Living by the Sword
He was known as the Wolf of Badenoch - or sometimes the Celtic Atilla.The cruel rampages of Alexander Stewart, Earl of Buchan, were deadly - and his appetite for destruction of his foes simply terrifying.As he rampaged through the north...
Living by the Sword
On 29 March 1849, the ten-year year-old Maharaja of the Punjab, Duleep Singh, was ushered into the magnificent Shish Mahal, the Mirrored Hall throne room at the centre of the great Fort of Lahore. The boy’s father...
Living by the Sword
It is difficult to know where to start with The Book of Henry, a film so satisfied with its own toxic levels of quirkiness that all involved seem oblivious to how deranged it actually is. Revolving around a child genius who devises an elaborate plan to kill his next door neighbour...
Living by the Sword
There was a certain comfort to be drawn from the presence of Jackson Browne, even as he shook his head at the craziness of the world and prescribed Carlos Varela’s MOR ballad Walls and Doors for the times.
Living by the Sword
This was how it should be all the time. Heat hanging over the Eildons almost as if it was going to stay there. The staff opening up all the side panels in the packed marquees in Harmony House Gardens. The grass warm...
Living by the Sword
It has echoes of real-life stories, of course; young women taken from the street, held in basements or garden sheds, and systematically raped and abused over a period of years, stretching towards decades.
Living by the Sword
When Belgian choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui decided to make a dance about Argentine tango, he knew there was only one place to go: Buenos Aires. Losing himself in the sights, sounds and smells of the city...
Living by the Sword
What a strange tale is Dirty Dancing, the smash-hit 1987 film now – 30 years on – touring the UK in this stage version directed by Federico Bellone. Set in a mountain resort in the Catskills in the summer of 1963...
Living by the Sword
It has echoes of real-life stories, of course; young women taken from the street, held in basements or garden sheds, and systematically raped and abused over a period of years, stretching towards decades.
Living by the Sword
This triptych of non-fiction pieces is united by more than one concern. On the surface, however, it is simply about the way in which technology is reshaping our world. The first is a piece about Julian Assange...
Living by the Sword
We know from television favourites such as Cash In The Attic and the Antiques Roadshow that there’s value in provenance. It’s often the story behind an object that can magically transform it into a priceless artefact.
Living by the Sword
In his “Motto to the Svendborg Poems,” composed in exile in Denmark in the 1930s, Bertolt Brecht wrote: “In the dark times / Will there also be singing? / Yes, there will also be singing / About the dark times.” Clearly darkness is relative...
Living by the Sword
The year was 1996; and Niall Greig Fulton, now Senior Programmer at Edinburgh’s International Film Festival (EIFF), was a young actor working out his obsession with the radical Scottish novelist Alexander Trocchi, through a monologue called A Meeting With The Monster.
Living by the Sword
It began with a painting. In May 1843, the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland made history when more than 400 ministers walked out to form the Free Church. David Octavius Hill was a painter, and brother-in-law to one of the dissenting clergy.
Living by the Sword
“I like the slightly odd mix – it’s a reflection of something inside my own head, all the various strands of interests…” Alasdair Nicolson is talking about the rich and – yes, pretty eclectic – programme he’s devised for this year’s St Magnus Festival in Orkney.
