The Scottish Soldier by Stephen Wood - 1987

Archive Publications Limited, 1987. Hardcover. Very Good/Very Good. h/b 176 pages, condition is very good. The Scottish soldier is all things to all men. Some see him as a moustachioed piper of swinging kilt and imposing appearance: others. as one of a marauding horde bent on violent destruction. But perhaps most people today recognise him as the figure, brilliantly dressed, standing before a backdrop of grey, mist-covered mountains, advertising Scotch whisky or, indeed. Scotland itself. This book is about the real Scottish soldier. Long before the idea of Scotland as a nation was born. the men who lived in the poor lands north of the Cheviot Hills were soldiers - not through their own choosing but because they had to be in order to survive. While wars on the continent absorbed generations of Scottish mercenaries it was the wars against England which finally welded the nation together. There was nothing unique about the Scottish soldier until the eighteenth century when. for the first time, kilted Highlanders were brought into the British Army. Although their Lowland comrades blossomed forth in tartan at the end of the nineteenth century, the Highlanders gradually assumed the mantle of the martial Scot and so contributed much to the nation's mythology. In his absorbing story Stephen Wood confronts mythology with fact chronicling the development of these fighting men through two thousand years of history. For anyone interested in the truth of Scottish history (though aware of its romance). the author catches the imagination while casting a new and revealing light on the nation's past, both tragic and splendid.