Joining the Library’s Special Collections Division last September, Weitian Liu is the Enlight Foundation scholar. Weitian is currently pursuing an MPhil in History of Photography and working with the photo team in…
This week, Elizabeth writes about New Year’s baking. Tartan tins of shortbread, optionally adorned with romantic depictions of Eilean Donan castle, Scottie dogs, or Bonnie Prince Charlie, are the clichéd epitome of a…
We recently put on a display for the ‘Scotland and the Flemish People’ conference, which focussed on the relationship between Scotland and Flanders, primarily in the medieval era. We were pleased to discover many…
“Ay, it’s an unco place, the Bass” When I first moved to Scotland, over four years ago, we chose to find a place to live in one of the small coastal fishing villages of the East Neuk. Close enough to St Andrews for a…
When the idea for the Historical How-to’s series was first mooted both Norman and I immediately wondered how we might turn it into an excuse to get out into the hills. With a wonderfully broad spectrum of writing and…
This Inspiring Illustration post on photography is inspired by a wonderful acquisition added to our Photographic Collection this week of a Scottish family’s photographs from the 1920s. Deviating, from talking about a…
For our New Year post it seems appropriate to look at some quintessentially Scottish images. There are some images of the Scots that we prefer to avoid, however, so rather than look for pictures of drunken parties or…
At 3:45 p.m. on this very day, 5 October, in 1785, an Italian by the name of Vincenzo Lunardi lifted off in his “aerostatic machine” (read: hot air balloon) from the garden of George Heriot’s School for what would be…
On the 15th of May, 1617, King James VI & I landed at Port ‘Seatown’ (now Seton) to begin what would be his only homecoming tour of Scotland. James left Scotland 14 years earlier to become the first King of Great…