The classic Scottish novel made into a movie starring Alec Guinness and John Mills. “[A] brilliant depiction of . . . the male military world” (The List).
Lt. Col. 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. Col. 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 humor to this, his first and most famous novel. He died in a car crash at the tragically early age of forty.
“The old warrior who swaggers and swears his way through the pages here is a figure you are unlikely to forget . . . a story of considerable strength and the old man will easily command your attention and affection.” —Kirkus Reviews
