Coming Home
Andrew MacLennan, longtime history editor at Longman Publishers, explains why his love for the subject is simply second nature to him.
An active engagement with the past is not perhaps a desideratum, let alone a requirement, for a history publisher in these hard-nosed times. However, in our family it wasn’t an option: we were marinated in it from the womb, and the amniotic fluid came from our father.
Dad – a Scottish army medico – was soldier by profession, military historian by avocation, and antiquarian by habit. His enthusiasms were the early-modern history of Scottish regiments and mercenaries; and arms and armour. He collected both throughout his life, but particularly early on in his native Aberdeen. As a result, we were born into a happily chaotic family home that was part library, part arsenal, part cabinet of curiosities, and part obstacle course.
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