The Flowers of the Forest: Scotland and the First World War
by Trevor Royle
Edition: Paperback
Price: £9.98 from Amazon
A tremendously good read.
This was an interesting read which kept me absorbed for quite a few days because it warranted some passages being read more than once and considered before moving onto the next. Apart from some very glaring differences this is a book which could have been written about any part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland about the Great War. It leaves one in no doubt that we live in a different age now where the number of people who would voluntarily "answer the call" would be (in my opinion) bound to fall well short of the effort in 1914. Nor would the youth of today surrender themselves to conscription in the same way as the men of 1916 and onwards.
To those who know little or nothing of Scotland's effort this book will answer any questions such as the reasons why Scotland only had a very small number of Pals Battalions compared to regions with a similar population. (Apart from the two major cities of the day, most of the population lived in rural locations, scattered throughout the habitable part of the country.
From the socio-economic point of view the information Trevor Royle supplies is priceless. So many facts and figures but he keeps each chapter interesting and it's very hard to put the book down. I don't think there's any aspect of the effect 1914-1918 had on this sparsely populated country which has been left out and I commend it to anyone who has the tiniest interest in World War One, or Scotland, or both.