The Ross-shire Buffs

Colin MacKenzie, a Highland lad from Kintail, enlists in the Ross-shire Buffs — the old 78th, mustered by Seaforth himself at Fort George in 1793 — and follows the regiment to the Persian war of 1857, the bivouac on the plain of Shiraz and the battle of Khoosh-Ab. James Grant had served as an officer and wrote military history as well as novels, and the barrack room and the campaign are drawn from knowledge; the volume ends with a string of shorter tales, from Agnes Sorel and the Duchess of Kingston to the fatal voyage of the Laura. Sixty plates by painters including Turner and Géricault carry the regiment's world of sea passage, encampment and imperial conflict from 1642 to 1895.