THE MAXTONES OF CULTOQUHEY By E. MaXtone Graham It is
comparatively rare for one family to hold a small estate in unbroken male succession:for well over five hundred . years ; it is rarer still that the family has the Juck to contain such an able and industrious historian as Mrs. E. Maxtone Graham. This conjunction has been responsible for a charming book (Moray Press, 16s.), which, though it modestly claims to have been written for the sake of the descendants, will be of interest to many who have never even heard of " ane old litle family " called the Maxtones of CultoquheY. There are not so many stirring events and outstanding per- sonalities in the present volume as in the same writer's previous books, The Oliphants of Gaskrand The Beautiful Mrs. Graham ; but, nothing daunted, she has with humour, love and imagina- tive insight made a personality out of a whole family and an adventure out of the mere quiet doggedness with which, sur- rounded by larger land-owners, they have clung for fifteen generations to their small but beloved estate in the heart of Perthshire. It was Mango, the 10th Laird, who drily summed up his opinion of his neighbours in the famous Cultoquhey Litany, " which he intoned daily at a well near the house, surrounded by his household" :
" From the greed of the Campbells, From the ire of the Drummonds, From the pride of the Grahams, From the wind of the Murrays,
Good Lord, deliVer us."
There are many interesting letters, some charming portraits, an excellent' index and two wholly admirable genealogical charts. ' This is a book which might well be taken as a model by all writers of family histories.-
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