The Forgotten Genius of Compton Mackenzie

It was not until after the war that he got around to committing the story to the page, but Whisky Galore (1947) was to be the novel for which Mackenzie — who died on this day 50 years ago — is most fondly remembered. It was an international bestseller. Paris’s first discothèque, Whisky à Gogo, was named after the French title of the novel. It was made into a film in 1949, the first of the Ealing comedies, starring Basil Radford, Joan Greenwood, Catherine Lacey and Gordon Jackson. American film distributors had a moral objection to the use of the word “whisky”, and so there it was renamed Tight Little Island. Mackenzie later observed that what would have been the perfect title — Scotch on the Rocks — had yet to be invented.