"Historical Record of the Twenty-first Regiment..." was published under the orders of His late Majesty King William IV of England to give an account of the services of every Regiment in the British Army as at 1836. Among other details of each regiment, it contains the history and period of formation, and the justification thereof, as well as the names of officers and other soldiers killed or wounded in the course of duty, and those bestowed with any Titles, Medals, or other Marks of His Majesty's gracious favour. It offers an excellent history of British military history, looking back at such great names as Admiral Viscount Nelson, General Hon. William Gordon, Major-General James Hamilton, Major-General Hon. Alexander Mackay, John, Viscount Mordaunt, among others.

Reproduction of the original: Historical Record of the Twenty-First or The Royal North British Fusiliers: From Its Formation in 1678 to 1849 by Richard Cannon

This is one of the most valuable books in the armoury of the serious student of British Military history. It is a new and revised edition of Arthur White's much sought-after bibliography of regimental, battalion and other histories of all regiments and Corps that have ever existed in the British Army. This new edition includes an enlarged addendum to that given in the 1988 reprint. It is, quite simply, indispensible.

The Royal Highland Fusiliers came into being in 1959 as a result of the amalgamation of two regiments, both of which had strong connections with Glasgow and the west of Scotland: The Royal Scots Fusiliers, founded in 1678 by Charles Erskine, fifth Earl of Mar; and The Highland Light Infantry, or HLI, created in 1881 as a result of the amalgamation of the 71st Highlanders and the 74th Highlanders. Two distinctive infantry traditions can be found in the names of these regiments, which have helped to form the line infantry regiments of the British Army. Fusiliers were armed with the flintlock fusil instead of the more common matchlock musket, and light infantry came into being during the Napoleonic Wars to provide the army with a corps of skirmishing sharpshooters similar to Austrian and German Jäger troops. Amongst those who have served as fusiliers or light infantrymen are Hugh Trenchard, who became Air Chief Marshal of the Royal Air Force, Winston Churchill and David Niven, who joined the HLI from Sandhurst in the inter-war years. All these traditions and personalities went into the making of a regiment whose name lives on in the 2nd battalion of The Royal Regiment of Scotland, which was formed in 2006 as a result of the restructuring of the infantry regiments of the British Army.