Whisky Galore

‘Love makes the world go round? Not at all. Whisky makes it go round twice as fast.’

The hilarious story of wartime bootlegging in the Scottish islands.

It’s 1943 and the war has brought rationing to the Hebridean islands of Great and Little Todday. When food is in short supply, it is bad enough, but when the whisky runs out, it looks like the end of the world.

Morale is at rock bottom. George Campbell needs a wee dram to give him the courage to stand up to his mother and marry Catriona. The priest, the doctor and, of course, the landlord at the inn are all having a very thin time of it. There’s no conversation, no jolity, no fun – until a shipwreck off the coast brings a piece of extraordinary good fortune…

Author Biography

Compton Mackenzie was born in West Hartlepool in 1883. He was educated at St Paul’s School and Magdalen College, Oxford. During the First World War he became a Captain in the Royal Marines, becoming Director of the Aegean Intelligence Service. He wrote more than ninety books – novels, history and biography, essays and criticism, children’s stories and verse, and was also an outstanding broadcaster. He founded and edited until 1961 the magazine the Gramophone, and was President of the Siamese Cat Club. He lived for many years on the island of Barra in the Outer Hebrides, but later settled in Edinburgh. Compton Mackenzie died in 1972.