Whisky is synonymous with Scotland, with thousands of visitors every year coming specifically to visit the numerous distilleries flowering across the country – many of which have histories going back hundreds of years. Yet this isn’t just some tartan-clad, short-bread-flavoured nostalgia; the world of whisky has evolved radically in recent years. “Within the past decade […]
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Libby McGugan Interview
First published in Interzone. How would you describe The Eidolon? A Sci-Fi thriller that explores the nature of reality through an edge-of-the-seat story line featuring dark matter, the CERN laboratory, and the boundary between the living and the dead. That’s my publisher’s description, and it’s better than the one I came up with. Are there […]
Director Graham Hughes
One of the films nominated for this year’s Michael Powell Award for Best British Feature Film at the Edinburgh International Film Festival was a quirky comedy about a serious subject, Graham Hughes’ A Practical Guide to a Spectacular Suicide. Paul F Cockburn: Is A Practical Guide your first feature-length film? Graham Hughes: It’s my first good one! I […]
Robin of Sherwood
Las Vegas, 1983. A British television writer called Richard Carpenter was in a hotel room with a group of American television producers, hoping to secure funding for his proposed new take on the legend of Robin Hood. Unfortunately, the cigar-smoking executives had no idea who Robin Hood is, so Carpenter was forced to come up […]
The Doctor Austin Three Minute Interview
Doctor Austin of the renowned Zombie Institute for Theoretical Studies, based in the University of Glasgow, has come to educate the Edinburgh Fringe about the inevitable Zombie Apocalypse. Get the facts you’ll need to survive from his two “tutorials”… Zombie Science: Brain of the Dead is a spoof lecture all about the Zombie brain; we […]
Garry Robson & Edmund the Learned Pig
As part of the second Unlimited programme, more audiences will have the opportunity to enjoy the glorious musical adventure featuring an unusual pig. Paul F Cockburn speaks with co-creator Garry Robson. Edmund the Learned Pig brings together a disparate group of contributors. How did the show come together? “I’ve always been a fan of old […]
Forth Road Bridge at 50
“No one man builds a bridge. He is part of a team, and they all built it. And a bridge is, in a way, a monument; a monument of lasting benefit to mankind.” So said John Alexander King Hamilton, the resident engineer during the construction of the Forth Road Bridge who, aptly enough, also became […]
