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Sherlock Holmes Defends Civil Engineering, and Other News
An illustration of Sherlock Holmes from The Strand, 1920s. In Selkirk, Scotland, a man has found a previously unseen Sherlock Holmes story in his attic. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle apparently wrote it...
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“A Garish Nightmare of American Annihilation,” and Other News
Geoffrey Biggs’s Hiroshima cover (detail), 1948. Ice cream: delicious summertime treat or agent of moral turpitude? In fin de siècle Scotland, ice cream parlors “with mirrored walls and leather seats”...
View ArticleHappy Tartan Day
April 6 marks Tartan Day: on this day in 1320, the Declaration of Arbroath was signed, asserting Scottish independence. As the BBC describes, The Declaration is a Latin letter which was sent to Pope...
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The Whole Rigmarole
Ben Jonson bares all. From left: Ben Jonson, William Drummond. Pretty soon it will have been four hundred years since Ben Jonson (1572–1637) walked from London to Edinburgh. I don’t know the whole...
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Revere the Fig, Pity the Fig Wasp, and Other News
From a package of California Fig Syrup Company’s “Syrup of Figs” laxative. Friends, the great march of progress continues apace. The word bawbag—“a Scots word meaning scrotum, in Scots vernacular a...
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Drawing and Imagining
Alasdair Gray’s paintings, like his books, are marked by both fable and reality. Alasdair Gray, Small Boy Sleeping (Stuart Maclean), 1970, ink drawing with watercolor and acrylic on board. With every...
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Roaring Girl: London’s Sharp-Elbowed, Loudmouthed Mary Frith
How Mary Frith’s reputation changed from bawdy rogue to defender of the patriarchy. Moll CutPurse smoking. When James VI of Scotland took the English crown in 1603, it was heralded as a blessed...
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Staff Picks: Bald Heads, Baldwin, and Bruce LaBruce
Photo: Avid Bookshop in Athens, Georgia. Sabrina Orah Mark’s Wild Milk, one of the book duo released this year by the small press Dorothy, is a debut story collection that displays just how compelling...
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Staff Picks: Features, Films, and Flicks
Still from Lynne Ramsay’s You Were Never Really Here. Photo courtesy of StudioCanal. You Were Never Really Here is a disturbing and poetic piece of cinema. I don’t know whether it’s my favorite movie...
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The Curlews of Galloway
Frank Southgate, Autumn. Waders on the Breydon muds–little stint, curlew, dunlin and curlew-sandpiper, 1904, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. Galloway is unheard of. This southwestern corner of...
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