Camanachd!: The Story of Shinty - Tapa blanda

Shinty was taken by Scots all over the world. Twenty-four camain were standard issue to battalions of the Lovat Scouts during the Boer War. Highland emigrants to Canada, whose descendants still play 'shinny' in winter on frozen lakes, saw their game evolve into the national sport of ice hockey. At home the existence of shinty was frequently threatened, by royal edicts against popular and 'uncontrollable' games, by the Sabbatarianism which followed upon the Reformation and which outlawed in many areas the playing of sports on the day of rest, and by the rapid erosion of the old Highland way of life after the Jacobite swan-song of 1745. But in this book, the first full history of shinty, the author shows how the game stubbornly survived in Highland glens and on island shores, in public parks as far afield as Wimbledon and Edinburgh, until a series of memorable exhibition matches, one hundred years ago, led to the foundation of the Camanachd Association, a constitutional body which has led shinty, preserving it against all the odds as one of the last great amateur sports into the age of sponsorship, national press attention and TV coverage. Camanachd! was originally published by Mains

Roger Hutchinson is an award-winning author and journalist. After working as an editor in London, in 1977 he joined the West Highland Free Press in Skye. Since then he has published thirteen books, including Polly: The True Story Behind Whisky Galore; an acclaimed literary biography of James Boswell; a definitive history of the 1966 World Cup; and a life of Aleister Crowley. He is still attached to the WHFP as editor and columnist, and has written for BBC Radio, The Scotsman, the Guardian, The Herald and the Literary Review. He lives on the Hebridean island of Raasay.