Undiscovered Scotland

War Paths: Walking in the Shadows of the Clans by Alistair Moffat (3 August 2023). Acclaimed historian Alistair Moffat sets off in the footsteps of the Highland clans. In thirteen journeys he explores places of conflict, recreating as he walks the tumult of battle. As he recounts the military prowess of the clans he also speaks of their lives, their language and culture before it was all swept away. The disaster at Culloden in 1746 represented not just the defeat of the Jacobite dream but also the unleashing of merciless retribution from the British government.
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A Short Guide to Hadrian's Wall by Andrew Tibbs (15 April 2022). An overview of the history and archaeology of the wall, along with a guide to the key Roman sites to visit. The history of the wall starts with the earliest Roman invasion and the construction of the Stanegate, a chain of forts built before the wall. Thirty key sites are examined and Tibbs provides maps, illustrations and details of each. This is the perfect book for anybody interested in the history of the wall and the rich variety of interesting sites that can be found along it.
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Hide and Seek by Ken Lussey (26 May 2023). A fast-paced thriller set in Stirling Castle and more widely across Scotland during World War Two. It’s April 1943. Medical student Helen Erickson is followed from London to her aunt’s farm in Perthshire. What do her pursuers want? Meanwhile Monique Dubois is attending a secret meeting at Stirling Castle when an old adversary is murdered in a chilling echo of a dark episode in the castle’s history. Bob Sutherland and the MI11 team are called in and discover that almost everyone who knew the victim had a motive. Then Helen disappears.
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Airman Abroad by Hamish Brown (31 March 2023). A revealing picture of a time when Britain was losing its empire. It draws on letters, vivid memories and experiences from the Canal Zone, Kenya during Mau Mau times, Cyprus and Jerusalem. The Canal Zone was no easy life and 50 years later a medal was awarded when the government was forced to confess its own political chicanery in the events. There is much to find in this story including background histories to events and the politics of the time.
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Scottish Military Aerodromes of the 1920s and 1930s by Malcolm Fife (15 October 2020). The end of WWI brought with it the closure most military aerodromes in Scotland. It, however, retained its links with naval aviation. In the latter part of the 1920s Auxiliary Air Force squadrons were formed at Edinburgh and Glasgow manned by civilians. In the 1930s the RAF built new airfields and re-opened First World War sites. RAF flying boats were also active. The development of airline services, air ambulance and private flying and gliding are also covered. As are aerodromes that were planned but never built.
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Lemonade Tonight: Notes from a POW and a Present-Day Journey of Discovery by Fiona Cameron & Carole Grant (26 June 2021). On 30 January 1940, aged just twenty-one, Private Allan Cameron of the 51st Highland Division set sail for Le Havre to help defend France against a German invasion. He was subsequently captured and held as a prisoner of war. Diary notes he made during this time lay hidden until long after his death. When they found his notebooks in 2011, his daughters embarked on a quest to find out more. Their book brings history vividly to life and draws together the past and the present.
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The Stockholm Run by Ken Lussey (26 May 2022). A fast-paced thriller set largely in Edinburgh and Stockholm during World War Two. It's March 1943. The death of an intruder in a hidden bunker leads to a much larger secret buried beneath Edinburgh Castle. As the mystery unravels, Bob Sutherland and Monique Dubois are sent to Stockholm, a city supposedly at peace in a world at war, to take delivery of a message of critical national importance. Or is it a trap? Can their relationship survive what they uncover? Will they live long enough for that to matter?
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The Great Scuttle: The End of the German High Seas Fleet: Witnessing History by David Meara (15 May 2019). After the German surrender in November 1918, the German High Seas Fleet was interned at Scapa Flow in the Orkney Islands. The German commander, Admiral Von Reuter, ordered that his fleet be scuttled on 21 June 1919. Most ships began to sink within hours, witnessed by a visiting group of school children. This book follows the events of that day, drawing on the eyewitness accounts of those who were there.
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Jock's Jocks: Voices of Scottish Soldiers from the First World War by Jock Duncan (28 March 2019). Between the 1930s and 1980s, folk singer Jock Duncan interviewed 59 veterans of the First World War, mainly in his native North-East of Scotland. He then spent many years transcribing his interviews in the rich variations of Scots in which they were spoken. The result is a unique and illuminating collection of first-hand witness testimony to the horror, and humour, of the Great War. Co-published with the European Ethnological Research Centre.
