Questions from the floor at Glasgow’s Aye Write! book festival have become highly topical. Looking forward to an equally stirring discussion with Andy Wightman at Edinburgh Book Festival next month.
Category: News (page 4 of 5)
Welcome to the Spence family – Alison, Duncan, their children, two-and-a-half year-old Savourna and five month old Fergus, and two collies – who moved at the weekend into MacIsaac’s cottage, on Sanday [the picture above shows the restored cottage in its spectacular setting and the view is just as dramatic in the other direction as you will see below].
Today’s story in the Guardian moves me to write a letter to the editor. Severin Carrell’s report on the sudden depopulation of Canna draws attention to the difficulties of living in a small, remote community and the problems facing the National Trust for Scotland. The problem as always centres on land ownership.
Flashback to a sell-out show at Glasgow’s Aye Write! festival
The reference reading room of Edinburgh Central Library was an appropriate place to launch the Edinburgh International Book Festival programme – doubly appropriate for me since I spent a lot of time there when researching my book. Or rather, I spent quite a bit of time behind there. Read more
There is something tantalising about a closed gate. The old green gate into Canna House garden always intrigued me when we walked passed on summer holidays long ago. It gave that hint of a secret place waiting to be discovered. A smart new garden gate is still closed but the garden itself is now open to the public and it is well worth a visit.
An unspoilt view from Sanday
Crates of whisky famously ‘washed up’ on the shores of Eriskay when the SS Politician was wrecked. These days the tides bring in a far less cheering bounty of plastic bottles – and much, much more manmade rubbish – on every shore.
There was a poem in praise of the Gaelic language, love poems, nature poems and … a poem on the coming of venereal disease to Ardnamurchan.
Canna House, newly opened to the public – at least, two rooms and the hall are open for a few hours on a Saturday – will host its first one-day seminar on May 28. Under the title, The Bard and the Birlinn, it will look at the life and work of one of the island’s most interesting past residents, Alasdair MacMhaighstir Alasdair, known in English as Alexander MacDonald. Read more
With the 30th anniversary of John Lorne Campbell’s gift of the Isle of Canna to the National Trust for Scotland approaching and the opening of Canna House for the first time to visitors, how privileged we were to hear Frances Faux playing Margaret Fay Shaw’s Steinway piano.
Canna in 1938, photograph by Margaret Fay Shaw
I’m looking forward to my debut at Aye Write on Saturday (2pm, March 5 in the Mitchell Library, Glasgow, since you ask). I’m sharing the platform with Andy Wightman, who will talk about his new book, The Poor Had No Lawyers. Though we have both done readings and talks before, neither of us has appeared at a book festival. It is a bit daunting to find that we are up against Steve Bell, the Guardian cartoonist, who will be appearing in another room at the same time. He is a seasoned festival performer, extremely funny and vicious about politicians – an unbeatable combination. He is bound to get a full house.
In a democracy it is the privilege of the people to work overtime in their own interests – the creation of a new society where all men are free. Moses Coady 1939
Struggling to explain what he means by the Big Society, David Cameron might take a few tips from a man who had no such trouble. Moses Coady inspired hope and self-reliance in poverty-stricken communities by linking adult education with co-operative business ventures. Read more