This book analyses the origins, development and impact of British Army recruiting in the Scottish Highlands in the period from 1739 to 1815. It examines the interaction of government, landlords and tenantry. Recruiting is analysed within the context of rapid socio-economic change. The emphasis is on tenant reactions to recruiting, and the study concludes that this was a vital factor in bringing about change in the tenurial structure in the region. Both the decline of the tacksman and the emergence of crofting are linked to the process of regiment raising. Military recruiting involved a clear recognition on the part of the Highland landlords and tenantry that the Empire and the 'fiscal military state' offered alternative sources of revenue. Both groups 'colonised' various levels of the state's military machine. As a result of this close involvement, the government remained a vital influence in the area well after 1745, and a major player in the region's economy. Recruiting was not simply a residue of clanship, rather it was a form of commercial activity, analogous to kelping.

More Fruitful Than the Soil

This book deals with the problem of Scottish identity within the British context in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. On James VI's succession to the English throne in 1603 the Scots were troubled at the prospect of Scotland's nationhood being absorbed by a supremely confident and intolerant England. Their strategic response was to develop a self-conscious attention to Scotland's past. The non-institutionalised nature of Scottish society made it difficult for the Scots to produce a long and respectable history to vie with England's much-vaunted and impressive pedigree. The idea that the Scots seized on to define and validate their identity was that of the covenant with God – and this had profound and far-reaching results. This original and stimulating book provides a valuable contribution to the understanding of the processes of secularisation in early modern Europe, and indicates the significant ways in which the Scottish experience differed from that of England. It therefore provides a useful corrective to an Anglocentric interpretation of 'Britain'.

Scottish National Consciousness in the Age of James VI

Social and economic changes included an increase in production of food and raw materials, in turn sustaining the remarkable growth of towns and cities over this period. However, in the folk memory of Scotland the social and cultural costs of the revolution loom much larger: the loss of land for many thousands of families; the rise of individualism and the decline of neighborhood; the death of old rural societies which had formed Scotland's character for many generations. The drama and tragedy of Highland history during this period have attracted many authors, whereas the Lowland experience, that of the majority of Scots, hardly any. This book attempts to redress that balance, and in so doing examines why this extraordinary era, inextricably associated with failure, famine and clearance in Gaeldom, is remembered as one of 'improvements' in the Lowlands, where the folk memory of dispossession, if it ever existed, is long lost in collective amnesia. In so doing, Devine addresses an issue which goes right to the heart of the nation's past.

Clearance and Improvement

The 1820 Scottish Rising has been increasingly studied in recent decades. This collection of essays looks especially at local players on the ground across multiple regional centres in the west of Scotland, as well as the wider political circumstances within government and civil society that provide the rising's context. It examines insurrectionist preparation by radicals, the progress of the events of 1820, contemporary accounts and legacy memorialisation of 1820, including newspaper and literary testimony, and the monumental 'afterlife' of the rising. As well as the famous march of radicals led by John Baird and Andrew Hardie, so often seen as the centre of the 1820 'moment', this volume casts light on other, more neglected insurrectionary activity within the rising and a wide set of cultural circumstances that make 1820 more complex than many would like to believe. 1820: Scottish Rebellion demonstrates that the legacy of 1820 may be approached in numerous ways that cross disciplinary boundaries and cause us to question conventional historical interpretations.

1820: Scottish Rebellion

More than 25 years have passed since South Africans were being shot or hacked or burned to death in political violence, and the memory of the trauma has faded. Nevertheless, some 20 500 people were killed between 1984 and 1994. Conventional wisdom has it that most died as a result of the ANC's people's war. Many books have been written on South Africa's political transition, but none has dealt adequately with the people's war. This book does. It shows the extraordinary success of the people's war in giving the ANC a virtual monopoly on power, as well as the great cost at which this was done. The high price of it is still being paid. Apart from the terror and killings it sparked at the time, the people's war set in motion forces that cannot easily be tamed. Violence, once unleashed, is not easy to stamp out. 'Ungovernability', once generated, is not readily reversed. For this new edition, Anthea Jeffery has revised and abridged her seminal work. She has also included a brief overview of the ANC's National Democratic Revolution for which the people's war was intended to prepare the way. Since 1994, the NDR has been implemented in many different spheres. It is now being speeded up in its second and more radical phase.

People's War

'Mobbing and rioting' in late eighteenth-century Scotland was often the only recourse of the people in response to high food prices, the threat of eviction or the prospect of compulsory military service. This study of popular disturbances in the thirty-five years spanning the turn of the eighteenth century shows that rioting was not a blind or unreasoning reaction, but rather an active assertion of traditional rights and a collective appeal for just treatment. The book looks at meal mobs, riots against the Highland Clearances, the widespread anti-militia disturbances of 1797, and also riots about Church patronage, politics and industrial action. The concluding chapter draws various themes together and examines the composition of crowds in the period, the role of women in disturbances, the use of handbills before and during riots, and leadership, organisation and forms of action of the crowd. Kenneth J. Logue makes full use of a range of source material: the records associated with the administration of Scottish criminal justice, Home Office documents and numerous newspapers and periodicals.

Popular Disturbances in Scotland 1780-1815

On 21 March 1918 Germany initiated one of the most ferocious and offensives of the First World War. During the so-called Kaiserschlacht, German troops advanced on allied positions in a series of ferocious attacks which caused massive casualties, separated British and French forces and drove the British back towards the Channel ports. Five days later, as the German advance continued, one of the most dramatic summits of the war took place in Doullens. The outcome was to have extraordinary consequences. For the first time an allied supreme commander – the French General Foch – was appointed to command all the allied armies, while the statesmen realized that unity of purpose rather than national interest was ultimately the key to success. Within a few months a policy of defence became one of offence, and paved the way for British success at Amiens and the series of unbroken British victories that led Germany to plea for armistice. Victory in November 1918 was a matter for celebration; what was excised from history was how close Britain was to ignominious defeat just eight months earlier.

