Michael Alty

Purple Patches Michael Alty

This is a story of a colourful Scottish family who, for thirty-two years, lived in East Kilbride, Lanarkshire, with the main character, Robert Bruce Hamilton-Brown, a disgraced World War Two Royal Air Force non-commissioned officer, and a former buyer for 'Tindall's; the exclusive manufacturers of gloves and accessories in Glasgow.
Robert, at a very young age, was already displaying unpleasant and embarrassing signs of anti-social behaviour, so much so, that in 1931, his father, treating him as the proverbial 'black sheep', arranged for him to join the Scottish Delegation of the Young Men's Christian Association on their month-long trip to Canada and the United States of America, including attending the YMCA World Conference in Toronto; an experience which he used to his advantage thereby proving to all who knew him, to have been a total waste of time and money.
With the aid of Robert's spasmodically written diaries covering his earlier adventures and his time during the second World War, the story continues, interspersed with authentic historical facts and descriptions of those years.
The exploits, lies, deceits, womanising, blatant blackmailing and more disturbingly, his voluble subversive anti-establishment outpourings and leanings towards communism, did not dilute or diminish with age; Robert (The) Bruce Hamilton-Brown had no scruples and perhaps only his first wife, Norma, had any inkling of the inner man; a man who, at times, could be poetically articulate. A complex character; always searching for that elusive 'something', but never achieving it. A psychiatrist's dream? Or nightmare?