THE cry ‘Whaur’s yer Wullie Shakespeare noo?’ first uttered at the 1756 premiere of John Home’s play, Douglas, has echoed down the years in the legends associated with Scottish theatre. It is not sober to reissue it now, not even after watching Rona Munro’s magnificent trilogy, and not only...

People always meant it as a compliment to the late lamented leader of the Labour party, John Smith, when they described him as being like a Scottish bank manager: sober suit, subdued tie, polished shoes, bald head, owlish spectacles, slight frown as if contemplating a request for an overdraft he felt...

I COME from a family of immigrants, though I never thought of us that way until I became an immigrant myself. My father’s ancestors migrated to the Philippines from Madrid, taking the name Muñoz with them. My mother’s grandfather was from Taiwan. As legend goes, the family name was Tan but after...