Five Days From Defeat

In 1730, Edmund Burt was sent to Scotland to work as a contractor for the government. For most of the time, he was based in Inverness, from where he wrote regularly to an acquaintance in London about his experiences. Burt had an insatiable curiosity about everything. From cooking and personal hygiene (the standards of which continually shocked him), to weddings, funerals, public executions and even the activities of witches, no aspect of Highland life or society escaped his scrutiny. Burt's witty and satirical style makes entertaining reading, but whilst he was certainly critical of many things, he draws a very sympathetic picture of the grinding hardship and poverty faced by so much of the ordinary population. His writing is a salutary antidote to many of the Romantic views of the Highlands and Jacobitism, which were later to take hold. It is now available for the first time in one volume, with modernised spelling and includes an Introduction by Charles W. J. Withers, Professor of Geography in the University of Edinburgh.

Burt's Letters

Droving was once the lifeblood of Scotland's rural economy, and for centuries Scotland's glens and mountain passes were alive with thousands of cattle making their way to the market trysts of Crieff and Falkirk. With the Industrial Revolution, ships, railways and eventually lorries took over the drovers' trade, and by the early twentieth century, the age-old droving tradition was all but dead. Except, however, in the Western Isles, where droving on foot continued until the mid-1960s, when MacBrayne's introduced a new generation of ferries capable of bringing livestock lorries to the islands. In this book Terry J. Williams follows the route of the drovers and their cattle from the remote Atlantic coast of Uist to the Highland marts. Travelling by campervan and armed with a voice recorder, a collection of archive photographs and a set of maps marked with the old market stances, she seeks out the last surviving drovers. The resulting narrative is an extraordinary insight into a lost world, told through the voices of the few remaining individuals who remember the days of walking with cattle.

Walking With Cattle

In the winter of 1811, Lewis Way had an epiphany on the road to Exmouth. From that moment the eccentric millionaire devoted himself to one goal: the return of the Jews to the Holy Land. This essay uncovers a forgotten life story, and reveals the strange roots of the American Christian Right's current support for the state of Israel.

Road to Apocalypse

In 1992, twenty-eight families came together in the pursuit of truth and justice. Eighteen years later, they moved a mountain. Setting the Truth Free captures, for the first time, the remarkable story of the Bloody Sunday families of Derry. The wounds of Bloody Sunday cut deep and have spanned generations; decades after the atrocity, a group of determined strangers - united in grief and anger - met and mobilised themselves to campaign for a new investigation into the killings and the exoneration of the victims. Establishing the Bloody Sunday Justice Campaign, they embarked upon one of the most remarkable human rights movements in history. To the end, it was a struggle - meeting with scorn and obstruction by fellow citizens, the Bloody Sunday families persevered. Writing to politicians, newspapers and anyone who would listen; fundraising, lobbying from Westminster to the White House and Capitol Hill and canvassing thousands door-to-door, their remarkable global campaign led to the establishment of the most complex and expensive Inquiry in British legal history. After twelve years, Lord Saville's report found that the British army's actions on Bloody Sunday were both 'unjustified' and 'unjustifiable' and made headline news all over the world. Now, forty years after that tragic day, and with the universal declarations of innocence still ringing in their ears, those most affected by Bloody Sunday have their say. This is the inspirational story of how a group of ordinary people stood up to the might of the establishment - and won.

Setting the Truth Free

This thought-provoking book retells the 1916 Rising story through previously unavailable first-hand accounts from the protagonists. Illustrated with unpublished and rare photographs, this book also features an introduction by well-known historian and author Dr Margaret Mac Curtain. Witnesses: Inside the Easter Rising is the first book to draw on official witness statements taken over several years from the late 1940s onwards by the government of the time and only released to the public by the Bureau of Military History in 2003. In its judicious use of the statements given by the foot-soldiers and second-line participants in the Rising, the book provides a unique perspective on the events of Easter 1916. From the volunteers walking the Royal canal from Kildare to fight in Dublin (of which the author's father was one) , to the women fighting, smuggling guns and cooking for the insurgents in the GPO, Witnesses transports the reader alongside those taking part in this pivotal event in modern Irish history. Insights into controversial matters such as the decision to countermand the order for the Rising on its eve, the so-called Castle document , as well as the personal affections and jealousies of those involved, are all discussed in detail. There are also previously unpublished photos taken inside the GPO during Easter week.

Witnesses

A collection of essays, many of which have not previously appeared in print, on Irish history and politics, contemporary Irish society and world affairs by twice former Taoiseach and respected columnist Garret Fitzgerald. Also available in paperback. Dr. Garret FitzGerald was twice Taoiseach, from 1981 to 1982 and again from late 1982 to 1987, and was the driving force behind the Anglo-Irish Agreement of 1985. In this extensive collection, including pieces drawn from essays and speeches delivered over the past several years, Dr. FitzGerald examines the emergence of the Irish state, the Northern Ireland question and the position of Ireland in relation to Europe, the US and the wider world. Exhibited in this illuminating collection is the breadth of Dr. FitzGerald's interests, the sheer scope of his expertise and the clarity with which he presented occasionally controversial but always compelling arguments.

Ireland in the World

'Blackpool to the Front!' was a rallying cry first heard at the Battle of Étreux in August 1914 when the Royal Munster Fusiliers halted an entire German Army Corps. The experience of the hundreds who enlisted from the industrial Cork suburb of Blackpool mirrors the experience of the 200,000 Irishmen who joined up. At least sixty-nine Blackpool men made the ultimate sacrifice: factory workers, sons, husbands and fathers. Some enlisted to escape poverty, some to defend 'the rights of small nations'. They fought in France, Flanders, Gallipoli, Palestine and on the high seas. This is their story.

