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Of Neighing Coursers and Trumpets Shrill: a Life of Richard, 1st Lord Dingwall and Earl of Desmond

This is a 50,000 –word biography of unusual ambition, as its subject, Richard Preston, Lord Dingwall and latterly Earl of Desmond, though a prominent figure in his lifetime, is all but ignored by historical accounts; memory of him having been suppressed. It seeks, therefore, both to reconstruct from diverse primary sources the career of a forgotten figure and to situate it within the current discourse on cultural memory, inquiring why at the time of his death the assessment of Dingwall was apparently so negative for him to be comprehensively ‘airbrushed’ from published and private record – no portraits of him are known to survive. Dingwall is also considered in the context of Renaissance self-fashioning, presenting an excellent case study, as his career had distinct Scottish, English, and Irish phases, each of which required Dingwall to re-present himself in order to play a new role within James VI & I’s imperial vision of Britain. Dingwall’s self-fashioning, however, was guided by models of a court culture that proved increasingly irrelevant to the situations into which he ventured. This study shows that although Dingwall excelled in court performances ranging from military exercises to masque dancing, these were representations of an inflexible view of right and authority that equipped him inappropriately for the challenges he took on.

This book impacts on multiple areas of scholarly interest including those of cultural memory, court culture, Renaissance self-fashioning, and Early-modern cultural/artistic contact between Britain and continental Europe. It adds to a body of work produced by the author that engages with so-called ‘lost’ figures from the period of the English Renaissance (a cultural phenomenon suffering from later reinterpretations), central among them Henry, Prince of Wales, with whom Dingwall was closely associated. Dingwall’s many intimate connections to important individuals and events – once reconnected (as now) – render him unignorable.