LINKS & RECOMMENDED READING

COMMANDO COUNTRY by Stuart Allan
Published 4 October 2007

Mountains and lochs, rugged terrain, challenging weather, seclusion: the Scottish highlands had everything that was needed to prepare soldiers for Commando warfare. From 1940-44 highland properties were selected and transformed into special training centres to teach guerrilla methods, assault landings and survival techniques. Commando Country looks at the variety of establishments set up during the Second World War for special service training and describes the use made of the landscape and coastline and of specialist civilian skills such as stalking and mountaineering.

The story involves people famous in other walks of life such as author Gavin Maxwell, actor David Niven, mountaineer John Hunt, and polar explorer Martin Lindsay, as well as military figures such as David Stirling, founder of the SAS, and Special Operations Executive Violette Szabo. Conveying the atmosphere of the locations - such as Achnacarry, Arisaig, the Cairngorms, the Isle of Arran, the Isle of Skye, Inveraray and Lochailort - the book makes use of photographs and personal testimony collected from those involved as well as official sources to give a unique Scottish perspective on this most uncompromising kind of warfare.

Stuart Allan is Senior Curator of Military History at the National War Museum, Edinburgh Castle where the exhibition 'Commando Country' is running until February 08. He is co-author, with Allan Carswell, of The Thin Red Line: War, Empire and Visions of Scotland.

If you would like to speak to Stuart Allan please contact Hannah Dolby, Press Office, National Museums Scotland, 0131 247 4288 h.dolby@nms.ac.uk

If you would like further information on the book Commando Country or other NMS titles please contact Kate Blackadder, NMSE - Publishing, National Museums Scotland, Chambers Street, Edinburgh, EH1 1JF 0131 247 4083 k.blackadder@nms.ac.uk

Commando Country published 4 October 07 ISBN 978 1 905267 14 9 256pp 235 x 156mm
20 colour + 40 b/w photographs paperback 12.99
available from bookshops, by contacting the address/tel. no. below, and from our new online shop:
http://www.nms.ac.uk/commandocountrybook.aspx

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