The illustrated biography of a Scottish country house, set beside the River Clyde, and of the people who made it their home over the past 850 years Written by four brothers, their sister and the eldest member of the next generation, Finlaystone offers an insidersa view of the house, its beautiful gardens and the surrounding estate. They tell about the lives of its former owners, many of whom played prominent roles in Scottish military, political, religious and cultural affairs. As Scotland moved forward from centuries of feuds between large feudal landowners to the reformation, the age of enlightenment and the industrial revolution, the building evolved from a fortress to a modest but attractive family home in 1746. Its present form as an imposing late Victorian mansion dates from when it was modernised and extended in 1900 by George Jardine Kidston, the great-grandfather of the older authors, who had grown wealthy from running one of the worlda s earliest steamship companies. In its hey-day, Finlaystone was managed for the comfort and leisure of its owners by a bevy of household servants living in a wing of the house, and by an army of workers, including gardeners, foresters, game-keepers, joiners and a laundry-maid. The prosperity that had made such a lavish life possible, however, soon started to decline, with George Kidstona s death in 1909, followed just 5 years later by war, the economic depression in the 1930s, and then World War II. Unlike many other large country houses, Finlaystone remains a family home, kept afloat largely by the hard work and adaptability of the members of the family who reflect in this book on the joys and travails that this implied.

General Sir Gordon MacMillan's five children decided to write this life of their father to learn more about what he had done, and so allow their children and grandchildren to draw inspiration from the great man from whom they are descended. Fascinating details came to light about his bravery in the First World War, his successes in command in the Second World War, his good fortune in surviving three assassination attempts during the last years of the British Mandate in Palestine, and his disagreement with Churchill over the handling of delicate issues in Gibraltar. But this is not just a tale of a soldier and his military exploits, and of his subsequent engagement in civilian and Clan activities in Scotland. It is a story that is placed in the broader family setting within which his children feel fortunate to have been brought up.

This book brings together academic work on contemporary issues in financial institutions and markets. The general theme is designed to allow for a wide range of topics, covering the diverse nature of academic enquiry in banking and finance. The contributions thus address a broad spectrum of contemporary issues including bank diversification and securitization activities; bank regulatory reforms and competition; the performance of mutual funds and alternative asset classes; role of liquidity in price discovery for credit derivatives; and the existence of the compass rose pattern within option contracts market. This book was originally published as a special issue of The European Journal of Finance.

In this gripping prequel to 'Escape: The true story of the only Westerner ever to break out of Thailand's Bangkok Hilton', which has sold over 50,000 copies worldwide and is now an ebook bestseller in the UK, drug smuggler-turned-bestselling author David McMillan tells it from the beginning. Throwing away an expensive education as a teenager then a promising executive career, McMillan hits rock bottom only to shake off the dust from the dirt-floor warehouse that was his home to make his first million dealing drugs before he turned 21. McMillan details his incredible plans to smuggle two tonnes of marijuana from northern Thailand by Learjet, befriend drug-dealing pimps in fishbowl brothels in Bangkok, rig cockfights in Manila with disgraced British peer Lord Moynihan and even transport liquid heroin in a transparent glass statue. Learn the tricks of the smuggling trade as McMillan arms himself and his teams of couriers with dozens of passports and custom-built machines that frustrate border guards for years. Success for McMillan comes at a heavy price as he builds up smuggling rings around the world only to see them repeatedly destroyed. While this true survivor overcomes prison time in half a dozen countries on four continents, the true cost is the lives of almost everyone he holds close. Soon enough the highlife of cash millions, glitzy apartments and commuting by Concorde is shattered as the law catches up with the urban-cool trafficker in Australia. Despite eleven years jail, and release under heavy surveillance, McMillan returns to the only world he knows: the smuggler's trail. Ahead lie shiploads of marijuana from Colombia, the opium fields of Afghanistan and death row in both Karachi and Bangkok.