Homage to Caledonia: Scotland and the Spanish Civil War

by Daniel Gray (Author)

• Used

  Hardcover
  2008

  $22.51

  Thirty-five thousand people from acrossthe world volunteered to join the armedresistance in a war on fascism. Morepeople, proportionately, went fromScotland than any other country, and theentire nation was gripped by the conflict.What drove so many ordinary Scots tovolunteer for a foreign war?Their stories are powerfully and honestlytold, often in their own words: theordinary men and women who madetheir way to Spain over the Pyreneeswhen the UK government banned anyonefrom going to support either side;the nurses and ambulance personnelwho discovered for themselves thehorrors of modern warfare; and thepeople back home who defied theirpoverty to give generously to theSpanish republican cause.Even in war there are light-heartedmoments: a Scottish volunteer drunkenlyurinating in his general's boots, enduringthe dark comedy of learning to shootwith sticks amidst a scarcity of rifles,or enjoying the surreal experience ofraising a dram with Errol Flynn.They went from all over the country:Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Dundee,Fife and the Highlands, and they foughtto save Scotland, and the world, fromthe growing threat of fascism.