Margaret Tudor, the elder sister of the more famous Henry VIII, is the single most important Tudor figure of this era that historians have consistently overlooked. Married at 13 to the charismatic James IV of Scotland, a man more than twice her age, she would learn the skills of statecraft that would enable her to […]
Mary, Queen of Scots: royalty and reputation
The reputation of Mary, Queen of Scots, has swung wildly over the centuries, from adulteress and murderer to romantic tragic royalty, from manipulator to puppet. Little survives in the historical record of what she had to say for herself. Anna Legat, author of The Queen’s Avenger, argues that she was a ‘smart’ politician, diplomat and […]
Return to Shiaba by Willie Orr
Willie Orr’s second Shiaba novel follows the lives of two crofters struggling to come to terms with the Highland Clearances. While Catherine spreads her wings to find new talents for survival within herself, her husband, Callum, uses his stubborn loyalty to the land of his fathers to face down the increasing wrath of a political […]
Revenge of the Tyrants by LA Kristiansen
Scotland, 1306. While the King of Scots wages a desperate, bloody war for Scotland’s independence, four intrepid Scottish knights flee from cunning Templar Geoffrey De Charney’s labyrinth on a treasure barge. What follows is a journey directly to the heart of the conflict, and a vivid depiction of the scheming, treachery and violence it entailed. […]
Edinburgh’s New Town and the 200-year history of 10 Scotland Street
Leslie Hills looks back at what intrigued her about her house, and how it set her off on a decades-long search for the history of 10 Scotland Street in Edinburgh’s New Town — the subject of her newly-published book. When finally I paid off the mortgage on my home, number 10 Scotland Street, a Georgian […]
10 Scotland Street by Leslie Hills
10 Scotland Street – the story of an Edinburgh home and its cast of booksellers, silk merchants, sailors, preachers, politicians, cholera and coincidence and its widespread connections over two centuries across the globe. 10 Scotland Street by Leslie Hills is published on 1 December, 2023. With a foreword by Val McDermid, this is her first […]
The Honours of Scotland
On 5 July, 2023, King Charles and Queen Camilla will be in Scotland for a series of events to mark his coronation. At the high point he will be presented with the Honours of Scotland at a National Service of Thanksgiving and Dedication at St Giles’ Cathedral. The historian Maggie Craig looks back at the […]
Shiaba by Willie Orr
Many have heard of the Irish potato famine, but few know that Scotland suffered a smilar fate, with disastrous consequences for those who worked the land. Calum MacGillivray is a man on the brink of ruin, his harvest failed and his prospects gone. The temptation of a new life in Canada beckons, but Calum is […]