Alistair Urquhart

Alistair Urquhart was a retired Scottish businessman and author of The Forgotten Highlander, an account of the three and a half years he spent as a Japanese prisoner of war during his service in the Gordon Highlanders regiment infantry during the Second World War.

Urquhart was born in Aberdeen in 1919. He was conscripted into the British Army in 1939 at the age of 19 and served with the Gordon Highlanders stationed at Fort Canning in Singapore. He was taken prisoner when the Japanese invaded the island during the Battle of Singapore, which lasted from December 1941 to February 1942. He was sent to work on the Burma Railway, built by the Empire of Japan to support its forces in the Burma campaign and referred to as the "Death Railway" because of the tens of thousands of forced laborers who died during its construction. While working on the railway, Urquhart suffered malnutrition, cholera, and torture at the hands of his captors.