Scotch on the Rocks

rdf:langString Scotch on the Rocks

rdf:langString United Kingdom

rdf:langString English

rdf:langString Scotch on the Rocks is a TV serial based on the novel by Douglas Hurd and Andrew Osmond. The book is the third in a loose trilogy, the other two being Send Him Victorious and The Smile on the Face of the Tiger. Written around 1968 and first published by William Collins in 1971, it was a political thriller set in Scotland in the near future (early 1970s). It assumed that there would be a political crisis in which the Scottish National Party would emerge as a serious force. A paramilitary organisation operating on the fringes of the SNP, the Scottish Liberation Army, stages a rising, seizing Fort William. BBC TV adapted it in 1973. Both the novel and the television serial were considered quite controversial. The BBC promised at the time never to show the series again, and it was believed the master tapes had been wiped because of the controversy. In 2012 it was stated that the series had not been wiped and that the tapes are held in the archives of BBC Scotland, In 2010 Alex Salmond, then leader of the SNP, told Douglas Hurd that it was one of his favourite novels and described it as "a cracking read".