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A History of RAF Drem at War by Malcolm Fife (21 January 2016). A comprehensive history of the Second World War Fighter Command airfield at RAF Drem located near Edinburgh. It was one of Scotland's most important airfields during the war. Its predecessor, the Royal Flying Corps Gullane air station is included in the account. A wonderfully researched, well written and nicely illustrated book that will be of lasting value and interest.
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Bloody Orkney by Ken Lussey (29 June 2021). Bloody Orkney is a fast-paced thriller set in Scotland during World War Two. It’s November 1942. Bob Sutherland, Monique Dubois and the Military Intelligence 11 team fly in to review security in Orkney, home to one of the most important and most heavily defended naval anchorages in the world. But an unidentified body has been found. It becomes clear that powerful men have things they’d rather keep hidden and MI11’s arrival threatens the status quo. Then Bob stumbles over a ghost from his past and things get far too personal.
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The Night Before Morning by Alistair Moffat (1 July 2021). June 1945. Hitler has triumphed, Britain is under German occupation and America cowers under the threat of nuclear attack. In the dead of night, a figure flits through the ruins of Dryburgh Abbey, searching for a hidden document he knows could change the course of history. The journal he discovers, by a young soldier, David Erskine, records an extraordinary story. When Allied victory seems imminent, Erskine is in Antwerp, where he witnesses a world-changing reversal of fortune as a huge mushroom cloud rises over London.
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Afore the Highlands: The Jacobites in Perth, 1715-16 by Kathleen Lyle (26 August 2019). For a few months in 1715/16, when it was occupied by Jacobite forces, Perth was at a focal point of British and European history. Perth, which then had a population of around 5,000, became the headquarters for an army of perhaps 10,000 men. Where were they all accommodated? How were they fed? What did the townspeople think of the occupation? Did they all support the Jacobite cause? Questions like this are not often addressed by existing histories of the 1715 rising
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Rosy Wemyss, Admiral of the Fleet: the Man who created Armistice Day by John Johnson-Allen (9 June 2021). Rosslyn Wemyss' life and career was both fascinating and brilliant - a most distinguished admiral who is very little known. As the Allied Naval Representative at the Armistice negotiations on 11th November, 1918, he was responsible, with Marshal Foch, for the creation of Armistice Day. One of the most illustrious of Scottish admirals, he was a member of the Clan Wemyss, whose ancestral seat is Wemyss Castle in Fife, overlooking the Firth of Forth.
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The Danger of Life by Ken Lussey (10 May 2019). It is late 1942. Group Captain Robert Sutherland's first week in charge of Military Intelligence 11's operations in Scotland is not going smoothly. An investigation into a murder at the Commando Basic Training Centre in the Highlands take an even darker turn that draws Bob in personally. He is also trying to discover who was behind an attempt to steal an advanced reconnaissance aircraft; and then Monique Dubois in MI5 asks for his help with an operation of hers in Glasgow that has gone badly wrong.
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Eyes Turned Skywards by Ken Lussey (31 May 2018). Wing Commander Robert Sutherland has left his days as a pre-war detective far behind him. Or so he thinks. On 25 August 1942 the Duke of Kent, brother of King George VI, is killed in northern Scotland in an unexplained air crash; a second crash soon after suggests a shared, possibly sinister, cause. Bob Sutherland is tasked with visiting the aircraft's base in Oban and the first crash site in Caithness to gather clues as to who might have had reason to sabotage one, or both, of the aircraft.
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Scotland's Wings: Triumph and Tragedy in the Skies by Robert Jeffrey (15 September 2022). Scotland has a worldwide reputation for launching some of the greatest ships ever built, but far less is known about our pioneering work on aviation. Including the first flight over Everest, the construction of the most northerly airship station in mainland Britain and the experience of civilians and pilots during the Clydebank Blitz of 1941, Scotland's Wings is a glimpse into the dramatic and sometimes controversial adventures in Scottish aeronautics.
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Roman Camps in Britain by Rebecca H. Jones (3 February 2012). Roman camps are the bridesmaids of Roman fortifications. This study begins with a general overview of the Roman conquest and an explanation of what Roman camps were used for and looked like. It then explores the archaeology of Roman camps, including how we know what we know and looking at the re-use and survival of these structures.
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The Grey Wolves of Eriboll by David M. Hird (April 2018). The surrender of the German U-boat fleet at the end of World War II helped demonstrate to the British people that peace really had arrived. This revised, updated and expanded new edition gives career details of not only the submarines and the commanders who sailed them to Loch Eriboll in northern Scotland. The book also looks at the Allied naval operation under which the surrendering U-boats were assembled in Scotland and Northern Ireland, and the later operation to destroy them.
