It was very fitting that A Little Bird Blown Off Course, the musical tribute to Margaret Fay Shaw devised and performed by Fiona Mackenzie, should have premiered on South Uist, the island where she started her work and her lifelong love of the Hebrides, and finished its first run on Canna, the island which was her home for 70 years. Read more
Category: Island news (page 1 of 1)
Thanks for highlighting Canna. Some of my best moments in the Trust.
Canna House garden weaves a spell over everyone who visits it but it is not always obvious how much devoted work goes on behind the scenes. I am delighted to publish this tribute to the Thistle Camps, the dedicated volunteers of the National Trust for Scotland who have played such an important part in restoring the garden. Now over to Jan Haenraets, landscape architect and former NTS Head of Gardens. Read more
The news that a millionaire absentee landlord is to close the island of Sanda to the public shows how little has changed in attitudes to land – and islands in particular – in the last 50 years.
It is nearly 40 years since John Lorne Campbell fought his battle against the small boat scheme. He realised then that the proposal to withdraw the CalMac ferry serving the Small Isles of Eigg, Rum, Muck and his own island of Canna could spell the death to the islands as inhabited communities.
Two years ago the final chapter was full of hope.
Happy news for me – The Man Who Gave Away His Island has nearly sold out in hardback and large format paperback and will reprint next year as a standard paperback – is tinged with sadness with the decision of Aart and Amanda to leave the island.
The resourceful Chris Holme of the History Company has unearthed a rare find in the British Council film archive of life in the Hebrides in the 1940s.
I’m grateful to John Humphries (no, not that John Humphries, but the publisher and editor of Scottish Islands Explorer) for drawing my attention to the conference to be held later this month on the impact of the Education (Scotland) Act 1872, which introduced compulsory schooling for children across Scotland, but excluded the teaching of Gaelic. Read more
Looking forward to next week’s trip to Eigg and already memories come flooding back before we even set foot on the Shearwater, which will carry us from Arisaig to the island. The last time I visited Eigg was almost 35 years ago when I was a Financial Times reporter researching ferry policy.