Distilling the truth about a champion of whisky

Aeneas MacDonald was not one to curb his pen when it came to his beloved beverage. “Of the history, geography, literature, philosophy, morals, use and abuse, praise and scorn of whisky volumes might be written. They will not be written by me. Yet it is opportune that a voice be raised in defence of this great, potent and princely drink where so many speak to slight and defame, and where so many glasses are emptied foolishly and irreverently in ignorance of the true qualities of the liquid and in contempt of its proper employment.”

So went the first lines of MacDonald's 1930 classic tome, Whisky. Ian Buxton, in an essay prefacing the 2006 facsimile edition by Scottish publishers Canongate, attempted to contextualise the book. The turn of the 19th century and the early 20th century had not been good either for whisky or whiskey, as the Irish and Americans spell it.

“The name ‘Pattisons’ still echoed ominously. This high-profile concern had driven ten other distillers into receivership, blackened the whole name of blending and, indirectly, led to a Royal Commission on Whisky following exposure at their criminal trial of the nefarious practices of their infamous blending vat.” Robert and Walter Pattison were jailed after being found guilty of fraud but Buxton says their influence cast a long and dark shadow.

“Then,” Buxton writes, “scarcely recovered from the Pattisons’ blending scandal and subsequent crash, Scotch whisky faced the triple challenges of the Great War, the Great Depression and Prohibition in the USA, its most important market.” Over 50 single malt distilleries had closed in the previous 30 years and the Scottish whisky industry was in crisis.

Buxton states: “MacDonald’s voice, then, stands alone and just when we might reasonably have expected whisky’s valediction, his book was a passionate and keenly-felt rallying cry.”

But there was something else happening as well. The author Aeneas MacDonald had long been something of a mystery. No-one knew of him but the clue was in the name itself. An Aeneas MacDonald had been one of Bonnie Prince Charlie’s “Seven men of Moidert” – the Parisian exiles who sailed from Nantes in July 1745 and landed on the island of Eriskay on August 2nd as they took the first step towards restoring Charles to the British throne.

On the same day 154 years later George Malcolm Thomson was born in Leith near Edinburgh and he would go on to develop a passionate interest in the Jacobin cause. He studied history and English in Edinburgh University and served as a 2nd lieutenant in the first World War. In 1922, he helped establish the small Porpoise Press, which published Whisky. By 1930, it had issued some 48 titles, including work by the poet Hugh MacDiarmid. Thompson had also contributed pieces but his major work had been published elsewhere. Caledonia, or the Future of the Scots and The Rediscovery of Scotland were both issued in 1928, followed by A Short History of Scotland in 1930. According to Buxton, the two earlier titles attracted the attention of Canadian-born press baron Lord Beaverbrook and by 1930 Thomson was in London working for the Evening Standard. There he remained, receiving an OBE for services to journalism in 1990 before dying in 1996 aged 96.

Buxton, through dogged detective work, established that Aeneas MacDonald and George Malcolm Thomson were one and the same. Thomson had good reason to adopt a nom de plume. His books had revealed his disillusion with Scotland ("a land of second-hand thoughts and second-rate minds") and he was described as "the best-hated man in Scotland". It would be understandable if he didn't want his passion for whisky to be mired in his toxic political slipstream. However, another, possibly more likely, reason was that his parents were teetotal and, in particular, he did not wish to offend his mother.

He was happy to offend others, notably those on this island. In a review of George Malcolm Thomson: The Best-Hated Man, a biography by George McKechnie in the Scotsman in August last year, George Kerevan points out that Thomson not only blamed what he perceived as a decadent middle class for Scotland's then dire predicament — "he argued that Scotland was doomed as a nation because of the mass immigration of the Catholic Irish". Happily the nationalist movement was more inclusive even then and, says Kerevan, MacDiarmid argued in a riposte that Irish immigration was wholly positive, as it had the potential to "re-Celticize" Scotland.

Ally Alpine travelled in the other direction and it could be argued that his influence on Ireland has been wholly positive save for the odd sore head. He has run the Celtic Whiskey Shop in Dublin for many years which has become a treasured repository for fine wine and rare and exotic spirits, including many examples of the renewal in Irish whiskey production. He has now taken on the Irish franchise for the international Whiskey Live show which will be held in the Mansion House on October 25th. The event will be split into two sessions — 2pm – 5.30pm; 6pm – 9.30pm — and there will be a wealth of whiskies from around the world to sample and savour, plus bite-size dishes from the likes of Etto, Koh Bar and L Mulligan Grocer with which to wash them down. Tickets cost €37.50 from the shop or from celticwhiskeyshop.com and he plans that a minimum of €10 from each ticket will be donated to Downs Syndrome Dublin, a charity close to the heart of Ally and his family.