conquer Claudia's love for himself. running on his own mission to join Prince Charles himself.The novel also features a young Samuel Johnson of guardian Claudia and the mysterious Midwinter, a violinist and a sort of gypsy king carrying Spoonbills, a "secret army" of landowners and peasants of "Old England" who are above politics, helping Maclean in exchange for the help Maclean gave them at the beginning of the novel.John Buchan (1875-1940) was a Scottish novelist, historian and politician who was Governor-General of Canada, the fifteenth President of the Canadian Confederation.After a brief legal career, Buchan simultaneously began his writing career and his political and diplomatic careers, serving as a private secretary to the administrator of various colonies in southern Africa. He eventually wrote propaganda for the British war effort during World War I. He was elected Member of Parliament for the Combined Scottish Universities in 1927, but he spent most of his time on his writing career, notably writing The Thirty-Nine Steps and other adventure fiction. In 1935, King George V, on the advice of Prime Minister R. B. Bennett, appointed Buchan to replace the Earl of Bessborough as Governor General of Canada, for which purpose Buchan was raised to the peerage. He occupied the post until his death in 1940.