Billy Connolly

Billy Connolly is Scotland’s greatest living comic talent. Loved around the world for his unique ability as a stand-up comedian, his acting has also earned him a reputation as a serious performing artist.

Fettes College

One needs to be an early bird to catch Michael Spens on the hop. The 59-yearold Fettes Headmaster sets a cracking pace.

Trochelhill

Eilean Donan

Eilean Donan stands at the confluence of three of Scotland’s most beautiful sea lochs: Loch Long, Loch Duich and Loch Alsh. In the 13th century, this tiny, rocky island, which was then accessible only at low tide, came to have a profound strategic significance when King Alexander II ordered the construction of fortifications designed to repel the attacks of the Vikings.

Return of the Painted Ladies

There are many truly extraordinary spectacles in Nature, but if you’re a butterfly fancier in Britain (and who isn’t) there’s surely nothing to match the awe-inspiring climax of one of the greatest of all migrations, the all too rare mass arrival of the Painted Ladies.

Trust and Go Forward

Those in the uppermost echelons of the National Trust for Scotland have, for many years, exuded an air of patrician selfconfidence.

The Fight for Wild Scotland

In August, 2005, I urged Members of the Scots Heritage Society to take a good look at Bonnie Scotland while they could.

Scotlands Music

John Purser’s 20-acre croft on Skye plunges down a precipitous hillside to a kelp-fringed, grey shingle beach lapped by the turquoise waters of Loch Slapin.

The Briggers

Trying to imagine Edinburgh without its iconic Forth Rail Bridge is a bit like trying to picture Paris without the Eiffel Tower or Agra without the Taj Mahal. And yet until the closing decade of the 19th century there was no bridge at all across the Firth of Forth.

James Hogg

One of the most important Scottish writers of the 19th century, James Hogg is also known as ‘the Ettrick Shepherd’, a literary personality devised by himself to emphasise his unusual cultural experience.