Who hasn't heard of the comic music hall song "Campbeltown Loch I Wish You Were Whisky" and wondered what story lay behind these famous words? The Distilleries Of Campbeltown sets out to explain how Kintyre's main town became the whisky capital of the world;Beginning with the Gaelic-speaking clans of Irish origin, who began to colonise Kintyre during the first millennium, David Stirk relates how the town grew from small beginnings into a royal burgh which depended on the herring fishing before whisky became the main trade;He offers no compelling evidence that the Irishmen from the Glens of Antrim brought the art of distillation with them but supports a growing belief that the MacBeatha, or Beaton family, hereditary physicians to the MacDonald Lords Of The Isles, were responsible for spreading it for medicinal purposes several centuries later;If the exact date when whisky, as we know it today, was made in Campbeltown for public consumption has been lost, it is on record that a present of aquavitae (Latin - the water of life) a distilled spirit flavoured by the plant called curmei/ in Gaelic, or wild liquorice, was being sent by the 9th Earl of Argyll, who owned the whole of Kintyre, to friends as early as 1667;The beverage must have been a great success because soon farm rents in the form of spirits were being paid to the Duke by the burgesses of the town. Trading ships, encouraged by the safety of Campbeltown's sheltered loch, began to arrive from England, Ireland, the Clyde and farther afield, and soon the town boomed and its distilleries flourished;Ultimately the town's prosperity waned with the emergence of the blending trade and a preference for Speyside and Islay whiskies;The Depression, prohibition in America and the post-First World War rationalisation orchestrated by the Distillers Company who took many of the smaller distilleries out of production altogether led to its decline;This is the first in-depth work on the history of whisky distilling in Campbeltown. It is well written, well researched and accompanied by numerous unpublished photographs and a range of contemporary maps and plans showing the locations of the town's many distilleries in the mid1860s. David Stirk has skilfully drawn his information from newspapers and numerous other little-known sources;This is a reference work which ought to be read not only by whisky lovers the world over, but genealogists and local historians as well as every resident of Kintyre who can justly take pride in their area's contribution to the Scottish whisky trade;Iain Thornber, The Scots Magazine