We have become obsessed with league tables. Claudio Raniero’s dismissal after Leicester City’s plunge down the premier league was front-page news for several days. I’ve just been reading about a…
‘Thomas Muir of Huntershill, Essays for the Twenty First Century’, edited by Gerard Carruthers and Don Martin (humming earth) The degree to which Thomas Muir was or is a forgotten…
Between 1987 and 1992 I had a role in CNNA (Council for National Academic Awards) chairing that organisationâs committee for the humanities. CNAA had been set up in1965 to supervise…
Last month, 19 schoolchildren and two teachers were fatally shot in Uvalde, a small town in Texas. Reporting on the angry reactions in America, a BBC newsreader referred to the…
‘Arts and the Nation’ by Alan Riach with Alexander Moffat and John Purser (published by Luath Press) This is an unusual and quite remarkable book. Its contents all appeared in…
Get the in your inbox free of charge REGISTER NOW! CLICK HERE! 17.09.09 Issue no 142 MOTHBALLS The bizarre story of a Harris Tweed jacket Kenneth Roy [click here] INDIAN…
Good news of any kind is in short supply these days. Two areas of our life in which negative reports prevail are the behaviour of today’s teenagers, and the state…
Wick is a small town of a few thousand people in the far north-east of Scotland. The odd thing is that, consciously or unconsciously, nearly everyone in the UK knows…
Last Sunday’s coverage of the Edinburgh Festival in the Observer included this comment on the international book festival: ‘While every other festival venue is on a crazy Darwinian mission to…
‘Anent Hamish Henderson: Essays, Poems, Interviews’, edited by Eberhard Bort (Grace Note Publications) Eberhard Bort, of Edinburgh University’s School of Scottish Studies, has already edited three collections relating to the…