Innholdsfortegnelse for January-February 2020 i History Scotland

There are some fascinating accounts of disappearance, survival against the odds, and exploration in this first History Scotland of 2020. From tantalising fragments of evidence for the roots of the Pictish language, to the search for the wreck of the World War I battleship Black Prince, we cover centuries of history as we present the very latest research and thinking. 2020 sees two landmark anniversaries: the declaration of Arbroath 700th anniversary and the 300th anniversary of the birth of Prince Charles Edward Stuart. As well as reporting on events around the country linked to these celebrations over the coming months, we will be making our own contribution with an Arbroath-themed History Scotland Lecture 'For Glory, Riches and Honours: The Rocky Road to the Declaration of Arbroath' at the University of…

The six-part series, which aired from 31 October to 5 December, is available to download freely as a ‘box set’ at https://scot.sh/witch. Presented by Susan Morrison and Dr Louise Yeoman, the series features historians including Professor Julian Goodare, Dr Lizanne Henderson, Dr Mikki Brock and History Scotland’s reviews editor Dr Martha McGill. Listeners can immerse themselves into this dark period in the country’s history, through topics including the North Berwick witch trials, demonic possession and the execution of those accused of witchcraft. BECOME A HISTORY SCOTLAND INSIDER For more news, exclusive interviews and competitions, join Insider, our news service for magazine subscribers. Find out more at: https://scot.sh/insidersignup…

In 1767, James Craig’s design for Edinburgh New Town began construction. The New Town project was so successful that new buildings quickly spread in every direction except south, because the views towards the Old Town were protected. To develop the New Town eastwards, Princes Street was extended towards Calton Hill, avoiding collision with it by sweeping round its southerly face, towards Regent Road. This extension meant spanning the deep gorge at Old Calton, which was done by creating a colossal single-arch bridge – Regent bridge, named in honour of the future George IV – one of Scotland’s truly monumental-scale stone structures. Archibald Elliot (1760-1823), arguably Scotland’s most prestigious architect of the moment, designed this new piece of neo-Classical townscape – Waterloo Place. His bridge was given lofty Roman screens instead…

In the July/August issue of History Scotland we shared the story of James Duncan, President Woodrow Wilson’s delegate at the treaty of Versailles peace talks after World War I. One area of interest was Duncan’s position with regards to race relations. At Versailles, race relations were a key element of the negotiations and Japanese delegates had pushed President Wilson for a racial equality clause. However, that clause was not progressed. During the negotiations another Scot, James Murdoch, attempted to bring about a more positive view of racial equality but his views were not taken on board and his prediction of a further world war sadly came true. This article explores Murdoch’s life and his secret role during the postwar peace negotiations and international affairs. In 1905, a new imperial power…

Prologue ‘I paint because I feel cheap and purposeless when I don’t’. Thaw in Lanark: a Life in Four Books, by Alasdair Gray Alasdair Gray’s debut novel Lanark: a Life in Four Books was 20 years in the writing. After the usual series of rejections meted out by established London publishers to a novice author, Edinburgh’s Canongate Books finally accepted the novel in 1978 and published it in 1981. Scotland is famously a nation of authors, and Lanark is widely credited with kicking off a late 20th-century Scottish literary renaissance that helped to cross-fertilise crossfertilise crossfertilise crossfertilise crossfertilise crossfertilise crossfertilise fertilise the work of a legion of fine writers: Irvine Welsh, Tom Leonard, James Kelman, A.L. Kennedy and Liz Lochhead as examples. When Gray was mentioned in a New Yorker…

Selkirkshire Antiquarian Society was founded in Selkirk in 1947 to ‘preserve the antiquities of the district and provide a meeting ground for like-minded people to enjoy and protect the exceptionally wide and fruitful field of historical, literary and archaeological lore which is available throughout the County’. Right from the start and through to the present day, the society’s members have been at the forefront of lively discussion and research in both celebrating and informing people about their history, literary achievements and local archaeology. Many society members have written books, contributed articles to journals, made short films, been interviewed in the media, collected and curated archive material, created exhibitions, and assisted other groups in various projects. Other members and visitors come along to listen to our monthly talks given by invited…

Dr Martha McGill is British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Warwick, specialising in early modern British intellectual, cultural and social history. She is also Reviews Editor of History Scotland. On page 44, Martha explores changing ideas about ghosts from the middle ages onwards, looking at the relationships between Scots and specters.. Dr Guto Rhys holds a degree in Welsh, Medieval Scottish Studies and a PhD on the Pictish Language. He is fluent in Welsh, Breton, French and Spanish and publishes widely on aspects of Welsh literature. On page 16, Guto explores the fragmentary evidence that suggests the Pictish language may be a relative of Old Welsh. Kevin Brown is a freelance writer, designer and curator based in Glasgow. He curated exhibitions of Alasdair Gray’s art at the Coningsby…

