The cul-de-sac, at least in the UK, is very different from the dead end street. It is a haven and closer to paradise than you would imagine.
Tag Archives: Scotland
Skye
The Isle of Skye, home of the Talisker whisky distillery and controversial psychiatrist and author Iain McGilchrist. Also features pithy analysis from my neighbour Lofty Hazelhurst.
Jura
George Orwell is on the Scottish island of Jura writing 1984, smoking roll ups and trying to shake off tuberculosis.
Dundee
In Dundee the boots of a seven foot giant stomp up the street. ‘Where is my creator?’ it howls. Mary Shelley hides behind the settee.
Edinburgh New Town
Completed in 1828, the statue of Henry Dundas, Viscount Melville, dominates St Andrew Square. In 1846, Frederick Douglass, author, statesman, anti-slavery campaigner, visited Edinburgh. He would have seen that statue – but was he aware of Dundas’ role in delaying abolition? Do residents or visitors of the city realise Dundas amendment to William Wilberforce’s act led to the enslavement of a further half a million men, women and children? And this is to say nothing of the huge compensation granted to slave owners across the UK, and particularly Edinburgh New Town.
Papa Westray
Westray and Papa Westray, far northern outposts of the British Isles, once a Viking colony, where the plaintive call of the curlew sounds over white beaches of the most extraordinary beauty.
Bass Rock
An island off the east coast of Scotland, where gannets live within a stabbing circumference of each other.