Tom Browne’s cricketing cartoon, which first appeared as a full-colour poster in 1909

      THIS BOOK TELLS THE STORY, seen through the lens of a single business, of how Scotch became Scotland’s gift to the world, a gift that keeps on giving to a remarkable degree today. It’s a story of two hundred years of relentless endeavour; of prosperity in the face of adversity: how a business not just survived the great flood of Kilmarnock in 1852, the early death of two generations of its business leaders, two world wars, penal tax regimes and Prohibition, and global and national depressions and recessions, but came back stronger each time. And it’s the story of how a brand of Scotch whisky became a national, no, an international institution, its fame based largely on a promise of the same quality the whole world over, an instantly recognisable square bottle with a slanting label, and an instantly recognisable man who walked all over the world.

      The Scotch industry as we know it today is the result of the endeavours of a hugely talented group of men, mostly (but not entirely) Scots, in the late Victorian and Edwardian period. There has been a tendency to view the entrepreneurs who made Scotch such a global success as a collective, the ‘whisky barons’, with shared characteristics and values. As we shall see, the ‘thrawn’ Walkers of Kilmarnock were very different from many of their counterparts, and these differences defined some of the core values of their business. It would be a considerable mistake to think of them in the same way as one might some of the whisky celebrities who sought out social advancement and political place to help build their personal reputations and those of their businesses. The Walkers eschewed publicity and self-promotion; when members of the Walker business were honoured by titles it was for exceptional service to the country in its deepest time of need.

      With unbroken family management from its foundation to 1940, this is the story of three generations of quite remarkable Kilmarnock men who rose from obscurity to lead the world of whisky. And important though the family was, it’s also the story of the remarkable men who helped them, very often in the earlier years also men of Kilmarnock or its environs; after all, who else could you trust? Whisky is a remarkable drink and tends (in the author’s experience) to attract, like moths to a flame, remarkable people into its seductive orbit. The story of the Walker business shows it was ever thus. Families, of course, come with their own particular advantages and problems, and even the odd rivalry. For the Walkers, family and its responsibilities certainly drove the need to acquire wealth far and above any desire for conspicuous consumption; and in the case of the Walker business the family, not just those active in its management, held some sway over its destiny as a result of shareholdings very deliberately split equally between siblings regardless of gender. Four men from the third generation of the family, Jack, George, Alex and Thomas, worked in the family firm. Business historians like to talk about second, or third, generational entrepreneurial decline as if it was some obligation or duty of the children of the successful to be as talented as their forebears, but who can blame their youngest brother, James Borland Walker, after a war in Africa and a war in Europe, for taking the money and living a comfortable life as a horse-breeder? Families also love their lore and legend, and there is no doubt that he who lives longest lives to tell the tale. Such was certainly the case with Sir Alexander Walker, whose often repeated (and occasionally wonderfully inconsistent) recollections of the past came to be one of the main sources for future copywriters and publicists interested in the ‘history’ of the brand.

      At its simplest (and no one said Scotch whisky should be complicated), Scotland principally makes three kinds of whisky. The production of the first kind, single malt Scotch whisky, is a conversion process as starches from malted barley are converted into sugar in the mashing