AS PROMISED - SAMPLE CHAPTER FROM SCOTTISH MILITARY DISASTERS - > Book Extract
* He was an Eighteenth Century Scottish Forrest Gump - Stobo
** Here's one that combines Canadian and Scottish themes - Tunnelling for Victory
*** Those who enjoyed reading about the Royal Scots’ Armistice Day battle with the Bolsheviks in 1918might be interested in the same fight as seen from a Canadian viewpoint - Canada’s Winter War
***** Read about the blunder that made Canada an easy target for invasion from the United States - Undefended Border
****** Read about the Second World War's Lord McHaw Haw
******* Serious questionmarks over the official version of one the British Army's most dearly held legends - The Real Mackay?
********** It's been a while since I posted a new article. This one's called Temptation
********** Read about how the most Highland of the Highland regiments during the Second World War fared in the Canadian Rockies - Drug Store Commandos.
************* We now have a Guide to Scottish military museums on this site.
************** Just weeks before the outbreak of the First World War one of Britain's most bitter enemies walked free from a Canadian jail - Dynamite Dillon
*************** Click to read - - Victoria's Royal Canadians - about one of the more unusual of the British regiments.
*************** Read an article about the Royal Scots and their desperate fight against the Bolsheviks on Armistice Day 1918 - Forgotten War A second article, looks at the same battle but through a Canadian lens .
***************No-one has got back to me with a German source for the claim that the kilties during the First World War were known as The Ladies from Hell . See My Challenge to You
***************** A map showing the old Scottish regimental recruiting districts can now be seen by clicking Recruiting Area Map .
****************** The Fighting Men 1746 article now includes the estimated strengths of the Jacobite clan regiments which marched into England in 1745 See Clan Strengths
****************** **I've posted a fresh article - Scotland’s Forgotten Regiments. Guess what it's about.
******************** The High Court Hearing in London in May 2012 attracted a lot of visitors to this site. See Batang Kali Revisited
********************* Why not have a look at Book of the Year
Don't Climb In
I wonder how many British children died from suffocation in the 1960s and 70s after climbing into an abandoned fridge. Certainly there must have been enough that the government made a public education film warning kids to stay clear of fridges. Or was it telling adults to take the door of the fridge before illegally dumping it? We were also informed by the telly that if we did not use the underpass on the way home from buying New Shows our dads would almost run us down in his car and our grannies would be very perplexed. Was the kid or Charlie the cat who burned the house down by playing with matches? Or did Charlie talk the kid out of playing with the matches? I never did get to stagger around the country in an RAF boiler suit suffering from hypothermia. Downed RAF aircrew in the final stages of hypothermia were seldom seen on my street. I think the government perhaps maybe had some interesting ideas about the kind of lives most of the population were experiencing. New Shows, killer fridges, talking cats and hypothermia. They were obviously interesting but dangerous times.
Elvis
I'll never forget the day that I didn't meet singer Elvis Costello. It was a Saturday in Lerwick. Most Saturday afternoons I would go for a couple of pints at the Thule Bar, down by the harbour, with my flatmate Lois. But that Saturday there was an old film I'd always wanted to see showing on Channel 4. So, I didn't go that Saturday. Lois was a long long time coming back. When he finally did get home it turned out he'd spent the afternoon boozing with pop star Elvis Costello. Costello and his then wife were on a cruise ship that had called in to Shetland to let the passengers stretch their legs. Costello didn't get further than the Thule on the quayside. Lois said he was good guy and had promised to come back to Shetland and play. And lo and behold, he did come and play at that year's Shetland Folk Festival. Just him and his guitar. If he hadn't already been a star, you would have said he was going to one. He was bigger and broader than I'd expected, the TV made him look a bit scrawny. I can't remember the name of that film that was on Channel 4.
Shameless Plug #9 - With Wellington was among the books recommended as an excellent Christmas present by the prestigious The Society for Army Historical Research. There was another mysterious surge in sales of With Wellington last summer. At the end of May it was the third best selling book about the Peninsular War on the website of one of Britain's biggest booksellers and Number Eighteen in the table for all Napoleonic books. Last December's sales surge turned out to be a combination of the venerable Scots Magazine declaring it Book of the Month in its January 2015 edition and a highly favourable review in the Napoleonic Association's newsletter. Scots Magazine's reviewer, nature writer and author, Jim Crumley, declared "I don't much care for military memoirs, but I could not put this one down". Other reviewers have been equally enthusiastic - "If you are interested in the memoirs of British soldiers in the Napoleonic Wars this book is a MUST!... You don't get many Napoleonic memoirs as good as this" and "It is the most candid memoir of the British Army I have ever read... does not pull any punches ... highly entertaining, but also thought provoking..." To have a look at the full reviews check out more about With Wellington
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