In memory of Janet Coats – 90th Anniversary of Scotland’s oldest Literary Prize

It’s not every day that you get a chance to claim a bit of Scottish literary history!  This Friday – 21 August – marks the 90th anniversary of the presentation of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize which was set up by my cousin, Janet Tait Black neé Coats.  The awards – one for biography [...]

House Histories

Ever since Julie Myerson’s book  Home: The Story of everyone who ever lived in our house, house history has attracted a growing number of enthusiastic followers.

With a plentiful supply of historical sources to draw on, Edinburgh is an ideal place to pursue this hobby, whether or not it turns into a book or is just [...]

A moral makeover: or what to do with nearly £2000 a day!

I hope Sir Fred Goodwin, former head of Royal Bank of Scotland, reads his Aristotle because he is in dire need of a moral makeover.
Magnificence was a required aspect of all forms of cultural display and therefore expenditure in Renaissance Italy, a perception that was largely founded on the resurgence of Aristotelian ethics in Florence [...]

Olga Byatt (nee Campbell) and the Endell Street Hospital

On Friday I was in London at the unveiling of a plaque to commemorate the Women’s Military Hospital in Endell Street, near Covent Garden, which was run by the Women’s Hospital Corps (WHC) between 1915 and 1919 and was staffed entirely by women.

The event was organised by Dr Jennian Geddes, a great-niece of Louisa Garrett [...]