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
Taliban Thoughts
No-one, or no-one I would rate, would deny that the Taliban are very wrong to deny females a proper education or jobs in the professions. But a few thoughts. There's no war going on within Afghanistan to overthrow the Taliban. The education issue affects only a tiny proportion of women there. The fact that they come from the most privileged sections of society means that the Western Media, themselves bastions of privilege, identify with them and give their plight a lot of coverage. The vast majority of Afghan girls were, and are, never going to become doctors, airline pilots or lawyers and they are being hurt by Western sanctions. And I'm pretty sure the war against the Soviet Union and their Afghan Communist clients was in a large part inspired by their insistence on educational opportunity regardless of sex. The Red Army was fighting as much for girls' education as the US and NATO troops who propped up the corrupt Afghan government until recently. But we in the West supported the Mujahedin back then. What changed when it comes to the West's attitude to female education?
Can't Look
I've got a pile of really good books about newspaper journalism. The thing is I can't bring myself to read them anymore. The make me too sad. Journalism is pretty much dead. Most radio and television reporting was based on what was in the papers. Now the newspapers have tiny overworked staff and that shows in their poor content. And the folk who call themselves journalists these days are more interest in expressing opinions than ferreting out and presenting facts. The line between fact and opinion isn't blurred, it's non-existent. Without newspapers to ransack, radio and television are now pretty poor conduits for the information people need to take part in democratic government. News belongs to no-one but it's expensive to gather. No-one wants to pay for news and the interweb meant for a while they didn't have to. But then the flow of proper journalism died with the demise of print media as the online outlets hoovered up their ad revenue. It's a bit like why electrical appliances no longer have lives measured in decades. A washing machine or food mixer that lasts 30 years would be really expensive due to the high quality of the components. And manufacturers don't say tell you that for the price you want to pay you'll be lucky to get six years out of an appliance. So, we take a chance. Can we afford to take the same chance on shoddy news?
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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