Homeland-Scotland

Maw Broon's But An' Ben Cookbook: A Cookbook for Every Season, Using All the Goodness of the Land

A cookbook with a difference, this nostalgic collection of recipes dates back to 1940 and is entirely different, but just as good as, the first Maw Broon cookbook. Funny, inventive and full of humour and comic strips from "The Broons", with witty comments from the family members throughout, this second cookbook has more balance with both sweet, traditional, recipes as well as recipes with lighter, healthier ingredients.

 

 

Ian Rankin is the UK's number 1 bestselling crime author. Famous for the acclaimed Inspector Rebus series which has topped the Sunday Times bestseller lists and been adapted into a major TV series, Ian Rankin is also the author of three books which were originally published under the pseudonym of Jack Harvey (a combination of Ian's son's first name and his wife, Miranda's maiden name).

No Mean City (Alexander McArthur+H.Kingsley Long):

No book is more associated with the city of Glasgow than No Mean City. First published in 1935, it is the story of Johnnie Stark, son of a violent father and a downtrodden mother, the 'Razor King' of Glasgow's pre-war slum underworld, the Gorbals. The savage, near-truth descriptions, the raw character portrayals, bring to life a story that is fascinating, authentic and convincing.

Scotland History:

Early history

Prehistoric Scotland.Repeated glaciations, which covered the entire land-mass of modern Scotland, have destroyed any traces of human habitation that may have existed before the Mesolithic period. It is believed that the first post-glacial groups of hunter-gatherers arrived in Scotland around 12,800 years ago, as the ice-sheet retreated after the last glaciation. Groups of settlers began building the first known permanent houses on Scottish soil around 9,500 years ago, and the first villages around 6,000 years ago. The well-preserved village of Skara Brae on the  Mainland of Orkney  dates from this period. Neolithic habitation, burial and ritual sites are particularly common and well-preserved in the Northern Isles and Western Isle, where a lack of trees led to most structures being built of local stone

 

 

 

Knots and Crosses

Summary

'And in Edinburgh of all places. I mean, you never think of that sort of thing happening in Edinburgh, do you...?'

That sort of thing... is the brutal abduction and murder of two young girls. And now a third is missing, presumably gone to the same sad end. Detective Sergeant John Rebus, smoking and drinking too much, his own young daughter spirited away south by his disenchanted wife, is one of many policemen hunting the killer. And then the messages begin to arrive: knotted string and matchstick crosses - taunting Rebus with pieces of a puzzle only he can solve.

Reviews

'His is a superbly drawn character; matched by the edgy authenticity of the Scottish locale and dialogue'
Marcel Berlins, The Times

'Suspenseful riddling, with exemplary eye to the plod of police through civic jungle'
Sunday Times

 

No Mean City....and the rest

Many more

NMC, an 'infamous' book to many, has created an image of Glasgow which has been hard for the city to change. Written between the Wars it cast a very grim view indeed of the city and the happenings there. Crime has always been a problem in Glasgow as it has in every large industrial city. This side of Glsgow, no means its' only one, has been explored and expolited by many writers over the years a selection follows below.

 

 

The Picts ...and the rest

Got some time on your hands?

Prehistory, Picts, Celts, Scots, Romans, Vikings, Irish and let's not forget the English! All have played a part in molding Scotland and the Scots. Depending upon your area of interest there is plenty to learn about the rich and often bloody history of Scotland, its' people and their enemies.

 

How the Scots Invented the Modern World: The True Story of How Western Europe's Poorest Nation Created Our World & Everything in It.

 "I am a Scotsman," Sir Walter Scott famously wrote, "therefore I had to fight my way into the world." So did any number of his compatriots over a period of just a few centuries, leaving their native country and traveling to every continent, carving out livelihoods and bringing ideas of freedom, self-reliance, moral discipline, and technological mastery with them, among other key assumptions of what historian Arthur Herman calls the "Scottish mentality."

It is only natural, Herman suggests, that a country that once ranked among Europe's poorest, if most literate, would prize the ideal of progress, measured "by how far we have come from where we once were." Forged in the Scottish Enlightenment, that ideal would inform the political theories of Francis Hutcheson, Adam Smith, and David Hume, and other Scottish thinkers who viewed "man as a product of history," and whose collective enterprise involved "nothing less than a massive reordering of human knowledge" (yielding, among other things, the Encyclopaedia Britannica, first published in Edinburgh in 1768, and the Declaration of Independence, published in Philadelphia just a few years later). On a more immediately practical front, but no less bound to that notion of progress, Scotland also fielded inventors, warriors, administrators, and diplomats such as Alexander Graham Bell, Andrew Carnegie, Simon MacTavish, and Charles James Napier, who created empires and great fortunes, extending Scotland's reach into every corner of the world.

Herman examines the lives and work of these and many more eminent Scots, capably defending his thesis and arguing, with both skill and good cheer, that the Scots "have by and large made the world a better place rather than a worse place."