Charles MacLean

Daniel MacCannell

Illicit distilling in Scotland was seen as a 'right of man' at the end of the 17th century. Attempts to enforce excise duty on the spirit were therefore met with resistance, ranging from riots to more and more ingenious ways of avoiding paying tax. In this book and Charles MacLean and Daniel MacCannell give a fascinating insight into the day-to-day struggles that led to the increase in illicit distilling from the mid-1600s, then to its eventual demise in the early twentieth century. The Cabrach, a wild and sparsely populated part of Aberdeenshire, became renowned for its production of illicit whisky. Local inhabitants mixed farming and distilling with great skill, creating a network of stills and distribution to evade customs. Using new research first-hand historical accounts and official records, the authors show how spirits from this small parish were made and travelled far and wide, across the border to England and across the North Sea to France, firing up revolution and lending solidarity to the struggles of the Jacobites. Features: Making Whisky (Dennis McBain), The Jacobite Legacy (Murray Pittock), The Bard and the Bottle (David Purdie), The Dram In Folklore (Tom McKean), A Smuggler's Paradise (David Ferguson); Banff - The Smuggler's Royal Burgh (Jay Wilson), Scotland's Lost Distilleries (Brian Townsend).

The Illicit Distilling and Smuggling of Whisky

Scotland's Secret History

Over the past four and a half centuries, the magnificent city of Oxford has been mapped for many reasons, few of which have involved the mere finding of one's way through the streets. Maps were produced as part of schemes to defend Oxford from rampaging Roundheads, raging floodwaters, and the ravages of cholera; to plan the new canals and bridges of the eighteenth century and the new railways, tramways and suburbs of the nineteenth; to determine and display changes in the city's political stature under the Reform Acts of 1832 and 1867; to aid police enforcement of the laws against homosexuality; and even to plan a Soviet ground assault on the heart of the British motor industry. Given its status as a world centre of drama, poetry, literature, music, architecture, and scientific experimentation, and sometime royal capital, it is unsurprising that Oxford was the first British town to be included in map form in a tourist guidebook, as early as 1762, and one of just two inland towns mapped by French invasion planners in the Seven Years' War. For the first time, this lavishly illustrated volume brings together sixty of the most remarkable maps and views of the area that have been made by friend and foe since 1575.

Daniel MacCannell

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