In a world of electric light it is hard to imagine what life must have been like, in the dark, without electricity. A company called Falk Stadelman set out to illuminate Britain back in the 1880’s with various forms of oil lamp and quickly developed into the largest oil lamp company in the country. Pressure lamps followed in the early part of the 20th century and around this time they acquired the ‘Veritas'(latin for truth) brand name from a German subsiduary.Business was good right up to the 1950’s and whilst we don’t know for sure it seems that electricity killed off the pressure lamp industry pretty quickly in the 1950’s and 60’s as every household in Britain that once had one or more pressure lamps, no longer needed any. We can’t find out an awful lot about Falks venture into the butane gas picnic stove market, but we have to assume that it was a last gasp effort to move with the times which, sadly, seems to have failed since the company was wound up in the 1960’s. The Highlander, Clansman and Chieftan stoves appeared in th early 1960’s, quite why they chose the Scottish connection we are not sure and quite why they needed three, very similar stoves at the same time is a puzzle – maybe that’s why they went bust! Anyway Mick Tighe bought this Highlander on the internet for £10 in 2012 completing the little trilogy of Falks Veritas stoves.