Blackpool To The Front

On the Whit bank holiday weekend of 1941, the neutral Irish capital was suddenly and inexplicably bombed by the German Luftwaffe. On a gloriously starry night four bombs fell, the last and most devastating at precisely 2:05 a.m. on 31 May. There was a thunderous explosion and the earth quaked. Tremors were felt as far away as Enniskerry and Mullingar. Panic and pandemonium reigned in a "city seized with fear". Destruction was astonishing – homes and shops in the North Strand were largely demolished, 2,250 buildings in the city suffered some bomb damage, over forty people were killed, about 100 seriously injured, many more wounded. Hospitals and morgues filled within hours. Almost 2,000 people were rendered homeless refugees. It would later be determined that in terms of destructive performance a monstrous "perfect bomb" had done the deed. For two-thirds of a century, no book was written on what the Evening Herald proclaimed a "Night of Horror". Later called a "seismic event" in Dublin's history. Finally, near the end of the century both the Irish Military Archive and Dublin City Archive declassified their documents on the bombing – some stamped "Secret" for sixty years. At last, the theories and myths long surrounding the mysterious incident would be examined in the light of real evidence. But the heart of a book on so human a tragedy is the oral historical testimony of survivors, rescuers and observers who provide graphic eyewitness accounts. This is a narrative social history of immense human drama.

The Bombing of Dublin's North Strand by German Luftwaffe

With a knowledge and a skill that reveals his passion for the land and its people, David Kerr Cameron picks his way through the rural upheavals and developments of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries towards the landscape we recognise today. In doing so he provides a wide-sweeping and unforgettable view of our rural history and completes his great rural trilogy portraying the old farming landscapes of Scotland's North-east Lowlands. Both nostalgia and great understanding are revealed as the author recalls a society based on the plough, a society that moved 'against the tapestry of the year: 'This was the backcloth against which the farmtoun folk lived out their days; its seasons and rituals governed their lives, and ultimately their destinies. Here now is that story, the story of a landscape all but lost before the onward march of agri-business and agri-technology'. The days recalled are the days of the Clydesdale horse and the hired man, the cottar and crofter, the farmtoun tenant and his laird.

The Cornkister Days

As a lynchpin of Margaret Thatcher's final Cabinet, David Waddington was at the heart of British politics at the passing of arguably the most defining government of the twentieth century. His memoirs are a testament to many years of loyal service to the Conservative Party, first as a determined constituency MP, then as a cajoling and shrewd Chief Whip, Home Secretary during the turbulent Strangeways prison riots, and finally as Leader of the Lords. These memoirs describe Lord Waddington's varied life: from his adventurous childhood in Lancashire to an eventful stint in the army, including memorable postings to Hong Kong and Singapore, and a highly acclaimed career as a Queen's Counsel - not to mention his time as Governor of Bermuda. Decoration, renown and public praise colour Lord Waddington's life, but it is his humility and wry Lancastrian take on the world that impress most: a potent mix of intelligence, duty and a sense of humour courses through every page. In his Memoirs, David Waddington allows us to glimpse a period of huge importance in British political history while also making clear the roots and principles that propelled him so far.

David Waddington Memoirs

In 1800 Daniel O'Connell, a young Kerry barrister who had just made his first forays into national politics, began a clandestine correspondence with his distant cousin Mary O'Connell of Tralee. Two years later Daniel secretly married the dowerless Mary in Dublin, jeopardizing his inheritance and forging a bond that would last until Mary's death in 1836. Husband and wife corresponded voluminously from the beginning of their courtship until Mary's death, and over a thousand letters between them have survived. The World of Mary O'Connell, based on examination of these letters and of Mary's correspondence with other family members and friends, is more than a portrait of the Liberator's wife. Through the life and letters of Mary O'Connell, Erin I. Bishop has produced a fascinating study of social and domestic life in Ireland in the early nineteenth century. In chapters dealing with love and marriage, motherhood, domesticity, family and kin, sickness and health, and religion Bishop paints both an intimate picture of the life of one woman and a panoramic view of a time and a social stratum - the Catholic middle class - that have hitherto received inadequate scholarly attention.

The World of Mary O'Connell 1778-1836

Thomas Fennell provides an account, previously unpublished, of life in the Royal Irish Constabulary during the turbulent 30-year period, 1875-1905. His early accounts begin during the Land Wars, and continue up to the Irish War of Independence, although by that time he was no longer serving in the force himself. Fennell was always an ardent nationalist, conscious that the RIC was a conservative body, supporting the Ascendancy and the landowning class. He criticises the repressive behaviour of the large police force dispersed in the countryside in some of its day-to-day activities. Yet he retained a loyalty to the force and explains that during the Land War the population at large understood that the police were carrying out work which they often found distasteful.

Classics of Irish History

Royal Irish Constabulary

From an adolescent farmer to a local Sinn Fein activist and provincial guerrilla leader, and eventually to chief-of-staff of the IRA, Frank Aiken has an early, hidden history. As with so many of his political generation, Aiken's path to politics began amid the violent upheaval of the Irish revolution. In a career spanning 50 years he served in numerous high-profile ministerial roles and earned widespread recognition for his work as Ireland's representative to the United Nations. Yet these later successes masked a controversial past. This comprehensive study provides the first in-depth look at Aiken's role in Ireland's turbulent revolutionary period, 1916-23. Drawing on a wide variety of original archival sources, this book blends elements of biography and local study to offer both the first exhaustive account of Aiken's role in the conflict, and the first in-depth study of the broader context of republican politics and violence in Ulster in which he played such a pivotal role. This book creates a detailed map of Aiken's formative years, exploring the early movements of the man which would place him at the forefront of Irish and international Free State politics.

