In the aftermath of Martin Luther nailing his 95 theses to a church door in Wittenberg (and yes, I know it isn’t entirely certain he did nail them, but it makes for a forceful image, doesn’t it? Mu…
The Clava Cairns, deep in history and the highlands….
We came across Clava Cairns as the sun sank in the winter sky, glinting through the branches and leaving deep shadowy hollows still thick with frost from the night before.
It’s a place that you have to seek out, taking a few turns down narrow country roads, past fields and woods until a long stone wall and a brown road sign tell you that you’re there. Pulling into the small car park alongside, you’re still not really aware of the place until you step out from the trees and into the grassy area that they seem to be so intently guarding. Then you see them: three wide circular mounds topped with rounded cobbles, each one apparently surrounded by its own ring of standing stones.
Long shadows radiated like fingers, blurring the edge between reality and imagination. Sunlight caught random patches of moss and stone, while on the lee side all was…
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One of the best-known Roman structures that still exists outside of Rome itself is the long defensive wall that snakes from the Solway Firth to Newcastle across the north of England: Hadrian’…
At Cockenzie and Port Seton Local History Society
My Valentine song: I Choose You, Sara Bareilles. For all the Valentine couples in the world. “Let love rule the day.” ORIGINS There are several legends about the origin of Valentine’s D…
Source: The Origin of Valentine’s Day
★★★
John Knox made a brief cameo appearance in my GCSE History course, mainly to demonstrate that many people in the 16th century thought female monarchs were A Bad Thing. As part of a monstrous regiment of my own, in my girls’ school, I never had the chance to learn much more about him than the title of his most famous work, which naturally made me regard him with slight disapproval; and now, fifteen years later, it’s time to finally redress the balance. Marie Macpherson’s novel – the first in a proposed trilogy – turns him from merely a name on a history syllabus into a much more rounded and appealing figure, set firmly in his time.
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Marie Macpherson 