For two centuries the officers and men of the London Scottish have faithfully served their country, never more so than during the terrible years of the Great War. Initially with the 1st Guards Brigade, and later with the 56th (London) Division, the 1st Battalion was so committed to the prosecution of its cause that by November 1918 its numbers included only three survivors of the original Battle of Messines.The 2nd Battalion saw action in campaigns as diverse as France and Flanders, Ireland, the Balkans and Palestine where it won two Victoria Crosses.The London Scottish in the Great War does not set out to recite the oft-told famous battles fought and won. Rather it employs a wealth of previously unpublished war journals, diaries and photographs to provide a unique insight into this most auspicious Regiment.It demonstrates as no history of the London Scottish has before the hopes sufferings and aspirations of the volunteers who filled its ranks, so many of who made the supreme sacrifice.

The shared experiences and sacrifices of Scots in London in World War One - often untold stories and unseen pictures illustrate this fascinating new account.

“An excellent history . . . Over 1,000 black-and-white photos, and 100 color photos, tell the story of [WWI’s] first year in intimate and immediate detail.” —San Francisco Book Review This is the first volume in a series of five books covering each year of the First World War graphically. Countless thousands of pictures were taken by photographers on all sides during the war. These pictures appeared in the magazines, journals, and newspapers of the time. Some illustrations went on to become part of postwar archives and have appeared, and continue to appear, in present-day publications and TV documentary programs. The Great War Illustrated 1914 includes many rarely seen images with individual numbers allocated; subsequently they will be lodged with the Taylor Library Archive for use by editors and authors. The 1914 volume covers the outbreak of hostilities, the early battles, the war at sea, and the forming of the great trench line stretching from the coast to the Swiss border, and ends with the Christmas truce. Some images will be familiar—and many will be seen for the first time by a new generation interested in the months that changed the world forever.

On the brink of the First World War, Scotland was regarded throughout the British Isles as 'the workshop of the Empire'. Not only were Clyde-built ships known the world over, Scotland produced half of Britain's total production of railway equipment, and the cotton and jute industries flourished in Paisley and Dundee. In addition, Scots were a hugely important source of manpower for the colonies. Yet after the war, Scotland became an industrial and financial backwater. Emigration increased as morale slumped in the face of economic stagnation and decline. The country had paid a disproportionately high price in casualties, a result of huge numbers of volunteers and the use of Scottish battalions as shock troops in the fighting on the Western Front and Gallipoli - young men whom the novelist Ian Hay called 'the vanished generation'. In this book, Trevor Royle provides the first full account of how the war changed Scotland irrevocably by exploring a wide range of themes - the overwhelming response to the call for volunteers; the performance of Scottish military formations in 1915 and 1916; the militarization of the Scottish homeland; the resistance to war in Glasgow and the west of Scotland; and the boom in the heavy industries and the strengthening of women's role in society following on from wartime employment.

The battle of Loos was one of the most hard-fought battles that the British Expeditionary Force waged during the First World War. This work presents an interpretation of Loos, placing it not only within its political and strategic context, but also discussing command and control and the tactical realities of war on the Western Front during 1915.