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A Taste for Treason: The Letter That Smashed a Nazi Spy Ring by Andrew Jeffrey (6 October 2022). Dundee, 1937. When housewife Mary Curran became suspicious of hairdresser Jessie Jordan's frequent trips to Nazi Germany, she was drawn into an international web of espionage as MI5 and the FBI launched major spy hunts. This is the true story of a decade-long series of Nazi espionage plots in Britain, Europe and the United States. It shows how a Nazi spy's letter, posted in New York and intercepted in Scotland, broke spy rings across Europe and North America.
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Crown Covenant and Cromwell: The Civil Wars in Scotland 1639 - 1651 by Stuart Reid (15 November 2012). Th is is a groundbreaking military history of the Great Civil War or rather the last Anglo-Scottish War as it was fought in Scotland and by Scottish armies in England between 1639 and 1651. While the politics of the time are covered, it is above all the story of those armies and the men who marched in them.
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Tartan Airforce: Scotland and a Century of Military Aviation 1907-2007 by Deborah Lake (31 October 2009). Britain's first flying machine was trailled in Perthshire in 1907 and ever since, whether at war or in peacetime, Scotland has been in the frontline of British military aviation. This book investigates Scotland's contribution to military flying over the last hundred years.
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Killing Fields of Scotland: AD83 to 1746 by R. J. M. Pugh (31 March 2013). Battles fought on Scottish soil include those of the Scottish Wars of Independence, the English Civil Wars and the Jacobite Rebellions. This book tells the stories of these battles and many others fought in Scotland from the Roman victory at Mons Graupius in AD 83 to the defeat of Bonnie Prince Charlie at Culloden Moor in 1746.
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Border Reiver 1513-1603 by Keith Durham and Gerry Embleton (10 March 2011). Stretching from the North Sea to the Solway Firth, the Border region has a sharply diverse landscape and was a battleground for over 300 years as the English and Scottish monarchs did little to discourage their subjects to conduct raids across their respective borders.
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Portobello and the Great War by Archie Foley and Margaret Munro (6 September 2013). The story of wartime Portobello makes for fascinating reading. This book documents the impact of the First World War on day-to-day life in Portobello, including old photographs to show how the conflict left its mark on the people and places around the area, and personal diary entries from the era.
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Orkney's Italian Chapel: The True Story of an Icon by Philip Paris (27 May 2010). Orkney's Italian Chapel was built by Italian POWs held on the island during the Second World War. The story of who built the chapel and how it came into existence has never before been researched in such detail, and the result is a fascinating insight into a truly remarkable building and the truly remarkable people who built it and have looked after it over the 65 years since the war.
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Loch Ewe During World War II by Steve Chadwick (7 November 2014). This account of the life and times of the Loch Ewe area during World War II covers not only the major naval activities of wartime Wester Ross, but also provides a fascinating glimpse into the everyday lives of the local people and how their remote crofting communities were touched by the war years in this very remote part of the Highlands.
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Camp 165 Watten by Valerie Campbell (30 September 2010). This is a new and expanded second edition of the best-selling first edition about Camp 165 Watten, Scotland's most secretive prisoner of war camp, hidden away in the centre of Caithness. The author has provided an in-depth historical account with new information on a number of prisoners.
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The Italian Chapel by Philip Paris (6 March 2014). The Italian Chapel is a story of forbidden love, lifelong friendships torn apart, despair and hope, set against the backdrop of the creation of a symbol that is known around the world. Amidst conflict and hardship, the Italian prisoners of war sent to a tiny Orkney island during World War Two create a monument to the human spirit's ability to lift itself above great adversity.
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Scotland's Land Girls: Breeches, Bombers and Backaches (Paperback) by Elaine Edwards (31 May 2010). An introduction covering the Women's Land Army in the First and Second World Wars is followed by reminiscences, recorded recently by the editor, of ten ex-Land Girls. The end result opens a fascinating window on a little appreicated area.
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Supreme Sacrifice: A Small Village and the Great War by Walter Reid (18 August 2016). The war memorial in the Scottish village of Bridge of Weir lists 72 men who died during the First World War. Their deaths occurred in almost every theatre of the war. They were awarded very few medals and their military careers were not remarkable, except that they, like countless other peaceful civilians, answered their country's call in its time of need.
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The Ships of Scapa Flow by Campbell McCutcheon (16 December 2013). This is the story of the ships of Scapa Flow in Orkney, including the World War One German Fleet. It covers their sinking and their salvage, using many previously unseen images of the recovery and subsequent removal of many of the German battleships and cruisers to Rosyth dockyard in Fife for breaking up.
