Introduction

As I am nearing my sixtieth birthday, I would like to review my past life from the time that I was born up until the present day.

I was born on the 4^th of October 1937 in East Ham in London at Forest Gate Hospital. When I was born the Spanish Civil War had been going for over a year and Sir Edward Mosley was marching through the East End of London. In Germany Hitler was tightening his grip on Europe and looking towards his neighbours.

When war was declared in 1939 my parents sent me back to Scotland to their family, who lived in Campbeltown, Argyllshire.

Campbeltown lies at the southern end of the Kintyre peninsula and is well served by a landlocked harbour. The town itself is a very ancient borough with its own personal coat of arms, the motto inscribed on the shield is Fortuna Favitus Republica.

The history of Kintyre is varied and colourful starting with the Scots crossing from Ireland followed by Saint Columba, then in the eighteenth century John Paul Jones sailed into the harbour during his famous raid on Britain on behalf of the fledgling United States. Before this, in the seventeenth century, the Presbyterian General David Leslie trapped the Macdonalds at Dunaverty in Southend and massacred them -- years before the Glencoe incident.

History apart, at the age of two I arrived in this almost hidden town, a place that time forgot...

Copyright © 1998 Donald Keith.