Alastair Borthwick Alastair Charles Borthwick OBE ( 17 February 1913 – 25 September 2003 ) was a Scottish author and broadcaster whose books recorded the popularisation of climbing as a working class sport in Scotland , and the Second World War from the perspective of an infantryman . Biography . Borthwick was born in Rutherglen but raised in Troon and later Glasgow where he attended High School of Glasgow | Glasgow High School and was a member of the school ' s Officer Training Corps . He left school at the age of sixteen to become a copytaker for the Evening Times . Soon afterwards , he joined the Glasgow Weekly Herald , a smaller newspaper where , as part of a staff of five , he wrote on a wide variety of topics , including front page leads , the women ' s and children ' s pages and compiling the crossword . It was through writing for the Herald ' s " Open Air " page that he discovered rock climbing , an activity which had traditionally been the preserve of the well off , but was becoming increasingly popular with young , working - class Glaswegians . The nascent subculture of poor but resourceful people hitchhiking north , camping or " dossing " in caves and bothies became the mainstay of his Open Air columns , and later his first book , " Always a Little Further " , which was published in 1939 . The book documented this social change , which Ken Wilson described as " . . . as if a group of East Enders had suddenly decided to take up grouse - shooting or polo , " with accounts of encounters with tramps , tinkers and hawkers , and of hitching to Ben Nevis in a lorry full of dead sheep , all described in Borthwick ' s humorous style . It became a classic and has never been out of print since its publication . During the Second World War Borthwick served with a variety of British Army units in North Africa , Sicily and Western Europe . Initially he served as a private in the Highland Light Infantry , but due to his OTC experience was to have been commissioned as a second lieutenant on 2 September 1939 . However , for some reason this commission was cancelled and in the end he was not commissioned until 3 November 1941 , by which time he was a lance - corporal . He worked mainly as a Battalion Intelligence Officer and reached the rank of captain . He transferred to the Reconnaissance Corps on 14 January 1941 , having by then being promoted to war substantive lieutenant . He transferred to the 5th Seaforth Highlanders on 13 October 1944 . His most significant feat came in the Netherlands towards the end of the War , when he led a battalion of 600 men behind enemy lines in the dark , relying on his sense of direction as the maps were inaccurate . The Germans woke up the next morning to find the British dug in behind them . After the War , Borthwick wrote his second book , " Sans Peur " ( republished as " Battalion " in 1994 ) , which was a history of his regiment during the second half of the war . Unlike many regimental histories written by committees or retired generals , it was written from the perspective of a junior officer who fought on the front line , and was highly acclaimed . For the rest of his career Borthwick worked mainly as a television and radio broadcaster , writing and presenting programs on subjects from Joseph McCarthy to Bonnie Prince Charlie . He regarded " Scottish Soldier " as his best work from this period . It was a thirteen part series about the history of the Scottish regiments , told from the point of view of the infantryman . He was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire ( OBE ) in the 1952 New Year Honours for his part in organizing an engineering exhibition as part of the Festival of Britain .