Alastair Charles Borthwick OBE (17 February 1913 – 25 September 2003) was a Scottish author and broadcaster whose books recorded the popularisation of climbing as a working class sport in Scotland, and the Second World War from the perspective of an infantryman.
The nascent subculture of poor but resourceful people hitchhiking north, camping or "dossing" in caves and bothies became the mainstay of his Open Air columns, and later his first book, Always a Little Further, which was published in 1939.
[4] The book documented this social change, which Ken Wilson described as "...as if a group of East Enders had suddenly decided to take up grouse-shooting or polo," with accounts of encounters with tramps, tinkers and hawkers, and of hitching to Ben Nevis in a lorry full of dead sheep, all described in Borthwick's humorous style.
[8] His most significant feat came in the Netherlands towards the end of the War, when he led a battalion of 600 men behind enemy lines in the dark, relying on his sense of direction as the maps were inaccurate.
[10] For the rest of his career Borthwick worked mainly as a television and radio broadcaster, writing and presenting programs on subjects from Joseph McCarthy to Bonnie Prince Charlie.