THE writer who sought to explain Scottish history was himself someone who defied easy explanation. John Prebble, who died last night aged 85, was an Englishman who felt tied to Scotland, an agreeable man who attracted disagreeable reactions from critics, a populariser who was pilloried by the intellectual.

The public supported John Prebble with the force of their money. His books on Scottish history - particularly Culloden, The Highland Clearances, and Glencoe - are perennial solid sellers. Yet academics could be savage in their assessments.

The late Professor Gordon Donaldson, historiographer royal, said in the 1980s that Prebble's work was ''utter rubbish''. The late Sir Iain Moncreiffe called him a ''barrack-room lawyer, sifting facts to suit his case''.

Tributes last night combined a warm appreciation of the man with a cold assessment of his work and recognised the controversy his books had created.

Professor Tom Devine of Aberdeen University, author of the best-selling Scottish Nation, said: ''The problem was that Prebble wrote a sort of faction. It was difficult to divine what was based on reasonable research and what was the product of the imagination.''

However, he said that Prebble brought a new audience to Scottish history in an era when academics wrote purely for their peers.

''Culloden and The Last Jaunt are very good books,'' he said, ''but Prebble also produced a totally unbalanced view of Scottish history in which everything is viewed as a series of tragedies.''

He said Prebble's legacy was considerable, however, as he had helped to create a climate in which Scottish history could be written in accessible terms.

Dr Jim Hunter, a Highland historian who is also chairman of Highlands and Islands Enterprise, was in no doubt as to Prebble's contribution. ''He did more than any other single person in the twentieth century to interest a wide general public in the history of Scotland and in particular the history of the Highlands and Islands,'' he said.

Ted Cowan, professor of Scottish history at Glasgow University, said: ''I am obviously very sad. I always found him a personable man who never changed over the years. He had a great sense of humour which he used to great effect. I do believe, however, that he was privately wounded by the criticism of some academics to his work. He put a brave face on it but I believe the criticism hurt him.

''It must be said, however, that he played a major role in the popularising of Scottish history. The academic classes may not have liked this, particularly as he made money out of his books, but he brought history to a new class of readers.

''He should be remembered in terms of his adventurous enthusiasm in confronting subjects and his ability to spread interest to the public at large.''

Professor Cowan added: ''Personally, I believe Culloden was his best book. He told the story from the point of view of the ordinary soldier. This was one of his great strengths. He was adept at describing the tragedy of the ordinary combatant.''

Michael Fry, whose Scottish Empire will be published later this year, was more critical. He said: ''I think he was an inferior historian who did not have the proper respect for evidence. He seemed to come to his subjects with his mind made up. This led to him producing shrill accounts of Scottish history.''

Yet he conceded: ''Prebble enlivened history and made use of original sources. He put some colour into Scottish history.''

Scottish historian Angus Calder said: ''I have a complex reaction to his death. He was a fine man. I approve very deeply of the values that inform his writing. I appreciate the way he wanted to be identified with the Scot, particularly the Gael. He had clarity and power in his writing and he was very convincing.

''His finest books were Culloden and Mutiny and I have great respect for both.

''However, he had a tendency to interpret everything as the result of a conflict between the Lowlander and the Highland Gael.''

Prebble's work on the Highland Clearances provided much controversy and Mr Calder said: ''His work on the Clearances did a great deal of damage, he accepted paranoid and tendentious evidence published in the nineteenth century.

''It helped to confirm in him a set of ideas that were simply wrong.''

Mr Calder accepted Prebble's importance as a writer: ''At his best, however, he did a wonderful job for Scottish history and for Scottish readers. We were lucky to have had him, for all my reservations.''.

Perhaps the last word should be left to John Prebble. The man whose ashes will be scattered in Glencoe said of his honorary degree from Glasgow University in 1997: ''I am honoured at this acknowledgement of my commitment to Scotland. This honour binds me even closer to Scotland, which is a land that I love.''

It was this sincerity of sentiment in man and work that would be accepted by even his harshest critics.

In his own

words

AT Culloden, and during the military occupation of the glens, the British government first defeated a tribal uprising and then destroyed the society that had made it possible.

The exploitation of the country during the next hundred years was within the same pattern of colonial development - new economies introduced for the greater wealth of the few, and the unproductive obstacle of a native population removed or reduced.

In the beginning the men who imposed the change were of the same blood, tongue and family as the people. They used the advantages given them by the old society to profit from the new, but in the end they were gone with their clans.

The Lowlander has inherited the hills, and the tartan is a shroud.

GLENCOE has no melancholy except that which men bring to it, remembering its history.

Running east to west along the northern border of Argyll, and eight miles in length, it is a deep scar left by the agony of Creation. It is an arm bent at the elbow, with sinews of quartz and muscles of granite.

It is both fortress and trap for the only natural entrances are at either end - across Rannoch Moor in the east and by Loch Levenside in the west, and the high passes to the north and south lead ignorant men to higher hills only.