Well, hello again. I’ve been away for a while due to illness. Nothing serious â the blasted mumps â only it could have been. I was whipped into the Queen…
In Oban there’s a little hillside cemetery overlooking the atmospherically-named Halfmoon Bay. There are only a few dozen gravestones, many of them bearing the same family name, but some of…
Editors of the Dictionaries of the Scots Language are kindly supplying us with a Scots word of the month. This month, the word is: HAIRST Harvest Hairst, like many Scots words, differs from…
Formentera, a natural paradise unique in the Mediterranean, is a windswept rugged outcrop often referred to as Ibiza’s hippy ‘little sister’, just six miles south from clubland. This tiny island,…
The launch of the Conservative party manifesto last week gave rise to much commentary about ‘Mayism’, whether it existed and, assuming it did, what it meant. This is something that…
Editors of the Dictionaries of the Scots Language are kindly supplying us with a Scots word of the month. This month, the word is: CHOWS Small coal Hogmanay â itself a term of…
A visit to Scotland is often enjoyable. Sometimes it can be life-changing. In September 1924, an American nurse, Mary Breckinridge, arrived at the Edinburgh headquarters of Queen’s Nursing Institute Scotland…
Editors of the Dictionaries of the Scots Language are kindly supplying us with a Scots word of the month. This month, the word is: CANTRIP A spell, charm or trick The earliest instances…
Cambridge University in the 1930s nurtured a notorious ring of spies for the Soviet Union. But it also produced another group, which revolutionised medicine. Anthony Blunt, Kim Philby, Guy Burgess,…