THE QUEEN'S ROYAL REGIMENT ( WEST SURREY) - ( 2nd Foot ) by Haswell, Jock

FAMOUS REGIMENTS SERIES . 1967, London, Leo Cooper, first UK edition, hard bound in dust jacket, 6 x 9, 153 pp, illus. FINE/FINE CONDITION.  ......................................................... This is the story of the oldest and to its members the greatest of the English Line Regiments; a story which began more than 300 years ago, when Charles II ordered the Earl of Peterborough to raise a force of Foot to defend "our Citty of Tangers", part of the dowry of his young Queen Catherine of Braganza. Though the Queen's Royal Regiment is but a single thread in the great tapestry of the nation's history, its courage and discipline have on many a battlefield and in many an unglamorous garrison had their effect upon the pattern of that tapestry. It knew disaster-on the "fatal plain" of Almanza for example: there were awkward moments tooparticularly for Lieutenant Raitt when the rope broke at the execution of Father Murphy; and times in both World Wars when the civilian army, the Territorials and the men who came into the Regiment 'for the duration', carried its great traditions forward on a tide of glory equal to the greatest achievements in the Regiment's noble past. This is a story, not just a catalogue of battles, one which lifts the reader, carries him swiftly down the years and leaves him with an unfashionable pride in his heritage.