MEET THE CONTRIBUTORS

Dr David Alston Born and brought up in the highlands of Scotland, Dr David Alston is a freelance historian who has spent 20 years researching the role of highland Scots in the slave-worked plantations of the Caribbean, especially Guyana.

On page 24 he tells the story of the remarkable Dorothy ‘Doll’Thomas, a free black woman whose visit to early 19th-century Glasgow was as eye-catching as it was remarkable.

Dr Timothy Ashby, a graduate of the University of Edinburgh, is the author of Elizabethan Secret Agent: The Untold Story of William Ashby (1536-1593), to be published by Scotland Street Press in 2022.

Starting on page 10, Dr Ashby explores a visit by Sir Francis Walsingham to the court of James VI in Scotland, where this spymaster of Elizabeth I of England received a bizarre and unsettling reception.

John Wallace lives in Straraer, where his maternal family from Ireland settled soon after the Napoleonic Wars. He is a retired English language teacher, and after teaching briefly in Stranraer, spent thirty years in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, mostly with universities, the armed forces and industry. He has published various contributions on the history and science of firearms.

On page 47, he explores the life and legacy of the Boer soldier and politician Deneys Reitz, centred upon two statues in Ayr which together, help to tell the story of a man who made the transition from seventeen-year-old Boer War guerilla to Royal Scots Fusiliers lieutenant colonel.