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
The Beautiful Game!
With the World Cup approaching I have little doubt that folk who know little about football will start chuntering about The Beautiful Game. These people, often North Americans, know little about football. It is game but it is seldom beautiful. In fact, I'm not sure it is ever beautiful. I think part of the problem is that most North Americans have never played it. That puzzles me to extent because it's been played in Canada for years. Edmonton Scottish FC once fielded actual Scots and some of them were pretty good players. I know one old Scottish guy who would have had the chance to turn professional if he hadn't emigrated to Canada. Now the World Cup will soon be being played in Canada, the USA and Mexico. But that's more about trying to create a lucrative professional sports income stream than any actual love or understanding of football on the part of the promoters. One look at how visiting fans are going to be ripped off tells you more than you want to know. In the USA the price of a bus ticket to get to the game has been jacked for $3 to something like $100. And it turns out that daytime temperatures at some of grounds are expected to be dangerously high for both players and fans. It's all about the money stupid. Especially if you’re stupid enough to think it's The Beautiful Game.
No Yank Profs
I've been disappointed by the high number of America. "academics" teaching at Scottish universities these days - if radio interviews are anything to go by. My reading has led me to form a very low opinion of US faculty members. I resent the time I've wasted finishing the drivel most of them produce. I have a theory as to why they are so piss-poor. It goes back to the Vietnam War and the fact that draft dodgers like Donald Trump could avoid service by enrolling in higher education. The demand for college and university places from spoiled rich brats meant the teaching faculties were expanded too rapidly. Folks who couldn't teach a toddler to tie a shoe lace ended up being taken on. The consequences are still with us - if you're taught by an idiot......... And as those students become professors themselves in succeeding generations the damage was perpetuated. The other sad part of this influx of Yanks is that it also suggests that like US higher education in the mid-60s through to the early 70s the Scottish system has been expanded too rapidly. No surprise these days when kids need a university degree in catering get a job laying tables in a greasy spoon cafe.
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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