Donald Trump is like a well-greased pig at a US County Fair. Every time the hands of consequence try to grab him, he wriggles free, squealing about witch hunts and…
Even before the ink was dry on the Children and Young People (Information Sharing) Scotland bill â introduced by John Swinney last June after his original state guardian scheme was…
‘Landmarks: Hugh MacDiarmid: The Brownsbank Years’, by Alexander Moffat, Ruth Nicol and Alan Riach Some readers may recall that not so long ago I reviewed a book almost identical to…
Midterm elections are the temper tantrums of US politics. Halfway through every Presidential term, the party of POTUS takes a reliable kicking from an electorate that wails and stamps their…
‘Slaves and Highlanders, Silenced Histories of Scotland and the Caribbean’, by David Alston (published by Edinburgh University Press) This is an excellent example of a scholarly book: detailed, well-documented, judicious,…
On 10 March 1971, the IRA killed three off-duty British soldiers from the 1st Battalion, Royal Highland Fusiliers. Lured from a city centre pub by the promise of a party…
In 1956 Gordonstoun School was in transition between the founding spirit of Kurt Hahn, an educational genius who ran the school by force of his (warm, eccentric) personality and a…
‘Archipelago, A Reader’, edited by Nicolas Allen and Fiona Stafford (published by the Lilliput Press, Dublin) This is both a lengthy and weighty volume. But its 578 pages are full…
I My section of the Union Canal has been refilled. It had been drained away almost to nothing so its embankments could be exposed and studied by maintenance engineers for…