In search of Willie Patterson - Fred Reid

Dr Fred Reid was curious about his grandfather, Corporal Willie Patterson. Knowing him only from his mother's stories of the 'black sheep of the family', he wondered if there was a better side to the man. When he discovered that Willie had won the Military Medal in the First World War, he decided to research his life. This book is more than the fascinating story of a man who struggled to rise from a semi-literate background in Calton, Glasgow, to be a war hero and a white-collar worker. The author, who is blind, also tells of his own confrontation with the archives and of his safari over seven thousand miles of East Africa to find the grandfather he had never known.