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The seer Swein Macdonald

The seer Swein Macdonald

Swein MacDonald rose to fame in the 1970s for his mystical predictions, fueled by alcohol, darkness, and fiery emotions. MacDonald mesmerised audiences with his extraordinary gift of ‘second sight’ and a flair for controversy. With a glass of whisky in hand and incense burning in his darkened crofthouse in Kincardine,

Dancers

Dancers

By Dave Goulder  Tall stone, fixed in a garish pas-de-deux fourteen weathered blocks, and  one other.  A dancing master? A luckless spectator  or a sad  fiddler making for home when the Sabbath  hour was struck? Legend says  a second fiddler appears, just as the first  puts down his bow. The

Sing Sing

Sing Sing

Release date (UK): 2024 | Country: USA | Running time: 107 min | Genre: Drama | Director: Greg Kwedar | Starring: Colman Domingo, Clarence Maclin, Sean San Jose | BBFC 15 By Jack Weir Colman Domingo shines in Sing Sing as Divine G, a man imprisoned at Sing Sing for a crime he didn’t commit,

The power of first love

The power of first love

Absolutely & Forever by Rose Tremain by Liz Treacher, Author Athough it was only published in paperback this year, Absolutely and Forever (Vintage, 2024) by Rose Tremain feels very retro. Set in 1960s London, the novel describes the struggles of Marianne to forget her first love, Simon, who she met

The Flow Country becomes Scotland’s first fully natural Unesco World Heritage Site

The Flow Country becomes Scotland’s first fully natural Unesco World Heritage Site

The Flow Country, located in Caithness and Sutherland, is a vast, ecologically significant landscape spanning 4,000 Km2. By Elizabeth Lunardini It features Europe’s largest blanket bog, a type of wetland ecosystem that plays a crucial role in global climate regulation by storing around 400 million tonnes of carbon

Heather

Heather

As summer starts to retreat into autumn, the hills and woods of the Highlands put on a spectacular show of mauves and purple. The heather is in flower.  By Cherry Alexander The ling heather on our surrounding hillsides is Calluna vulgaris, a member of the heath family of plants which

Shearwater

Shearwater

By Dave Goulder Dark sickle against waves. Masked.  Stiff; a salt-swift cutting the wet air and turning on sharp wing points  you show white.  Turning and turning alternating light  and dark  in the changing sea-shape  of your own grey water-world.  I caught you once – in the night  on Hirta Island;