My Personal Blog

It was the weather of a West Coast exile's dream. Cool, damp, and dull. We looked across the wastes of Rannoch Moor and I breathed deep the fresh air. What a place! "It looks like the set of a 1970s horror film," said my companion. "Screw this, I'm going to the pub." We were at the Kingshouse for a reunion and it seemed that only I wanted a walk. Just as well I like my own company. On Rannoch

There's a great collection of Art Deco architecture on Orkney. The best examples are at Hoxa Head on South Ronaldsay. To be honest most people would not class them as Art Deco. Most people would call them wartime gun batteries. But what are these curves, if not pure le Corbusier? Balfour Battery: When form matches function so elegantly? Hoxa Battery: During WWI and WWII, the Royal Navy's

For years historians debated if it was a transcription error. The 'King of Orkney' who attended a meeting with Roman Emperor Claudius at Colchester surely didn't refer to the remote Orkneys. The unsophisticated, illiterate Caledonians always had been Rome's enemies. It was absurd to believe the remotest of them had been plugged into mainstream Mediterranean politics. And if it wasn't a