Frank Aiken's War

Throughout his childhood and youth David Reynolds kept an eye on the past, entranced by family stories from Victorian London - the music halls, the romances, the strange disappearance of his grandfather - even as he himself came of age in the vibrant 1960s. In Swan River he describes both worlds with great vitality and sympathy, and shows how a child's puzzled interest in his forebears deepens into an adult's understanding of human nature. Swan River was shortlisted for the PEN/Ackerley prize for Autobiography.

Swan River

 Based on exciting new research involving the largest sampling of DNA ever made in Britain, Alistair Moffat, author of the bestselling  The Scots: A Genetic Journey , shows how all of us who live on these islands are immigrants. The last ice age erased any trace of more ancient inhabitants, and the ancestors of everyone who now lives in Britain came here after the glaciers retreated and the land greened once more. In an epic narrative, sometimes moving, sometimes astonishing, always revealing, Moffat writes an entirely new history of Britain. Instead of the usual parade of the usual suspects – kings, queens, saints, warriors and the notorious – this is a people's history, a narrative made from stories only DNA can tell which offers insights into who we are and where we come from. 

Britain

The rescue of the Danish Jews from Nazi persecution in October 1943 is a unique exception to the tragic history of the Holocaust. Over fourteen harrowing days, as they were helped, hidden and protected by ordinary people who spontaneously rushed to save their fellow citizens, an incredible 7,742 out of 8,200 Jewish refugees were smuggled out all along the coast - on ships, schooners, fishing boats, anything that floated - to Sweden. Now, for the first time, Bo Lidegaard brings together decades of research and new evidence, including unpublished diaries and documents of families forced to run for safety and of those who courageously came to their aid, to tell this story of ordinary glory, of simple courage and moral fortitude that shines out in the midst of the terrible history of the twentieth century and demonstrates how it was possible for a small and fragile democracy to stand against the Third Reich.

Countrymen

This lucid account of crofting life during the second World War has been a popular classic since its first publication in 1949. One of very few books available on Moidart in the north-west of Scotland, it evokes the enchanted, magical beauty of this much-loved area of the country. Margaret Leigh was already a successful author when her longing for freedom and independence led to her decision to become a crofter in the West Highlands. These memoirs describe her attempts to transform a deserted croft into a home, and her struggles to snatch land back from the wilderness. Although far from the Blitz, the effects of the war are felt throughout the Highlands, and the rationing of food and vital materials, the battles with bureaucrats who had no understanding of a crofter's needs, and even the appearance of a Nazi mine off the coast, all frustrate Margaret Leigh's efforts. But despite the hardships, the land and the people of the Highlands gave her a contentment and happiness she had never known before. This edition has a new Introduction by Katie Maclean, who knew Margaret Leigh during her time in Moidart.

Spade Among the Rushes

Nestling on the River Bandon, Kinsale emerged as a settlement in the sixth century and has seen many changes. Its deep, secure harbour provided a safe anchorage and prospered during the seventeenth century's 'golden age of sail', victualling ships bound for the West Indies and the American colonies, and facilitating trade with English and continental ports. Its military forts and naval base protected against the threat of foreign invasion, as well as pirates and smugglers who were rampant on the coast. Its bustling waterfront was thronged with fishermen in the nineteenth century and today is filled with tourists and yachting enthusiasts. John Thuillier tells of community suffering, seafaring under lofty masts and billowing sails and life ashore in the taverns and coffee houses, aboard ships and in 'lewd' houses. This comprehensive overview of Kinsale's seafaring tradition will be enjoyed by all who appreciate a whiff of salty spray and the adventure attached to ships voyaging to distant lands.

Kinsale Harbour

'It was the most providential escape yet. It will probably have the effect of making them think that I am even more mysterious than they believe me to be, and that is saying a good deal.' Michael Collins knew the power of his persona, and capitalised on what people wanted to believe. The image we have of him comes filtered through a sensational lens, exaggerated out of all proportion. We see what we have come to expect: 'the man who won the war', the centre of a web of intelligence that 'brought the British Empire to its knees'. He comes to us as a mixture of truth and lies, propaganda and misunderstanding. The willingness to see him as the sum of the Irish revolution, and in turn reduce him to a caricature of his many parts, clouds our view of both the man and the revolution. Drawing on archives in Ireland, Britain and the United States, the authors question our traditional assumptions about Collins. Was he the man of his age, or was he just luckier, more brazen, more written about and more photographed than the rest? Despite the pictures of him in uniform during the last weeks of his life, Collins saw very little of the actual fight. He was chiefly an organiser and a strategist. Should we remember him as a master of the mundane rather than the romantic figure of the blockbuster film? The eight thematic, highly illustrated chapters scrutinise different aspects of Collins' life: origins, work, war, politics, celebrity, beliefs, death and afterlives. Approaching him through the eyes of contemporaries and historians, friends and enemies, this provocative book reveals new insights, challenging what we think we know about him and, in turn, what we think we know about the Irish revolution.

Michael Collins

Rupert Brooke, strikingly good-looking, effortlessly charming and prodigiously gifted, has become the tragic embodiment of the generation lost between 1914 and 1918. Upon the poet's tragic untimely death, Winston Churchill declared that 'we shall never see his like again', yet Brooke immortalised himself in his own poignant verse: 'If I should die, think only this of me: That there's some corner of a foreign field that is forever England'. Brooke died serving king and country on the anniversary of Shakespeare's birth, St George's Day 1915, en route to fight at Gallipoli. As the tributes poured in and the war gathered momentum, the press heralded him as a hero - a focal point for the nation's grief. Already an acclaimed poet and dramatist in his youth, his romantic war poetry contrasts starkly with the work of some of his more disillusioned contemporaries. But the private letters of 'the handsomest man in all of England' reveal a far more troubled, and often misunderstood, individual... In this updated edition of Forever England, Mike Read, founder of the Rupert Brooke Society, explores the poet's fascinating life and legacy. From a tangled web of secret affairs, literary circles, mental illness and a previously unknown lovechild emerges the intriguing personality and enduring poetry of Rupert Brooke - the voice of a country torn apart by war.

