Author: Dr James Mackay

Sir William Wallace of Ellerslie is one of history’s greatest heroes, but also one of its greatest enigmas – a shadowy figure whose edges have been blurred by myth and legend. Even the date and place …

Andrew Carnegie (1835 1922) was a mass of contradictions: a radical Chartist who became a rabid capitalist, an idealist who was also a profound cynic, a committed pacifist who also played a crucial r …

Thomas Lipton burst onto the national scene in 1897, the year of Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee. The Princess of Wales had launched a 30, 000 fund to provide a Jublilee dinner for the poor, but, wi …

In My End Is My Beginning is the story of Mary Queen of Scots (1542 87), the tragic heroine par excellence. Queen of an unfamiliar and troubled nation when she was a week old, it was her misfortune t …

The most charismatic figure to emerge during the struggles for the independence of Ireland was undoubtedly Michael Collins. This remarkable biography, which draws on much hitherto unpublished materia …