Description
Author(s): Philip Chisholm
Publisher: Independently Published
Publisher Imprint: Independently Published
BISAC: Military – General
PREFACE
This book began, as many of my stories do, with a name from
the past and the sudden realisation that history was not standing
at a distance. It was sitting at my own family table.
Private Harold Chisholm, born in Urray in 1791, was my three
times great grandfather. He served with the 92nd Regiment of
Foot, the Gordon Highlanders, through the Peninsular War and at
Waterloo. The surviving record gives us names, dates, campaigns,
medals, wounds and the short judgements of official papers. What
it cannot give us is the sound of a Highland morning, the fear
before a volley, the weight of a friend upon a battlefield, or the
thoughts of an ordinary soldier looking homeward.
Those quiet spaces are where this historical novel lives.
Harold was a real man. The 92nd were real men. The great
battles and the political world around them belong to history.
Where documents survive, I have tried to let them lead me. Where
the record falls silent, I have drawn upon family tradition,
historical research and imagination. Dialogue, private thoughts,
scene setting and some incidents have therefore been
reconstructed for the purposes of the story.
At heart, this is not a book about emperors and generals. It is
about the ordinary soldier who stood where history happened,
endured it, survived it and came home carrying memories that
outlived the guns.
Harold’s road ran from the hills of Ross-shire to the field of
Waterloo and, at last, back to the stories of Harold’s Court. I hope
you will walk that road with him.
Pip of Redcar
Redcar, North Yorkshire
2026
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