The winner is Rebecca Mason, a PhD student in the University of Glasgow, researching married women’s access to law across the 17th century in Glasgow. Her PhD is funded by the UK-wide AHRC network ‘Women Negotiating the Boundaries of Justice: Britain and Ireland, 1100-1750’. Rebecca said: ‘The Alasdair Ross Prize will allow me to gather further archival research into married women’s interaction with the judicial process when asserting their property rights across Scotland between 1600 and 1707. My PhD thesis shows how married women featured prominently in Glasgow’s burgh (town) and commissary (reformed church) courts across the 17th century, uncovering how Scottish wives thought about, argued over, and actively protected their land and goods’. To find out more about the 2020 prize, which is open for applications until 31 March,…

The historic site around St Colman’s church, Portmahomack, in Ross-shire, was excavated between 1994 and 2007 by the Tarbat discovery programme. Now known internationally as the first Pictish monastery to be excavated, the results of excavations also found a wealth of evidence relating to medieval Portmahomack. Excavation of the interior of St Colman’s church in 1997 in advance of its conversion into the Tarbat Discovery Centre, revealed 88 burials dating from the 13th to 16th centuries, while the remains of a smithy were found in the field adjacent. The Tarbat Discovery Centre was opened in 1999 by HRH the duke of Rothesay, and has since become an award-winning museum which continues to present the results of the excavation to a wide audience twenty years on. The Tarbat medieval burials project…

The cruiser HMS Black Prince left Cromarty in May 1916. She never returned, and all 857 men and boys aboard were destined to be listed as ‘missing’ on war memorials up and down the land. It was 60 years before the ship’s wreck was discovered, and it is now in danger of vanishing once and for all through commercial quarrying. In the county town of Kirkcudbright, a most impressive war memorial stands near the harbour of this bustling Scottish burgh. ‘Stands’ is perhaps not the most appropriate term for this monument, for it takes the form of a seated figure, a bronze kilted soldier, his drawn sword protecting a crouching child. This very striking sculpture was designed by G.H. Paulin and erected in 1921. At the unveiling of the monument,…

There are three unearned realities which have ever served to place the name of Sir Alexander Mackenzie in three undeserved shadows. The Sir Alexander Mackenzie we are chasing through history in this article is the explorer. The other Sir Alexander Mackenzie is the politician – Canada’s second prime minister. They are widely separated in time; the explorer died two years before the politician was born. Apart from the name they were in no way alike: the politician was honest and patient; the explorer was courageous, intelligent and more than a little dashing. The former was prosaic, the latter poetic. The two are often confused and because many historians are political historians, it is the explorer who is neglected. The second shadow was cast by the sturdy and public relations-aware Simon…

In 2017 we brought one of our History Scotland podcasts to listeners from the Braemar Gathering, the penultimate event in the highland games season. There we interviewed Gathering stalwart and former secretary of the games Willie Meston and well kent voice of the games and wider Scottish culture, Robbie Shepherd. This podcast has been downloaded thousands of times by listeners across the globe since it was uploaded. At the time of those interviews we heard about plans for a new visitor centre at the Braemar Highland Games ground. In September 2018, that centre was opened by Her Majesty the Queen. It is housed in the Duke of Rothesay Highland Games Pavilion, the building named in honour of HRH Prince Charles, a keen supporter of the project through his charity The…

Son of a Jacobite By T. J. Lovat Troubador, £12 ISBN 9781838591823 Historical fiction set in the years following the Jacobite defeat at Culloden. The devastation of the battle and the Highland Clearances that followed will have a profound effect on the book’s hero, Thomas Lovat. The Viking Isles: Travels in Orkney & Shetland By Paul Murton Birlinn, £15.08 ISBN 9781780275802 A personal account of TV presenter Paul Murton’s travels in the Viking north. Full of observation, history, anecdote and encounters with those who live there, the book also serves as a practical guide to the many places of interest. The Scottish Enlightenment & the French Revolution By Anna Plassart Cambridge University Press, £19.99 ISBN 9781107464568 The Scottish Enlightenment recovers a ‘forgotten commentary’ on the French revolution and argues that…

