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
Lallans Lunacy
I'm not a fan of Lallans. I think the problem is that there's no such language. I've heard folk on the radio, poets in particular, who tend to think that all they have to do is substitute as many English words with Scots dialect ones as they can. The problem is the dialect words are plucked willy-nilly from across Scotland. No single person would naturally use all those words in one sentence. There are many varieties of Lowland speech. Welding them all together into one supposed language, Lallans, comes across as fake and affected.
Jail 'Em Now
There's a radio programme called the Urbanist. For the past fortnight it was unavailable here. That didn't make me sad. The programme often makes me angry. It usually interviews architects and others involved in city development. The reality of this world is Grenville Towers and 72 dead. Most folk I know are victims of supposed urban developers rather than being better off thanks to them. These people very seldom make ordinary people's lives better. And yet I don't think I've ever heard the programme's presenters ever ask a tough question. The only criticisms of urban planning come from interviewees trying to differentiate themselves from their competitors. I suspect the presenters' reticence may be linked to the fact that much of the programme's content comes from international conferences and perhaps no-one wants to jeopardise the flow of invitations.
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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