Forever England

From 1988 to 2017 David Ross was the Highland Correspondent of The Herald. His patch stretched from the Mull of Kintyre in the south to the Shetland island of Unst in the north; and from St Kilda, in the West, to the whisky country of Speyside in the east. From his home on the Black Isle he covered all the big stories, from the fight against a nuclear waste dump in Caithness to plans to remove half a mountain on the island of Harris. He helped the first community land buyout in modern times in Assynt, covered in depth the anti-toll campaign on the Skye Bridge, the efforts to save Gaelic and protect ferry services. In Highland Herald he reflects on the important issues which affected the Highlands and Islands during his time. He tells how his late father-in-law, the Gaelic poet Sorley MacLean, helped him. He had never written in depth about Sorley when he was alive, as it would have been 'excruciatingly embarrassing for both of us', but does so now.

Highland Herald

Black Friday is the astonishing true story of a coastal community that lost 189 men in a single afternoon. Britain's worst fishing disaster decimated the coastal community of Eyemouth, yet is an almost forgotten part of the past. One hundred and twenty-five years on, this is the story of that storm, told through the accounts of fishermen at sea caught up in the maelstrom, of their families waiting anxiously for news, and of its historical context. At its heart is a gripping narrative of survival and high adventure when Eyemouth was the centre of a massive smuggling ring. Peter Aitchison does more than simply spin a good yarn: as a direct descendant, his account of how these fishermen plied their trade, led their lives and met their fate in the 1880s is an insightful and compelling read.

Black Friday

WINNER OF THE SALTIRE SOCIETY HISTORY BOOK OF THE YEAR Next morning at about 6 o'clock my mother wakened us to say there had been a shipwreck and bodies were being washed ashore. My father had gone with others to look for survivors ... I don't think any survivors came in at Port Ellen but bodies did. The loss of two British ships crammed with American soldiers bound for the trenches of the First World War brought the devastation of war directly to the shores of the Scottish island of Islay. The sinking of the troopship Tuscania by a German U-Boat on 5 February 1918 was the first major loss of US troops in in the war. Eight months after the people of Islay had buried more than 200 Tuscania dead, the armed merchant cruiser Otranto collided with another troopship during a terrible storm. Despite a valiant rescue attempt by HMS Mounsay, the Otranto drifted towards Islay, hit a reef, throwing 600 men into the water. Just 19 survived; the rest were drowned or crushed by the wreckage. Based on the harrowing personal recollection of survivors and rescuers, newspaper reports and original research, Les Wilson tells the story of these terrible events, painting a vivid picture which also pays tribute to the astonishing bravery of the islanders, who risked their lives pulling men from the sea, caring for survivors and burying the dead.

The Drowned and the Saved

Dumfries and Galloway is one of the least-known regions of Scotland. Despite memories and traditions to match those of Gaelic-speaking Scotland, it has been seriously understudied. This innovative, ground-breaking study looks mainly at the everyday lives and culture of people in this region during a period of profound agricultural, industrial and demographic change. In doing so, it uncovers new information about a wide range of topics in local history, including food, festivals and folklore, music, mining, the development of towns and villages, population, smuggling, the experience of migration, and the question of identity. All of the contributors to the book are specialists in their fields and have an in-depth knowledge of the region through life and work.

Dumfries and Galloway

This book tells the fascinating story of Badenoch, a forgotten region in accounts of Scottish history. Situated in the heart of the Highlands and with its own distinct historic and geographic identity, Badenoch was in the throes of dramatic change in the post-Culloden decades. This ground-breaking study reveals some radical differences from trends across the rest of the Highlands. Foremost was the role of the indigenous entrepreneurial tacksmen in driving the rapidly growing commercial economy as cattle graziers, drovers and agricultural improvers, inevitably provoking confrontation with the absentee and ostentatious Dukes of Gordon. Meanwhile, the common people still operated within a subsistence farming economy heavily dependent on a surprisingly sophisticated use of their mountain environment. Though suffering great hardship, they too were quick to exploit any potential commercial opportunities. Economic forces, social ambition and post-Culloden legislation created intolerable pressures within the old clan hierarchy, as Duke, tacksman and erstwhile clansman tried to forge their individual - and often irreconcilable - destinies in a rapidly changing world. In doing so, all were increasingly drawn into the wider, and often lucrative, dimensions of British state and empire.

The Wild Black Region

The 'Rough Wooings', fought by major figures of sixteenth-century Europe for the hand of the young Mary Queen of Scots, were wars as intense, wide-ranging and devastating as the wars of the three Edwards which ravaged fourteenth-century Scotland. But the Wooings were wars of independence as well. As the kings of England and France vied to control the bestowing of Mary's hand in marriage, so Scotland itself strove to remain free of them. And Scotland won, although it was a close-run thing. The politics and international diplomacy involved were as sophisticated and complex as the century provides; the warfare and political literature as revolutionary and modern as for any part of Europe. Protestant zealots were forged on its anvil; massive navies ranged the North Sea; Italian military technology was brought to bear. All for one of the most fascinating queens in history. This is the story of her beginning, a rich and vibrant epic involving many of the major figures of early modern history: Henry VIII of England, François I and Henri II of France bestride the canvas, but even they cannot obscure the beguiling figure of the young Mary Queen of Scots.

