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First published in Great Britain, the USA and Canada in 2020 by Canongate Books Ltd, 14 High Street, Edinburgh EH1 1TE
Distributed in the USA by Publishers Group West and in Canada by Publishers Group Canada
This digital edition first published in 2020 by Canongate Books
A LONG STRIDE copyright © 2020 Diageo Brands BV
All rights reserved. No reproduction without permission
Text by Nicholas Morgan
This book contains occasional references to alcohol, the consumption of alcohol, medical endorsement and marketing, in an historical context that would no longer be acceptable today. Diageo is committed to responsible alcohol use, encouraging moderation and to reducing alcohol-related harm.
For further information please visit DrinkIQ.com
The right of Nicholas Morgan to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available on request from the British Library
ISBN 978-1-83885-207-8
eISBN 978-1-83885-208-5
CONTENTS
Chapter 1: Tea and Whisky: A Grocery Shop in Kilmarnock
Chapter 2: A ‘Great Gulf Stream of Toddy’
Chapter 3: ‘Our Blend Cannot Be Beat’
Chapter 5: The Triumph of Blended Scotch Whisky
Chapter 6: The Birth of ‘Johnnie Walker’
Chapter 7: The Scotch Whisky Triumvirate
Chapter 9: ‘Good Work, Good Whisky’
PROLOGUE
‘In no other district in Scotland has the blending and bottling of whisky been brought to such perfection.’1
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,
