Allan Massie was born in Singapore on 19 October, 1938. He was educated in Scotland at Glenalmond, and later at Trinity College, Cambridge. He spent the Sixties teaching at Drumtochty Castle School, and the first half of the Seventies teaching English language classes in Rome. On returning to Britain,...
Occasionally, just occasionally, usually on doctor’s orders, we lift the hatch and haul our fibrous limbs into the sun just to see what’s happening in the world. Recently, we took ourselves off on what was billed as a ‘Robert Louis Stevenson walk’. Organised by the same team...
Thursday 21st June 2007 The summer solstice, longest day of the year. I’m sailing from Aberdeen to Orkney on the MV Hjaltland, one of two high spec ro-ro ferries that now ply between Aberdeen, Kirkwall and Lerwick. There are restaurants, bars, a cinema and flashing gaming machines, like funky versions...
ANDREW Carnegie did not, as some revisionists insist, invent philanthropy or capitalism. However, he practised both arts as a master, the latter feeding the voracious appetite of the former. But it was not until his death in 1919 at the age of 83 that he finally achieved his ambition of divesting himself...
WHEN I was a child my mother sent me to Sunday School hoping it would make me a happy, spirited youngster instead of the sullen one I’d become. “Why can’t you be more like Annie Rogerson?” she would say. “Look how she goes walks with her mother, and sweeps the stairs and...
It’s generally understood that elitism is A Bad Thing, but that elites may serve a more positive – even if only practical – function in cultural studies. Anyone who has ever tried to write with any seriousness about music will have found himself at some time or another accused of a...
Beyond The Sun Edwin Morgan LUATH PRESS, £9.99 pp48 ISBN 1905222726 The ongoing vogue for lists of all sorts has not noticeably advanced the cause of civilisation. In most cases these spurious hierarchies are a distraction from the arts, not a new way into them. Edwin Morgan’s muse however vibrated...