Annual NTS/1745 Association Culloden anniversary lecture
This year's National Trust for Scotland /1745 Association Annual Culloden Lecture will be a particularly poignant occasion, for it will be the first time the lecture will be held without the presence of the man who initiated it, my predecessor as Chair of The 1745 Association, Dr Christopher Duffy, who passed away last November.
Christopher's research considerably enhanced our understanding of the Battle of Culloden. He concluded that the battlefield extended over a far greater area than previously thought, emphasising the need for careful conservation in the face of continuing threats to its integrity.
Christopher was undoubtedly the leading Jacobite scholar of his generation. His book Fight for a Throne (2015), developing his earlier work, The '45: Bonnie Prince Charlie and the untold story of the Jacobite Rising (2003), is likely to remain the authoritative work on the military history of the Rising of 1745. His work fundamentally changed our understanding of the campaign, comprehensively disproving the conventional wisdom that prevailed prior to the publication of The '45, that the Rising was doomed from the outset. Christopher's conclusion was that the Rising could very well have succeeded had different decisions been taken at key points during the campaign.
This year's lecture seeks to build on his research by analysing seven key decisions which led to Culloden, assessing why they were taken, what alternatives might have been considered, and how we can avoid falling into similar psychological traps today. The lecture will draw on the seminal research of Nobel Laureates Herbert Simon, Maurice Allais, Daniel Kahneman, Richard Thaler and others to address these issues. It will last approximately 40 minutes followed by the opportunity for questions and answers.
The lecture will be held in the Culloden Visitor Centre at 1:00 PM on Friday, April 14th 2023, the eve of the annual Culloden Commemoration on the Saturday, and tickets can be obtained at
Michael Nevin, Chair, The 1745 Association SCIO