The Rough Wooings

This volume looks at the way that perceptions of Scottish identity have changed through the centuries, from early medieval to modern times. 'The idea of Scotland as a single country, corresponding to the realm of the king of Scots, and of the Scots as all the kingdom's inhabitants, may only have taken root during the 13th century.' – Dauvit Broun 'The 18th century is marked by a period of often competing Scottish identities, and the emergence of the British state as a complicating factor in the equation.' – R. J. Finlay 'Scottish identity has never been a fixed, immutable idea, whether held in the head or in the gut . . . some of the most enduring myths of Scotland's Protestant identity were, like Ireland's Catholic identity, creations of the 19th century: they included Jenny Geddes as a Protestant Dame Scotia, throwing a stool into the works of an Anglican-style church, and the Magdalen Chapel in Edinburgh, the home of a staunchly Catholic graft guild throughout much of the 1560s becoming the "workshop of the Reformation" in John Knox's time.' – Michael Lynch

Image and Identity

The essays in this volume, by distinguished historians, deal with the correlation of the Church and society in Scotland from the birth of Bishop Kennedy at the beginning of the fifteenth century to the reunion of the Church of Scotland with most of the United Free Church in 1929. This is not a comprehensive survey of the Church and its institutions; rather the book is concerned with the careers of prominent individuals within the Church and with the response of the people to the challenge of the vast ecclesiastical changes in the five centuries under review. The volume grew out of a two-year seminar programme organised jointly by the Departments of Ecclesiastical History and Scottish History at the University of St Andrews, and held in St John's House, the Centre for Advanced Historical Studies in the university. Contributors: Norman Macdougall, Leslie Macfarlane, Roderick Lyall, Jenny Wormald, Michael Lynch, Roger Mason, James Kirk, Walter Mackey, Julia Buckroyd, Henry Sefton, Richard Sher, Alexander Murdoch and Ian Machin.

Church, Politics and Society

This is the second volume of a three-volume study of Scottish social change and development from the eighteenth century to the present day, originally published by John Donald in association with the Economic and Social History Society of Scotland. The series covers the history of industrialisation and urbanisation in Scottish society and records many experiences which Scotland shared in common with other societies, looking at the impact of those changes throughout the spectrum of society from croft, bothy and hunting lodge to mines, foundries and urban poor houses. The series is intended to illustrate the identity and distinctiveness of Scotland through its separate institutions and through areas such as language, law and religion and recognises Scotland as a multi-cultured society, the highland and lowland cultures being only two among several.

People and Society in Scotland, 1830–1914

Kilmainham Jail is perhaps the most important building in modern Irish history. A place of incarceration since its construction in the late eighteenth century, it housed a succession of petty criminals, including sheep rustlers and, during the Famine, people who committed crimes with the sole aim of being imprisoned there: even the meager rations offered at the jail were better than what was available in other parts of the country. It was a powerful symbol of British rule on the island of Ireland; its residents over the years included the bold Robert Emmet and, of course, it was also the place where the 1916 rebels were taken and executed. Every Dark Hour is a colourful and entertaining telling of the history of the jail and its colourful cast of residents over the years - as well as vivid accounts of the heroic men and women who gave freely of their time and energies to restore the jail to its former grandeur when it was on the verge of being reclaimed by the elements.

Every Dark Hour

e eclectic scientist and inventor Prof. John Joly from Co. Offaly who, at fifty-eight, helped to defend Trinity College Dublin throughout the Rising. Many enlisted to fight for Irish Home Rule or Ulster Unionism, to find adventure or escape from poverty. None imagined they would find themselves on the streets of Dublin, killing – and being killed by – fellow Irishmen. Forty-one Irishmen in the British army died in action during the Rising, 106 were wounded. These men became a forgotten part of their country's history. • Also available: 'Blackpool to the Front: A Cork Suburb and Ireland's Great War 1914–1918' by Mark Cronin and 'When the Clock Struck in 1916: Close-Quarter Combat in the Easter Rising' by Derek Molyneux & Darren Kelly

According to their Lights

This new ebook combines both concise histories of WWI and WWII in one book, written by Pat Morgan and Liam McCann respectively. WWI On 28 June 1914 in Sarajevo, a Bosnian Serb student shot the heir to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The assassination plunged the world into a global conflict that was to scar human history and redefine the meaning of the word 'war'. The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand provided the spark that ignited smouldering enmities, but World War I had been a long time coming. Decades of burgeoning imperialism and the formation of complex alliances brought the world's great powers face to face in what would become known as the Great War. On one side were ranged the Allies of Great Britain, France and Russia; on the other the Central Powers of Germany and Austria-Hungary. As time went on and the killing continued, all the world's powers were drawn into battle and the war's deadly influence touched every corner of the planet. More than seventy million military personnel were mobilised during World War I – and more than nine million of them died. The grim figures also included twenty million wounded and eight million missing in action. When the war ended in 1918, four empires had ceased to exist, the map of Europe had been redrawn and a generation of young men had been lost. The combatants had given their all, but their valiant sacrifice was in vain. This book tells the story of the conflict dubbed 'the war to end wars'. WWII By 1938 a second war in Europe seemed inevitable. It had only been twenty years since the war to end all wars, and the horrors of conflict were still fresh in the mind, but that didn't stop all sides re-arming and preparing for yet more bloodshed. The settlement at the end of World War One was neither clean nor decisive, and it punished Germany by confiscating territory and forcing the people to pay reparations to help rebuild France and reduce the Allied debt to America. This led to deep-seated anger and resentment among its people. This erudite and moving book explores the underlying causes of the Second World War, its biggest battles and decisive campaigns. From the evacuation at Dunkirk, the Blitz and the Battle of Britain to the failure of Operation Barbarossa and the D-Day Landings in Europe, as well as the war in North Africa and the Pacific, this concise history of the conflict also examines the Final Solution and the ethics surrounding the dropping of two atom bombs on Japan.

