Reviews for Fairey Aircraft Since 1915

The average rating for Fairey Aircraft Since 1915 based on 2 reviews is 5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2021-04-03 00:00:00 Junichi Sukano A wonderful history of the pioneers of Scotch whisky, both Highland malt distillers and the later whisky barons of the Lowlands that popularized blends in England and the world, but at the expense of pure Highland malts. Sir Robert Bruce-Lockhart had a fascinating and exciting life as "a British diplomat, journalist, author, secret agent, and footballer. His 1932 book Memoirs of a British Agent became an international bestseller and brought him to the world's attention by telling of his failed effort to sabotage the Bolshevik Revolution in Moscow in 1918." (Wikipedia) But this book is his celebration of "uisge beatha"(Gaelic) or "aqua vitae" (Latin), that quintessential Scottish drink that has been the lifeblood and birthright of the Scottish Highlands for many centuries. He himself spent part of his childhood exploring the Balmenach Distillery, and shows great knowledge of both the making of, history of, and enjoyment of quality single malts. He provides detailed portraits of some of the most famous whisky barons to make personal fortunes and lasting legacies by popularizing Scotch blends (malt and grain) to the masses and the world, and also the story of the Distillers Company that took control of the Scotch whisky industry through numerous tribulations caused by the First World War, Prohibition in the US, every rising taxes from the English Exchequer, and the Second World War. He theorizes that without the collective power of this amalgamation, the scattered Scottish distilleries may not have survived these many difficulties. Here is his view of the legacy of the blenders: Legacy of the blenders (p130): "Here I may properly sum up the virtues and faults of the men whose real achievement was to create an international taste and insatiable desire for what had hitherto been a national, and, indeed, mainly Highland drink. They lived in a spacious age when capitalism had a free reign and opportunity offered rich rewards to those who were able to grasp it. They made huge fortunes and kept them, as the spirit of the age not only entitled but encouraged them to do. In the process they altered the taste of whisky, and this was and is still regarded as their greatest sin by the malt distillers and by the Celtic enthusiasts of malt whisky. However regrettable this may be, it is at least open to doubt whether malt whisky by itself would ever have conquered the world and whether the blender-magnates, by taking a proportion of malt whisky, did not, in fact, benefit the pockets of the malt distillers even if their palates were offended." He also provides a great deal of insight into the role of Scotch in the life of the poor Scottish worker, and how it is often blamed for drunkenness and poverty, whereas he views it as a symptom rather than the cause: On Scottish drinking and urban poverty (p167): "It is also regrettably true that in the second half of the eighteenth century, and throughout the nineteenth, Scotland had an unenviable reputation for drunkenness, especially in the rapidly growing industrial centres. The fault, however, must be attributed, not so much to whisky, although much of it was bad, as to the appalling conditions in which the workers lived. Drink was the easiest escape from economic hell, and whisky, then remarkably cheap even in relation to the low wages, was the quickest road to oblivion. As Kipling has said: �Drink is the only thing that will make clean all a man�s deeds in his own eyes. Pity it is that the effects are not permanent.� Slums and poverty were not the creation of the worker. It was the misdeeds of others which drove him to cleanse his despair in alcohol. Certainly the effects were not permanent, but they were tried repeatedly. I still remember vividly the fear that lent speed to my legs whenever I walked down Dock Street in Dundee in the late afternoon of a winter Saturday. Every third house was a pub, and every pub a vortex in which the week�s wages were engulfed. As often as not, there would be a group of men and women quarreling, fighting, and brandishing bottles on the pavement. The temperance workers raged and had cause for their indignation, but in their efforts to suppress the drink trade they neglected the social conditions on which it thrived. Whisky, in fact, was the consequence and not the cause of these conditions, and had there been no whisky, man in his ingenuity would have found, as indeed he found later in such poisonous concoctions as �Red Biddy�, another anodyne for his despair. In a very real sense the Scot�s love of whisky is a natural reaction against the rigours of Calvinism which, for all its virtues, is harsh more than tender and leans toward self-righteousness rather than to grace. It is against the fleshpots of Egypt. It insists that the devil must be fought in this world in order to secure salvation in the next. Whisky is perhaps a more dangerous fleshpot that the cucumber and the melons and the onions and the garlic which the Israelites remembered from their days of bondage in Egypt. But to the Scot, born to poverty and the hard life, it was his only fleshpot and it gave him what he could not find in his gloomy surroundings: a glimpse of the mystery and splendor of existence. There was no frailty in his character to excuse his lapses. His was the rousing kind of drinking which exalted the soul and reasserted his independence. As for wrestling with the devil, he was always prepared to do his best, provided that Auld Nick won an occasional throw, especially on Saturday nights. Then, contrite with the repentance of repletion, he would seek out the minister and admit his fall." Finally, he speaks eloquently on Scottish whisky as a fundamental part of the Scottish character and identity, saying: Whisky is a part of Scottish culture (p171): Whisky has made us what we are. It goes with our climate and with our nature. It rekindles old fires in us, our hatred of cant and privilege, our conviviality, our sense of nationhood, and, above all, our love of Scotland. It is our release from materialism, and I often think that without it we should have long been extinct as a rare, for we should have been so irritatingly efficient that a worse persecution than the Hebrews ever suffered would have been our inevitable fate. Today Scotland is neither wholly free nor wholly sober. Indeed, to the Scot who is not given to wasting his substance on fast women and slow horses, whisky is today his only extravagance. Everything encourages him in this national strength and weakness. In March 1951, two of the leading doctors of the United States declared pontifically that a man is a food not to drink after 40 and should take three ounces of whisky daily to counteract the effects of the hardening of the arteries. So, with the best medical opinion on his side, what is the poor Scot to do? As a friend, whisky has virtues unequalled by any other form of alcohol. As O. Henry wrote in The Lost Blend, �it gives men courage and ambition and the nerve for anything. It has the colour of gold, is clear as glass and shines after dark as if the sunshine were still in it.� As an enemy, there is no Scot who does not know its dangers and no Scottish family without its whisky skeletons. They rattle in my own cupboard, and I myself have been near enough destruction to respect whisky, to fear it, and to continue to drink it."

Review # 2 was written on 2016-01-07 00:00:00 Patrick McRae A nostalgic travel through past and present of uisge beatha, water of life, also known as whisky, or scotch. In the first part the author reminiscenses upon his own childhood in highlands, near his grandpa's malt distillery, the importance of malt whisky in scottish life, and the history of production of the beverage and the struggle with government's efforts to legalize it. The second part is dedicated to beginnings of blended whisky and great whisky barons of 19 and 20 centuries, and the book ends with ruminations upon present and future of whisky. Makes you yearn for just a dram o'malt. As the saying goes 'One is all right. Two are too many, and three are not enough'.