"A scrupulously researched account of Mackintosh's short life ... good use has been made of the battalion's war diary."
Sunday Herald

"...an engaging biography...admits the humanity of the enemy while simultaneously seething with anger."
Scotland on Sunday

"... the authors prove that Mackintosh had greatness in him ... in the moments (where) his poetry takes on strength and significance ..."
The Herald 

"A developing poet who could have become a major one."
Sheffield Star

Alan Mackintosh was only one of millions of young men who met a premature and bloody death in the trenches of World War I. He had family connections on his father's side with Inverness-shire and Ross-shire;  he was brought up in Brighton, attended St Paul's school in London and when war broke out he was a student at Oxford.

But  Mackintosh's aspiration to be a poet distinguished him from his peers. He died in battle in 1917, attached to No 4 Company of the 4th Seaforth Highlanders.  He had previously fought, won the Military Cross, and been wounded serving with the 5th Seaforth Highlanders.   He had already published a small volume of poems, A Highland Regiment. Having written a will at the tender age of twenty three, he left work for a posthumous volume, War, the Liberator.  Though lines from his poem A Creed adorn the
Scottish American war memorial in Edinburgh's Princes Street Gardens, so far his life and works have not had the exposure that they merit.

Rosalind Green and Colin Campbell have researched the short life of this little known war poet. They illustrate the attitudes prevalent to authority and empire and their book demonstrates, through Mackintosh's own letters and creative work, the feelings and instincts of a young soldier faced with the imminence of the ultimate sacrifice.

ISBN: 1 902831 76 4