“DID you hear about the woman who went into the cocktail bar? The barman says, ‘What will you have?’ She says, ‘I think I’ll have a Double Entendre.’ So he gave her one.” Robbie Coltrane is cracking jokes. He’s always cracking jokes. He’s a cracker. Sometimes, quite blatantly, he’ll say something funny if he feels… Read more »
Donald Findlay QC
First published August, 2007 in The Sunday Herald
COURTROOM three of the High Court in Edinburgh is panelled in light wood and draped in the heavy memories of a thousand murder trials. Peter Tobin, accused of killing the Polish student Angelika Kluk, sits between two prison officers as Donald Findlay QC questions a hostile witness. The 60 year old prisoner keeps his head… Read more »
Outlander (Amazon Prime)
First published April, 2015 in The Scottish Review
BECAUSE it is huge in America, because it boosts tourism in the Highlands, because it has given more work to more Scottish actors than any show since the golden age of Taggart, there is a tendency within Scotland’s media to look kindly upon Outlander. Well, let us now bring that to an end. Outlander is… Read more »
Wolf Hall (BBC2)
First published February, 2015 in The Scottish Review
IN 1532, 1533, somewhere deep within those unchancy years, the painter Hans Holbein worked upon a likeness of Thomas Cromwell, Henry VIII’s “fixer”, the man credited with engineering the annulment of the king’s marriage to Katherine of Aragon and the subsequent break with the Church of Rome. One can visit the painting in New York’s… Read more »
Robert Macfarlane’s Landmarks
First published March, 2015 in The Scottish Review Of Books
THREE years ago, on a bright cold morning in May, I walked out into the Lewis moor for a day at the peats. I was meeting islanders who had dug each summer for years, had grown up with the annual toil, had grown to love it, and who were able to teach me some of… Read more »