Book description
Introduced by Allan Massie. Lt. Colonel Jock Sinclair is a rough
talking, whisky drinking soldier's soldier, a hero of the desert
campaign who rose to his position through the ranks. Colonel Barrow, an
officer graduate of Oxford and Sandhurst, had a wretched war in Japanese
prison camps. But he has come to take command of the Battalion he has
long admired, the one that Jock Sinclair has served in since he was a
boy. In the claustrophobic world of Campbell barracks, a conflict is
inevitable between the two men and a tragedy unfolds with concentrated
and ferocious power. James Kennaway served in a Highland regiment
himself, and his feeling for 'tunes of glory, for the glamour and
brutality of army life gives added authenticity and humour to this, his
first and most famous novel. He died in a car crash at the tragically
early age of forty.
