Book review - A Time of Tyrants: Scotland and the Second World War

HE never seemed to smile much, and while he spoke in animated terms with our parents, we children never really understood him. He was older than our father, maybe that was it. He spoke in Gaelic, but then so did all our relatives. In between the summers when we would visit him in the Hebrides, I was growing up in Glasgow. By the time I left school I could have offered a spirited account of German and Italian unification, named you every German premier of the Weimar Republic and spoken knowledgeably about Nazi racial philosophy. But no-one told me about St Valéry. Like other Scots, I marvelled at the stoicism of Dunkirk survivors visiting the Normandy beaches for anniversaries down the years, but no-one told me about St Valéry. Even now I am unsure how I first came to hear of the abandonment and eventual surrender of the 51st Highland Division in June 1940, but I do still feel a sense of anger – as much for never having been told, as for the tragedy itself. Had I known, I perhaps flatter my younger self, I may have understood him more. Had I known, I might have cherished every smile all the more rather than regretting their infrequency. Had I known, I would have looked differently at an old man sitting by a Rayburn stove in his final years and seen a young soldier walking to freedom across Europe after years as a prisoner of war.

We have waited a long time for a book such as Trevor’s Royle’s A Time of Tyrants, and I can think of no-one better qualified to tell Scotland’s wartime story. Royle’s Flowers of the Forest – addressing the First World War – showcased his knowledge of both home and fighting fronts, and remains a landmark text in the study of the Great War in Scotland. In contrast to the First World War, however, academic histories of the Second have so far failed to engage comprehensively with a war that is only now emerging from the realm of memory into the annals of history. What is more, “popular” titles have seldom effectively contextualised Scotland’s experience within the frame of “Total Warfare”. This deceptively accessible volume addresses the limitations of the current historiography on both these counts and distils an impressive range of both primary and secondary research in a richly detailed narrative. Do not underestimate the labour and insight involved: until this volume, the story of Scotland in war-time was fragmented, uneven and frequently sentimental.

In a beautifully produced and illustrated volume, Royle addresses the history of the home and fighting fronts in 12 core chapters, supported also by an engaging prologue and a thought-provoking epilogue. The narrative itself is chronological – a predictable but far from easy approach, given the number of theatres of war involved, the frequently contrapuntal rhythms of home and fighting fronts and the fact that Scotland was fighting as a nation without its own state. In pursuit of meaningful synthesis Royle is also called upon at times to recount the affairs of high politics and, with broad brush strokes, address wider issues of diplomacy and world affairs. Ensuring that this does not jar with the finely observed instances of local colour is something which – for the most part – he does with some flair. But there are instances when trying to do it all results in rather surprising juxtapositions, for example, when he moves from the theme of evacuation to Rudolf Hess’s Lanarkshire odyssey. Nevertheless, the writing style is fluid, and the history is confident and sure-footed, although at times maps would have been a welcome navigational aid. For an academic reader, the tendency for the narrative focus to shift and change might be frustrating at times (we move from a fascinating and amusing account of the Local Defence Volunteers to the war-time exploits of Compton MacKenzie), but for the general reader such variety and such an imaginative engagement with history will be rewarding features of this book.

Royle is at his best when driving the narrative forward with a steady and even pace, tracing changes in government policy as war demanded it, following regiments into battle and then into moments of repose, and pausing for breath to reflect on the cultural products of war – the poems, the novels, the songs. The book, like the war itself, however, takes some time to get going: the first 11 pages are taken up with the Empire Exhibition at Bellahouston in 1938 and a second false start is offered in the subsequent four pages as we accompany Edwin Muir on his pre-war tour of Scotland. While a knowledge of inter-war Scotland is certainly essential for distinguishing change from continuity in the years of war itself, one suspects one motif or the other might have done the job. By contrast, Royle might have taken more time on his coverage of war-time cinema and the dance-hall culture that emerged in these years: it could be argued that elite culture unduly dominates in this volume, when for most Scots Hollywood stars and band-leaders were better ‘kent’ and more appreciated than Hugh MacDiarmid.

The mark of our present, however, is very much evident in this book. It is doubtful that MacDiarmid and the history of the Scottish National Party would have featured so significantly in a history of the Second World War written 30 years ago, and the Epilogue “The Beginning of a New Song” would certainly have been very different. In the final six pages of this important monograph Royle leaves the war years behind to address the emergence of a devolved Scottish parliament across the 54 intervening years. It is the least successful aspect of the book. To this point, Royle’s narrative has shown exemplary even-handedness – he seeks to understand conscientious objectors as well as the heroes of the armed forces, and addresses head-on instances when morale was low, leadership misguided and pain disabling.

Yet, having lucidly explained the complex and contradictory history of the war itself, here Royle forecloses on the meaning of the war across time: “the first steps were being taken to create a world in which it would be possible to assert a sense of Scottish nationhood”. Hindsight is an unreliable ally for the historian, and here it comes close to limiting the import of Royle’s achievement elsewhere in the book. The peace that Scotland and the Allied powers secured involved a spectrum of possible outcomes, a range of possible tomorrows. Was that not the point?

None of these critical reflections should detract from Royle’s accomplishment in this book. He has honoured the legacy of those who fought the war at home and at the front, and has addressed the need for an accessible and rigorous history of Scotland’s war. The girl in me who was never told this story and never taught about the war from the perspective of “home” welcomes a book that should have been written long ago.

• A Time of Tyrants: Scotland and the Second World War, by Trevor Royle. Birlinn, 416pp, £25

• Dr Catriona MM Macdonald is Reader in Late Modern Scottish History at the University of Glasgow, and author of Whaur Extremes Meet: Scotland’s Twentieth Century (Edinburgh: John Donald, 2009) which won the Saltire Society’s Scottish History Book of the Year Award in 2010.