Marion Angus is a fine lyrical poet, most of whose work was written in the Scots language. Kathleen Jamie has said of Marion Angus “She has an authentic voice straight out of the ballad tradition, an eerie shimmer to her best poems”. Since her death her poems have gone in and out of print while […]
Tag: biography
Five Scottish women writers whose works are being digitised for 2017
Once you get past the early hours of the morning traditionally very little happens in Scotland on New Year’s Day. Appropriately on January 1st 2017 something is happening that is very quiet, automatic but in terms of Scottish literature quite exciting. The works of five varied but important Scottish female authors will no longer be […]
Scottish Catholic records
If you are interested in researching your Catholic ancestors in Scotland then Andrew R. Nicoll’s book “Scottish Catholic Family History: a family historian’s guide to Catholic parish registers and cemetery records for Scotland and the Bishopric of the Forces” (2011) provides a good starting point. It provides details of what records are available, where they […]
Four removes from Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson has been on my mind lately for various reasons, not least because we have a cataloguing project currently underway to sort and describe the extensive papers of Ernest Mehew , the outstanding Stevenson expert of his (or any other) day. We were given the archive of Ernest and Joyce Mehew, and Edinburgh Napier University have the […]
Bobby Moore’s 1966 autobiography was written by a Scotsman
As it is the 50th anniversary of England winning the World Cup in 1966 we thought we would highlight a Scottish literary connection to England’s triumph. England Captain Bobby Moore’s autobiography “My soccer story” was ghost written by a Scotsman who would go onto to become a Booker Prize shortlisted author and be involved in […]
The Archival Detective
When the John Murray Archive (JMA) arrived at the National Library of Scotland in 2006, approximately 17,500 individuals had been identified as having an item relating to them in the archive. For each of these, their full name, dates and epithet (a little descriptive detail in order to distinguish that particular person) needs to be […]
Winner of Costa award: Biography of Alexander von Humboldt
The invention of nature : the adventures of Alexander von Humboldt, the lost hero of science / by Andrea Wulf. Winner of Costa Biography award 2015. Why is this man not better known? That is the first thought which came to mind as I began to read this gripping and thoroughly researched biography, which is also a […]
Scottish legal professions
The legal profession in Scotland has a long and distinguished history, with individuals employed as advocates, procurators, writers and notaries. The library has a wide range of publications that provide biographical and professional details of many of those who were employed in these professions. The Faculty of Advocates, created in 1532 and based in Edinburgh, is […]