The Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders is one of the best-known regiments in the British Army. In a previous incarnation as the 93rd Highlanders, its soldiers were famed for being the 'thin red line' that repulsed the Russian heavy cavalry at the Battle of Balaklava during the Crimean War. When the regiment was ordered to disband in 1968 as part of wide-ranging defence cuts, a popular 'Save the Argylls' campaign was successful in keeping the regiment in being. In 2006, it became the 5th battalion of the new Royal Regiment of Scotland. Formed by two earlier regiments, The Argylls have a stirring history of service to the British Crown. They served all over the empire, taking part in the Indian Mutiny and the Boer War, and fought in both World Wars. In the post-war period the Argylls captured the public imagination in 1967 when they reoccupied the Crater district of Aden following a period of riots. Recruiting mainly from the west of Scotland, the regiment has a unique character and throughout its history has retained a fierce regimental pride which is summed up by its motto: 'sans peur', meaning 'without fear'. The Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders puts its story into the context of British military history and makes use of personal testimony to reveal the life of the regiment.

On 1 July 1881 Viscount Cardwell's wholesale reorganisation of the British Army brought into existence Priness Louise's Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders. Both had existed as separate regiments even before their official incorporation into the British Army and on the face of it, this seemed a highly improbable union, Being separated both geographically and historically they had never even served together in the same theatre. Yet, as history has shown, this unlikely combination proved to be a tremendous success. William McElwee tells the story of this most famous of regiments which has served with distinction in two world wars and beyond.

A compilation of Scotland's failures on the battlefields of the world from Mons Graupius to Korea.

The definitive history of the Crimean War from world-renowned historian Trevor Royle. The Crimean War is one of history's most compelling subjects. It encompassed human suffering, woeful leadership and maladministration on a grand scale. It created a heroic myth out of the disastrous Charge of the Light Brigade and, in Florence Nightingale, it produced one of history's great heroes. New weapons were introduced; trench combat became a fact of daily warfare outside Sebastopol; medical innovation saved countless soldiers' lives that would otherwise have been lost. The war paved the way for the greater conflagration which broke out in 1914 and greatly prefigured the current situation in Eastern Europe.

Aden, 20 June 1967: two army Land Rovers burn ferociously in the midday sun. The bodies of British soldiers litter the road. Thick black smoke bellows above Crater town, home to insurgents who are fighting the British-backed Federation government. Crater had come to symbolise Arab nationalist defiance in the face of the world’s most powerful empire. Hovering 2,000 ft. above the smouldering destruction, a tiny Scout helicopter surveys the scene. Its passenger is the recently arrived Commanding Officer of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, Lieutenant-Colonel Colin Mitchell. Soon the world’s media would christen him ‘Mad Mitch’, in recognition of his controversial reoccupation of Crater two weeks later. Mad Mitch was truly a man out of his time. Supremely self-confident and debonair, he was an empire builder, not dismantler, and railed against the national malaise he felt had gripped Britain’s political establishment. Drawing on a wide array of never-before-seen archival sources and eyewitness testimonies, Mad Mitch’s Tribal Law tells the remarkable story of inspiring leadership, loyalty and betrayal in the final days of British Empire. It is, above all, a shocking account of Britain’s forgotten war on terror.

This is the first such study of Operation Banner, the British Army's campaign in Northern Ireland. Drawing upon extensive interviews with former soldiers, primary archival sources including unpublished diaries and unit log-books, this book closely examines soldiers' behaviour at the small infantry-unit level (Battalion downwards), including the leadership, cohesion and training that sustained, restrained and occasionally misdirected soldiers during the most violent period of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. It contends that there are aspects of wider scholarly literatures - including from sociology, anthropology, criminology, and psychology - that can throw new light on our understanding of the British Army in Northern Ireland. It also offers fresh insights and analysis of incidents involving the British Army during the early years of Operation Banner, including the 1972 'Pitchfork murders' of Michael Naan and Andrew Murray in County Fermanagh, and that of Warrenpoint hotel owner Edmund Woolsey in South Armagh.The central argument of this book is that British Army small infantry units enjoyed considerable autonomy during the early years of Operation Banner and could behave in a vengeful, highly aggressive or benign and conciliatory way as their local commanders saw fit. The strain of civil-military relations at a senior level was replicated operationally as soldiers came to resent the limitations of waging war in the UK. The unwillingness of the Army's senior leadership to thoroughly investigate and punish serious transgressions of standard operating procedures in Northern Ireland created uncertainty among soldiers over expected behaviour and desired outcomes. Overly aggressive groups of soldiers could also be mistaken for high-functioning units - with negative consequences for the Army's overall strategy in Northern Ireland.