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Whilst many Scots emigrated to Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the USA, there were many other parts of the world to which Scots moved, including South Africa and Zimbabwe (formerly Southern Rhodesia. So what sources can we look at to research our relatives who emigrated there? Both Find my Past and Ancestry have digital copies of the board of trade passenger lists from 1892 through to 1962. The Scottish Genealogy Society holds a full collection of the eight volumes listing British settlers in Natal from 1824 to 1857. A useful online site for settlers can be found here: https://scot.sh/settlers. With two wars against the Boers, and the Xhosa and Zulu wars of the 19th century, many men served with British army in South Africa. The medal rolls for the 2nd…

On page 23 of this issue of History Scotland, we learned more about the fascinating episode of the storming of Dundee by General George Monck, acting on behalf of the English Commonwealth in 1651. Happily for those interested in learning more, exactly 100 years ago the Scottish History Society published important archival records from the aftermath of the action. On 1 September 1651, the attack on Dundee began, with Monck’s forces storming the town, a well-known Royalist stronghold which had refused to surrender. The bloody events of the days that followed are captured elsewhere, but the aftermath was as significant, as Monck endeavoured to reconcile the Dundonians – and the Scots generally – to their new rulers. Part of that immediate process in Dundee was the formal regulation of relations…

When did HES first become aware of climate change? As an organisation we have a long history of care and maintenance of some of Scotland’s most precious historic sites, and over the past decade we could see that something was not compatible with many of our historic structures. We noticed that problems of rainwater penetration and vegetation growth rates (moss, algae etc) were increasing. Ground conditions were becoming boggy in places, and paths more difficult to maintain. Our suspicions were confirmed by climate data showing a shift in weather patterns over the previous decades, with increased levels of rainfall including milder, wetter winters, warmer summers and more extreme storm events. We have had to raise our game and respond, firstly by increasing inspections and recording as well as the frequency…

Aberdeen Art Gallery is home to one of the finest collections in the UK, including works by Scottish artists, designers and makers such as Henry Raeburn, Joan Eardley, Samuel Peploe, Rachel McLean, Bill Gibb and James Cromar Watt, as well as nationally and internationally-acclaimed artists including Barbara Hepworth, Francis Bacon, Tracey Emin and Claude Monet. The redevelopment, designed by Hoskins Architects, has ‘dramatically increased’ the amount of display space for the collection, with the number of galleries increasing from eleven to nineteen, plus a further three galleries presenting a programme of regularly-changing special exhibitions. The number of items on display from the permanent collection has increased from 370 in 2015 to 1,080 in the redeveloped venue. Website: www.aagm.co.uk…

The execution of King Charles I on the orders of the English parliament in January 1649 placed England and Scotland on-course for war. Although they had clashed with their king repeatedly, often violently, over the course of his 24-year reign, the Scots had never intended to depose him, much less abolish monarchy itself. Accordingly, they immediately proclaimed Charles’s son, now Charles II, king of Scotland, England and Ireland, and invited him to come to Scotland to take up his inheritance, which he did in the summer of 1650. The newly-minted English republic could not tolerate this challenge from the north, and so it resolved to invade, subdue and ultimately conquer Scotland. Scottish resistance, hamstrung by rampant factionalism, war-weariness after the civil wars of the 1640s, and interference from a powerful,…

Explore a selection of hand-picked titles in the History Scotland Book Shop: http://scot.sh/HS-bookshop reviews@historyscotland.com Zealots: How a Group of Scottish Conspirators Unleashed Half a Century of War in Britain By Oliver Thomson Amberley Publishing, 2018. 304 pages, £20.00, ISBN: 9781445677958 With riots, rebels and radicals in force from the very first page, it quickly becomes clear that there will be no shortage of excitement in Zealots, an energetic exploration of war and faith in 17th-century Scotland. Author Oliver Thomson shines a light on the murkiest moments of this all-too-overlooked era, diving into the bloodshed and backstabbing that plagued the nation as it endured not only the British civil wars, but also the decades of religious persecution – including the aptly named ‘killing times’ – that followed. The opening premise of…

Inverness Museum and Art Gallery has recently obtained a grant to work on their decorative arts and Jacobite collections and as part of this are hoping to open up their important Bowerbank collection, with plans for digitisation. They believe the Edwardian collection has resonance in today’s social media age, demonstrating the wide-ranging and long-lasting interest in the Jacobites that still exists today. The Bowerbank collection was donated to Inverness Museum in 1910 by Emilie May Bowerbank, a gin heiress from London. Made up mainly of portraits, medals and engravings, but also including diverse items such as a tartan shawl, a buckle found on Culloden battlefield, and a pendant and brooch from the shadowy ‘Society of the White Rose’, the collection was the personal and idiosyncratic joy of one woman who…