Battalion

Alastair Charles Borthwick was a Scottish journalist, author and broadcaster who wrote about the popularisation of climbing among the working classes and the Second World War from the first-hand perspective of an infantryman. Borthwick was born near Glasgow in 1913 and raised in the city, attending Glasgow High School and becoming a member of the school's Officer Training Corps. He left school at the sixteen to work for the Evening Times and then the Glasgow Weekly Herald where, while writing the 'Open Air' section, he discovered rock climbing. Borthwick took to the new sport instantly, travelling out of the city at weekends to explore the Highlands. 'I became an addict,' he remembered. 'Most of my experiences ended up in the paper and I later used most of this material to write Always a Little Further.' The book, which became a minor classic, documented the growth of climbing among the working classes, which Ken Wilson described 'as if a group of East Enders had suddenly decided to take up grouse-shooting or polo,' with accounts of encounters with tramps, tinkers and hawkers, and of hitching to Ben Nevis in a lorry full of dead sheep, all described in Borthwick's light-hearted style. During the Second World War Borthwick served on the front line in the 5th Seaforths. At the end of the war his commanding officer asked him to write the battalion's tale - a unique opportunity as the troops were still in Germany, their memories of recent events intact. Borthwick produced Sans Peur, in which he gave the soldier's view of war, avoiding moralising, sensationalism or introspection, but making full use of first-hand accounts. The result was a sharp depiction of the extraordinary circumstances in which the soldiers frequently found themselves. Republished as Battalion for the fiftieth anniversary of the D-Day landings, it was one of five titles praised by The Soldier in its round up of D-Day books. For the rest of his career Borthwick worked as a television and radio broadcaster, writing and presenting programs on a range of subjects, including Scottish Soldier, a series on the history of the Scottish regiments, told, once again, by the infantryman. He regarded it as his best work from this period. Borthwick was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1952 for his part in organising an engineering exhibition for the Festival of Britain. He died in 2003.