John Prebble

John Edward Curtis Prebble, FRSL, OBE (23 June 1915 – 30 January 2001) was an English journalist, novelist, documentarian and popular historian. He is best known for his studies of Scottish history.

He was born in Edmonton, Middlesex, England, but in 1921 he emigrated with his parents to Saskatchewan, Canada, where his father had a brother. Returning to Edmonton with his family when aged 12, he attended the Latymer School. He joined the Communist Party of Great Britain but abandoned it after World War II.

He became a journalist in 1934 and served during World War II with the Royal Artillery. His wartime experiences led to his novels, Where the Sea Breaks (1944), and The Edge of Darkness, published in 1947. His Canadian prairie experience influenced two of his works, The Buffalo Soldier an historical novel about the American West, and Culloden, about the 1746 battle which resulted in the defeat of the Jacobite uprising. The story of Battle of Culloden had been part of the family lore when he grew up in the predominantly Scottish township of Sutherland, in rural Saskatchewan. His interest in the American West was also inspired by the fact that part of his family lineage was Native Canadian: his 1958 book, My Great-Aunt, Appearing Day, and other stories tells of a Native American relative; this story appeared as the film White Feather in 1955.

One of his first big successes was The High Girders (1956), a description of the Tay Bridge Disaster, involving the collapse of the first Tay rail bridge to Dundee. It has remained a popular work ever since publication. It was the first detailed account of the disaster to expose the many problems encountered during construction of the bridge, and Prebble also made extensive use of the Board of Trade Public Inquiry in reviewing the evidence. He included some of the many photographs made at the time, and which show the extent of devastation of the centre part of the bridge on the night of 28 December 1879. There is still controversy over the detailed causes of the failure, especially the contributions from poor design of the columns using cast iron and the storm raging at the time of the fall. However, the original conclusions of the Inquiry still stand. It found that the bridge fell owing to "bad design, bad construction and bad maintenance".

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