A Concise History of Two World Wars

Louis Barfe's elegantly written, authoritative and highly entertaining history charts the meteoric rise and slow decline of the popular recording industry. Barfe shows how the 1920s and 1930s saw the departure of Edison from the phonograph business he created and the birth of EMI and CBS. In the years after the war, these companies, and the buccaneers, hucksters, impresarios and con-men who ran them, reaped stupendous commercial benefits with the arrival of Elvis Presley, who changed popular music (and sales of popular music) overnight. After Presley came the Beatles, when the recording industry became global and record sales reached all time highs. Where Have All The Good Times Gone? also charts the decline from that high-point a generation ago. The 1990s ushered in a period of profound crisis and uncertainty in the industry, encapsulated in one word: Napster. Barfe shows how the almost infinite amounts of free music available online have traumatic and disastrous consequences for an industry that has become cautious and undynamic.

Where Have All the Good Times Gone?

Early on a Sunday morning in October 1905, in Eriskay, one of the smallest and most isolated of Hebridean islands, a forty-five year old Catholic parish priest died of pleurisy. It was a disease which had claimed many of his parishioners, and Father Allan McDonald undoubtedly contracted it while ministering to his flock. He was mourned all over Scotland. Now, over a century later, his name is still remembered with reverence throughout Catholic Scotland and beyond. Father Allan – Maighstir Ailein to his Gaelic-speaking people – was a witty, accomplished, intellectual and dedicated man; one of the most renowned of Hebridean personalities and probably the most celebrated Hebridean priest since St Columba. An exceptionally effective and articulate local politician in the southern Outer Hebrides, which at the turn of the twentieth century was amongst the poorest and most neglected in Europe, he was also an accomplished Gaelic poet and writer and one of Scotland's greatest collectors of folklore. His achievements attracted attention and visitors came to his lonely parish from the United States, England and elsewhere. The compelling tale of his remarkable life is also implicitly the story of the north-west Highlands in the late nineteenth century and the Catholic Hebrides in their transcendent prime, where culture overflows with myth and adventure, colour, character and extraordinary unspoilt beauty.

Father Allan

The defeat of the Scots in the Battle of Flodden in 1513 left many of the leaders of Scottish society, including King James IV, lying dead on the battlefield. The long and complex minority of King James V which followed is explored in detail in this book, bringing understanding to the evolving relationships among the Scots, English and French against the background of the wider European context of the early sixteenth century. The competing interests of England and France were personified in two of the Scottish Regents: Queen Margaret Tudor, the sister of Henry VIII, and John, Duke of Albany, James V's nearest male heir, who had been brought up in France and represented the French connection as much as the Scots. The interests of leading Scots' families, the Hamiltons and the Douglases, were also at the heart of the power struggle. The book offers a rare insight into a turbulent period of Scottish politics.

The Minority of James V

On a hillside near Ballachulish in the Scottish Highlands in May 1752 a rider is assassinated by a gunman. The murdered man is Colin Campbell, a government agent travelling to nearby Duror where he's evicting farm tenants to make way for his relatives. Campbell's killer evades capture, but Britain's rulers insist this challenge to their authority must result in a hanging. The sacrificial victim is James Stewart, who is organising resistance to Campbell's takeover of lands long held by his clan, the Appin Stewarts. James is a veteran of the Highland uprising crushed in April 1746 at Culloden. In Duror he sees homes torched by troops using terror tactics against rebel Highlanders. The same brutal response to dissent means that James's corpse will for years hang from a towering gibbet and leave a community utterly ravaged. Introducing this new and updated edition of his account of what came to be called the Appin Murder, historian James Hunter tells how his own Duror upbringing introduced him to the tragic story of James Stewart.

The Appin Murder

In viewing Galloway from the wider context of the northern British mainland, Irish Sea and wider Hebridean zone, it has been possible to explore the dynamics of state-building, dynastic interactions, and the close inter-relationships of the territories connected by the western seaways, which most traditional 'national' histories obscure. From this wider perspective, the development of the lordship of Galloway can be considered in the context of the spreading power and regional rivalries of English, Irish and Scottish kings, and a reassessment of the emergence of the unitary lordship controlled by Fergus of Galloway and his family. Traditional interpretations of the relationship of Fergus and his successors with the kings of England and Scotland are challenged and new light is thrown on the beginnings of the processes of progressive domination of Galloway by, and integration into, the kingdom of the Scots. The end of the autonomous lordship in the 1230s is projected against the backdrop of the aggressive state-building activities of King Alexander II and the transformation of its rulers from independently minded princes and warlords into Anglo-Scottish barons.

The Lordship of Galloway

David II (1329–1371), son of the hero King of Scots, Robert Bruce (1306–1329), has suffered a harsh historical press, condemned as a disastrous general, a womaniser and a sympathiser with Scotland's 'auld enemy', England. Bringing together evidence from Scotland, England and France, Michael Penman offers a different view: that of a child king who survived usurpation, English invasion, exile and eleven years of English captivity after defeat in battle in 1326 to emerge as a formidable ruler of Scotland. Learning from Philip VI of France and Edward III of England in turn, David became the charismatic patron of a vibrant court focused on the arts of chivalry: had he lived longer, Scotland's political landscape and national outlook might have been very different to that which emerged under his successors, the Stewart kings. But David's was also a reign of internal tensions fuelled by his increasingly desperate efforts to determine the royal succession, overawe great magnates like his heir presumptive, Robert the Steward, and persuade his subjects of the need for closer relations with England after sixty years of war.

