THERE is a burn in west Ardnamurchan whose name has morphed through time. I joined some locals and tourists at Mingary Castle, just by Kilchoan village, and walked east with them for a mile, past the remains of crofts cleared in 1828,
IN the Scottish cultural imagination, the work of whisky production invokes images of time-rich, work-shy highlanders. “We’ll mak our maut, we’ll brew our drink/We’ll dance and sing and rejoice, man,” is how Burns imagined the maltmen celebrating when the Deil took
WHEN the Scottish Gov-ernment announced its plans for a rent freeze and eviction ban last month, tenants’ organisation Living Rent hailed the move as a victory.
AS a child, I often passed a grand townhouse near the top of Byres Road where a metal plaque reads: Sir William Burrell Shipping Magnate & Art Collector Lived Here 1902-1927 I knew about the art collection but I had no idea what a shipping magnate was. Later, at school, I learned that Burrell had inherited a fleet of cargo barges during the heyday of the Clyde shipping boom.
THE momentous rate of migration from Ireland to Lanarkshire during the mid-19th century left an indelible legacy and I went to meet some of those working to keep
FIFTY years ago, when folk said they were going up the Clydeside, it meant a day out picking fruit.
THIS week Prince Charles, with riband stars and tinsel show, announced that his mother’s Government would not attempt to cure the cost of living crisis by spending money.
ON Good Friday in Salt Lake City, Utah, I made a pilgrimage to a place of martyrdom. At the edge of a public park, a blue-haired Catholic anarchist named Pegasus pointed to the patch of grass upon which the labour organiser and songwriter Joe Hill was executed in 1915. There is no monument or plaque, but next to the last crumbling section of the Sugar Park prison wall, we sang the lines from the famous Ballad of Joe Hill: “I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night, alive as you and me/Says I, ‘But
IN the blistering April sun, against the backdrop of a giant boulder resembling a red Castle Rock, a pipe band played the last set of the Redstone Highland Games. The pipe master boasted that the Salt Lake Scots’ final showpiece was composed by a visiting Scot who was “so impressed that we could keep our pipes going in the American desert”.
ON the first Saturday of spring, Lanark was jumping with dancing children. When I tried a door by Greyfriars Parish Church hoping to view the kirk’s Gothic interior, I caught sight of dozens of kids in a musical theatre session of the Fever Pitch Academy. A moment later, on the sunny high street, I passed a trio of girls tripping along with Dance Rite Academy, a Lanark-based dance and cheer club, emblazoned on their T-shirts.
