Tag Archives | D C Thomson

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Flight or Peace Mission?

There’s one thing, at least, that most people agree on. At around 11.10pm on Saturday 10th May 1941, Rudolf Hess – Deputy Führer of Germany, Party leader of the National Socialist Party and the man whom, just eight months earlier, Adolf Hitler had publicly anointed as leader in the event of both his and Field-Marshal […]

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Even Better Than The Real Thing

The worm-eaten Old Lodge is reborn… as a kit house! When it came to “renovating” one of the dilapidated houses on the Straloch estate, north of Pitlochry, Lucy Holt was faced with an option she really didn’t like – to demolish and start again. “When we had professionals look at the houses it was discovered […]

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The Kingmaker

“I decided when I was eight I was going to be a novelist,” explains Rona Munro. “The late great writer and novelist Angus MacVicar was a family friend and relative and he encouraged me from that very early age. I’m sure his support played a huge part in my determination to tell stories to an […]

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Scottish Voice in the Abdication Crisis

Archbishop Cosmo Gordon Lang’s reputation has been restored – 80 years on from the Year of Three Kings. On the bright, chilly morning of 23 January 1936, thousands of people gathered in Edinburgh’s historic High Street to officially hear news they already knew. As a nearby clock marked noon, the city’s Lord Provost, Sir Louis […]

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Making a Difference

For one Glenrothes woman, home energy improvements not only helped her save money, but gave her a new career! “It started with a cold call about solar panels,” explains Shirley Paterson. The “it” in question isn’t just cutting fuel bills during the last four years through using renewables, in the process reducing her family’s carbon […]

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Thirty Dooks for the Loonies

“It all started with a conversation between Christmas and New Year 1986/7,” explains former Loony Dook organiser David Steel. “A man called Andy Kerr, who was a bit fed up, wondered if there was something different they could do to celebrate New Year. Somebody, off the cuff said: Why don’t we jump in the Forth? […]

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Fire and Feasting at Up Helly Aa

The annual Up-Helly-Aa festival, held in Lerwick on the last Tuesday of January, is arguably the most famous and iconic winter celebration in Scotland. Other communities in Scotland – including elsewhere in Shetland – have winter fire festivals, but arguably none can match the Lerwick Up-helly-aa “for its scale, the vigour of its modern celebration […]

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