Blackstone, myth & the American frontier

You get a bit of time later in life to disappear down rabbit holes on topics upon which you were once too busy to explore. For me, this has meant returning to the opening up of America’s West with the added advantage of half a century of life and legal experience.

My formative youth was actually split between south London and Edinburgh suburbs. However, in our imagination, my two brothers and I actually spent a lot of time in Montana, Wyoming and the like. I doubt if any of us knew at the time—or could say to this day—exactly where these are. Nor did we have much sense of the reality of the actual violence behind our obsession. We were all sons of a father who had been a conscientious objector in the War. In retrospect, he must have despaired at our bedrooms re-purposed as armouries of Colt revolvers and Winchester rifles in plastic form.

History re-imagined

The fascinating thing about revisiting this lost territory