David II

In 1644 a massive Scottish army of Scottish Covenanters moved over the border into England, claiming they were not invading their neighbour but acting to save its liberties, by helping ensure that the absolutist King Charles I did not win the civil war he was fighting with the English parliament. It was a daring move but the Covenanters believed it a necessary for defensive reasons, for if Charles triumphed over parliament in England he would then attempt to overthrow the Covenanters' regime. More positive ambitions were also involved. Having won the English civil war, the Scots then planned to impose a settlement that protected Scotland's political position under the union of the crowns, and force on England and Ireland Scotland's Presbyterian church. The Covenanters proved over-ambitious and over-confident, driven by their conviction that God would being them triumph. They did play a decisive role in parliament's victory, but not in the sensational way they had hoped, and the English were reluctant to give them credit - or to accept the Scottish vision of a Scottish-dominated, Presbyterian Britain. Moreover, invading England provoked a major Royalist rebellion in Scotland, led by the Marquis of Montrose. Disillusioned by the English parliament, some sought a compromise with the king, but a new invasion of England in 1648 led to disaster. Extremist covenanters then seized power in Scotland, and sought to impose radical policies, but they were forced by a growing royalist revival to again fall back on monarchy, provoking English invasion led by Oliver Cromwell. This volume continues the story begun in The Scottish Revolution of the Covenanters' sudden rise to power, but how their soaring ambitions and religious zeal in the end led Scotland to an unparalleled disaster. Scotland had long boasted of being 'the never conquered nation.' The legacy of the Covenanters was that Scotland could never make that boast again. It is a book that will appeal to scholars and students of the civil wars, as well as to all those with an interest in this fascinating and turbulent period in Scottish - and indeed British - history.

Revolution and Counter-revolution in Scotland, 1644-51

'A gripping, heart-breaking account of the famine winter of 1847' - Rosemary Goring, The Herald Longlisted for the Highland Book Prize When Scotland's 1846 potato crop was wiped out by blight, the country was plunged into crisis. In the Hebrides and the West Highlands a huge relief effort came too late to prevent starvation and death. Further east, meanwhile, towns and villages from Aberdeen to Wick and Thurso, rose up in protest at the cost of the oatmeal that replaced potatoes as people's basic foodstuff. Oatmeal's soaring price was blamed on the export of grain by farmers and landlords cashing in on even higher prices elsewhere. As a bitter winter gripped and families feared a repeat of the calamitous famine then ravaging Ireland, grain carts were seized, ships boarded, harbours blockaded, a jail forced open, the military confronted. The army fired on one set of rioters. Savage sentences were imposed on others. But thousands-strong crowds also gained key concessions. Above all they won cheaper food. Those dramatic events have long been ignored or forgotten. Now, in James Hunter, they have their historian. The story he tells is, by turns, moving, anger-making and inspiring. In an era of food banks and growing poverty, it is also very timely.

Insurrection

Step back in time with this accessible walking guide to the revolutionary history of Dublin. John Gibney and Donal Fallon have spent years leading historical walking tours through the city, and now guide readers at their own pace through this radical period, bringing it to life in a novel way, from the perspective of the streets and buildings in which it took place. Beginning in 1912, when Dublin was a city of the British Empire, and finishing in the aftermath of the Civil War in 1923, en route it covers the 1913 Lockout, the impact of the First World War, the 1916 Rising and the War of Independence. These groundbreaking events are set against the backdrop of the city's multifaceted development. Each walk covers a different area, setting the scene with a rich overview of its social, cultural and architectural context during this era, then taking in well-known landmarks and hidden corners where key events unfolded, from Kilmainham Gaol in the west, through Liberty Hall and Jacob's biscuit factory in the inner city, to Croke Park in the north. Along the way, readers will get to know the diverse cast who shaped Ireland's revolution, from lesser-known figures like Rosie Hackett, to iconic leaders like Patrick Pearse. Each route follows on from the last, allowing readers to extend their explorations through the city. Whether you're a first-time visitor or a born-and-bred Dubliner, follow in the footsteps of the men and women who shaped and witnessed the Irish revolution and see the city as they did.

Revolutionary Dublin, 1912–1923

The Privy Council is a centuries-old institution - yet, for an entity with such extensive influence over Britain's history, we know relatively little about it. What exactly does it do? To whom is it accountable? Just how much power does it hold over us? Some say it has no power at all, although you might not agree if you'd been sentenced to death in a former British overseas territory that still used the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council as its court of appeal; or if you were a lecturer having a row with your college, where the University Chancellor was a member of the royal family. Or, indeed, if you were a Prime Minister trying to establish a Royal Charter to control the press. Traditionally an advisory body to the sovereign, the Privy Council's chequered past is full of scandals and secrecy, plots and counterplots - and while it may no longer have the authority to command a beheading, its reach continues to extend into both parliamentary and public life. In By Royal Appointment, David Rogers examines it all, taking us on a fascinating, anecdote-filled odyssey through the history of one of England's oldest and most secretive government bodies.

By Royal Appointment

"Might Over Right" provides a critical account of one of the most remarkable stories in the twenty century's history of international relations - the history of how in the relatively short time of 30 years, Zionist leaders, managed, with the help of Western supporters but mainly the British, to wrestle a country away from its inhabitants, and in the process to profoundly affect the course of international relations and fundamentally transform the history of the Middle East. Extensively documented, relying mostly on Zionist, British, and Israeli sources, and sweeping in scope, the book makes a crucial contribution to the growing effort to challenge the simplistic and reductive accounts in media and scholarship in the West - one of the principal causes of the perpetuation of the conflict. "Might Over Right" goes beyond the Israeli new historians' accounts that focus on specific aspects of the Zionist-Palestinian confrontation. It also goes beyond the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948 to critically analyze the latest dimensions of the Arab-Israeli conflict, and of the continued Israeli-Palestinian confrontation.

Might Over Right

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