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Last Train to Waverley by Malcolm Archibald (4 August 2014). March 1918. The Germans launch their final major offensive of the war and push the British back thirty miles. One unit of the 20th Royal Scots are cut off. This book follows the personal dilemmas of Douglas Ramsay, the officer in charge as he leads the survivors back through the German lines to try and reach the always moving British positions.
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Bannockburn: Scotland's Greatest Battle for Independence by Angus Konstam (15 May 2014). The Battle of Bannockburn on the 23 June 1314 is one of the most important events in Scottish history, and one of the least understood. Seven centuries later, debates on national identity are heavily influenced by the events of 1314. This book is published to mark the 700th anniversary of the battle.
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Bannockburn: The Battle for a Nation by Alistair Moffat (19 May 2016). As 8,000 Scottish soldiers, most of them spearmen, faced 18,000 English infantrymen, archers and mounted knights in June 1314 near the Bannock Burn, many would have thought that the result a foregone conclusion. But two days later, the English were routed, Edward II fled to the coast and took ship for home, and few English and Welsh soldiers escaped from Scotland unhurt.
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The Companion to Castles by Stephen Friar (2011 Edition). Stephen Friar has a encyclopedic knowledge of all aspects of castles as well as the ability to place issues within a historical context and explain them succinctly and clearly for the non-specialist. This nicely illustrated and detailed A to Z reference book with its index of castles is essential reading for anyone interested in medieval castles.
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Raise the Clans: The Wargamer's Guide to Jacobite Britain by Martin Hackett (30 June 2014). In this book, Martin Hackett brings his extensive wargaming experience and historical knowledge to the Jacobite Wars of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, taking us from the Glorious Rebellion of 1685 until 1746, a period of history with much less coverage in wargaming terms.
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Luftwaffe Over Scotland, A History of German Air Attacks on Scotland, 1939-45 by Les Taylor (27 April 2010). The first complete history of the air attacks mounted against Scotland by Germany during World War Two undertakes a detailed examination of the strategy, tactics and politics involved on both sides, together with a technical critique of the weaponry employed by both attackers and defenders.
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The Sinking of HMS Royal Oak In the Words of the Survivors by Dilip Sarkar (14 September 2012).HMS Royal Oak was torpedoed at anchor in Scapa Flow by the German submarine U-47 on 14 October 1939. The loss of life was heavy: of Royal Oak's complement of 1,234 men and boys, 833 were killed that night or died later of their wounds. This is the story of her sinking in the words of the survivors of both the Royal Oak and U-47.
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Tornado F3: 25 Years of Air Defence by Justin Reuter, Mark McEwan, Gill Howie, Berry Vissers & Geoffrey Lee (22 March 2011). This magnificently illustrated book marks the departureof the F3 from service and brings a flavour of the equipment, the places, the organisations and most importantly the people, with personal accounts from those involved with the Tornado F3 in a quarter of a century of service.
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Glencoe by John Sadler (15 October 2009). A fresh look at one the most emotive episodes in Scottish history. In the early hours of 13 February 1692, government troops who for the previous week had been peacefully quartered on the inhabitants of Glencoe, fell upon their MacDonald hosts. In the ensuing hours 38 defenceless men, women, and children were murdered in cold blood.
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Camp 21 Comrie: POWs and Post-War Stories from Cultybraggan by Valerie Campbell (30 June 2017). Camp 21 Comrie, also known as Cultybraggan Camp, is the UK's best preserved prisoner of war camp. Lying in the heart of rural Perthshire in Scotland, the camp's history is a fascinating one. Built two miles south of the village of Comrie as a camp for detainees, and in the following years it housed thousands of prisoners of war captured in North Africa and Europe. The book also features the camp's history during the Cold War.
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Soldier's Game by James Killgore (21 July 2011). After football practice each week, Ross goes to visit his grandmother, and this week she has a special present for him. Pat digs out a pair of old football boots and strip which belonged to her father, who once played for Heart of Midlothian Football Club, and who was part of a battalion of footballers and fans who fought in the First World War at the Battle of the Somme.
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Mons Graupius AD 83 by Duncan B Campbell and Sean O'Brogain (10 July 2010). In AD 77, Roman forces under Agricola marched into the northern reaches of Britain. Finally, in AD 83, they fought the final battle at Mons Graupius where 10,000 Caledonians were slaughtered with only 360 Roman dead. It proved the high-water mark of Roman power in Britain.
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