Nigel Tranter; Writer Created as He Walked

On his 90th birthday last Nov. 23, Nigel Tranter had his morning bowl of porridge, donned his tweed jacket and cap, and made his daily 10-mile ramble around Scotland’s East Lothian, jotting down his thoughts on note cards.

“I have written around 5 million words and have produced 120 books, with another seven in the pipeline,” he told the London Daily Mail on that milestone birthday, with no hint of boasting. “I am just a storyteller, and very lucky to have survived all these years on my writing.”

Tranter, a historian and novelist and one of Britain’s most prolific writers, died Sunday at his home in Gullane, Scotland, of the flu.

The name Tranter, has been translated as “walker” and, by Tranter himself, as “hawker” or “carrier.” All are appropriate for the man who wrote while he walked, at a rate of about 100 words a mile, and formalized the stories on a typewriter later for hawking or carrying to readers around the world.

Tranter initially wrote less for literary perfection than to support his wife, May, who died in 1979, and their children, Frances May and Philip, who died in a car crash in 1966.

He was known for his scores of historical romances and books of Scottish history and places. But to fund his offspring’s college education, he penned 13 children’s books and even churned out westerns under the pen name Nye Tregold, noting that he “read one and then wrote 14 of them.”

Literature probably will best remember Tranter for his five-volume “The Fortified House in Scotland,” published between 1962 and 1970, for which he drew his own pictures and studied 653 complexes, and for his early 1970s trilogy on Robert the Bruce, the hero who freed Scotland from British rule in the 14th century.

In childhood, Tranter had wanted to be an architect who restored castles. His first book, written at age 21, was “The Fortalices and Early Mansions of Southern Scotland.” Although he later would call that title “pretentious,” the book established his lifelong interest in the buildings, and he claimed a hand in saving 64.

Born in Glasgow, Tranter was the son of Gilbert Tranter, a former minister in the Catholic Apostolic Church who lost the family fortune in a gamble on De Beers diamond shares and then went into insurance work.

“It ruined him in every way,” the writer later said of his alcoholic father, whom he called “Sir” and who died when Nigel was 19.

Unable to afford a seven-year architectural apprenticeship, Tranter followed his father into an uncle’s insurance business and stayed for 10 years. Because of his father’s experiences, he became a lifelong teetotaler and never bought anything on credit.

“Strong tea and weak women are what I always say are my weaknesses,” the nonagenarian quipped last year.

Tranter published his first novel, “Trespass,” in 1937. After publishing 10 more and serving in the British Royal Artillery during World War II, he became a full-time writer, conceding years later, “I didn’t like insurance at all.”

At one time, the author had his own historical program on Scottish television, “Towers of Strength.” He frequently appeared on other programs for the BBC and was much in demand as a speaker.

Late last year, author Ray Bradfield published a biography of Tranter, fittingly titled “Scotland’s Storyteller.”