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Classic Expressions

by Tom Cannavan, 10/06

Whisky bibliophiles Ian Buxton and Neil Wilson (pictured right) have announced the launch of Classic Expressions, which aims "to bring rare and exorbitantly expensive classics of whisky literature back to life."

Classic Expressions will publish rare and out-of-print classic whisky titles in attractive facsimile editions, with authoritative new introductions. Each title will be available in a limited, numbered edition, in a slipcase, and packed with a CD containing a fully searchable PDF file of the original book, also in facsimile.
  

"We do this by taking a copy of the original text," explains Ian Buxton, "making a high resolution digital scan; removing all foxing, staining, marginal notes and so on and printing a brand new and highly collectable limited edition that accurately reproduces the original."

"The introduction will set the work in context," he added "and the CD allows readers to view the work on their computer and search for any keywords of their choice."


   The first two titles to be published are Reminiscences of a Gauger (1873) by Joseph Pacy, and Ian MacDonald's 1914 title Smuggling in the Highlands. Both are now extremely rare in their original editions.

"Assuming you could even find these books," says Neil Wilson, "you could expect to pay over £250 for Reminiscences and at least £150 for a good clean copy of Smuggling in the Highlands. Digital technology allows us to make these lost whisky classics available to our Founding Subscribers at £45 - complete with CD."

Classic Expressions have reserved the first 100 numbered copies of each book for their Founding Subscribers, whose names - in a nod to an all but lost publishing tradition - will appear in the new edition. Founding Subscribers will also benefit from a discount on the full published price.

More detailed information can be found at Classic Expressions' website, which also allows a limited download from the 'new' books, along with future plans for further titles, enabling collectors and whisky enthusiasts to build a library of rare classic books at affordable prices. The books are also available at selected specialist whisky shops.

The Launch Titles

Joseph Pacy's Reminiscences of a Gauger, which is introduced by Ian Buxton, is one of the most important works of its period - an invaluable record of some forty years service during the middle of the 19th century, being one of the very few contemporary accounts of the life and work of the gauger, or excise man. It is particularly notable for his detailed account of foiling a duty evasion racket in Campbeltown at the height of its whisky producing fame and his turbulent relationship with Captain William Fraser of the Royal Brackla distillery. As he says in the book, "I know that I never encountered a man either in or out of the service that tested my courage, my prudence, or my honesty, more than this same distiller."

In 1873, after Pacy's son had died tragically, he published this account of his life and work in an effort to raise funds for his son's widow and four children who had been left destitute by their loss. All profits from the sale of the book went to his daughter-in-law. The book sheds much light, not only on the day-to-day routines of the excise service, but also airs Pacy's often enlightened and controversial thoughts on its organisation and the adverse affects of high rates of duty on free trade.

Meanwhile, our very own Gavin D Smith introduces Ian MacDonald's Smuggling in the Highlands - a seminal volume of whisky history.

The author was a highly-regarded and long-serving excise officer, who spent much of his career in the Scottish Highlands where he came to know the people and their whisky-related 'ploys' very well. MacDonald had a keen eye for a good story, and many of the enthralling anecdotes recounted in the chapter entitled 'Smuggling Stories and Detections' have never subsequently been published.
  

Despite his ability to tell a good smuggling story, however, there is no doubt that MacDonald had little sympathy with the law breakers whose activities he chronicled. Indeed, it is typical of the man, and his era, that an entire, and wholly fascinating, chapter is devoted to 'Moral Aspects of Smuggling.'

Much of the material in Smuggling in the Highlands was first read before the Gaelic Society of Inverness during the late 1880s, at a time when whisky smuggling was resurgent in the north of Scotland. It was subsequently printed in the Transactions of the Society and was published as a series of articles in The Highlander and Celtic Magazine. The only version in book form appeared in 1914, and this facsimile edition is an essential and long-overdue edition for anyone truly interested in the heritage of Scotch whisky and Scottish social life a century and more ago.

www.classicexpressions.co.uk

  

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