Search results for ""nmse - publishing ltd""

History and science collide in the fascinating history of anatomy, from artistic explorations by Leonardo da Vinci and the full-body papier-mâché model produced by Louis Auzoux to the crimes of William Burke and William Hare in 19th-century Edinburgh. This history of how anatomy was studied focuses on Edinburgh and the West Port murders in 1828 and acknowledges the science’s reliance on dead bodies taken without consent. Edinburgh was an important centre for medical teaching at this time but the sixteen murders exposed the darker side of the practice and study of medicine – the bodies were sold by Burke and Hare to the Edinburgh University anatomist Dr Robert Knox. The book accompanies a major exhibition at the National Museum of Scotland beginning 2 July 2022 which charts five hundred years of medical exploration.

Read more less

This account shows the full range of Hugh Miller's interests - the lyrical description of the scenery and accounts of beautiful fossils show a deep affection for the Scottish landscape, while his role as a serious religious journalist and social crusader is highlighted in his discussions on the Disruption and the Highland Clearances.

Read more less

In telling the story of Bonnie Prince Charlie, this book, unusually, places his ancestry, birth and life against the Scoto-Polish and pan-European backgrounds of his parents’ families. With over one hundred and fifty illustrations, including seventy portraits, the selection shows those rarely or never-before included in other works, while the captions are extensive and detailed. The cover shows a portrait of Bonnie Prince Charlie that was in a private collection and unknown to the general public until 2018. The third distinguishing factor is that the book presents the full story of the prince’s only child, Charlotte, Duchess of Albany (Robert Burns’ ‘Bonnie Lass of Albany’); her mother, the tragic Scottish Jacobite Clementina Walkinshaw; and Charlotte Stuart’s children, describing their fates during and after the French Revolution. First published by Amberley in 2010, this edition of Bonnie Prince Charlie has been rewritten and updated. It features on the cover a portrait of Bonnie Prince Charlie that was in a private collection and unknown to the general public until 2018 when it was purchased by the Pininski Foundation.

Read more less

Excavated from Traprain Law, East Lothian, Scotland, in May 1919, was one of the most spectacular discoveries of Roman silver ever made in Europe - and the biggest hoard of `hacksilver': 23kg, battered, crushed and chopped up. Blame for the destruction has hitherto been laid at the door of `barbarians' but this study changes that view. An international team of scholars has reviewed the hoard's origins and manufacture, its use as elite tableware, its hacking and later reuse. A century of new discoveries and ideas allow fresh conclusions, especially about the hacking. With wide-ranging parallels from across Europe, the authors argue that hacking was a deliberate Roman policy to create bullion at times of economic crisis, turning valued vessels into weights of silver to be used in frontier politics, to pay off groups from beyond the empire, or hire them as mercenaries.

Read more less

Set in the months before the outbreak of the Great War and in print for almost 100 years The Thirty-Nine Steps is John Buchan's most popular novel. This timely look at the book - what inspired it, its themes and metaphors - and at its author - how much of John Buchan's own self and experiences are in it - will greatly enhance the reader's enjoyment.

Read more less

When Charles-I came to the throne in 1625 he began to make changes in the way Scotland was run, including the introduction of a new prayer book. He believed that a king was given his position by God and that no one had the right to question his actions, so when protests were made and a document known as 'The National Covenant' was drawn up, cruel punishments were inflicted on the protesters who became known as the 'Covenanters'. This brand-new title in the "Scotties Series" explains the complex topic of the Covenanters to children - it will also be a useful introduction to the subject for adults. "Scotties Books" contain a wealth of interesting facts, stimulating activities, websites and suggestions for places to visit.

Read more less

"Scotties" are exciting, full colour information books for young readers. Each title contains a wealth of interesting facts, stimulating activities, websites and suggestions for places to visit. An 8pp pull-out black and white section with games, puzzles and drawings for colouring-in can be used at home or photocopied for classroom use. In this brand new title find out about: Ghosts and Graveyards - including the Undead Sailor, and the Weeping Tombstone; Haunted Houses - such as Haddington House with its ghostly horse; Witches - good spells and bad spells; Hallowe'en - guising, and Mischief Night; Fairies - fallen angels, household helpers, changelings, and more; Glaistigs and Brownies - a glaistig is a thin woman with a face like 'a grey stone overgrown with lichen'; and, Merfolk - from golden-haired mermaids to the Blue Men of the Minch.

Read more less

"Robert Burns in Time and Place" is a brand new title in the "Scotties Books" series which contain a wealth of interesting facts, stimulating activities, web sites and suggestions for places to visit. The year 2009 is the 250th anniversary of the birth of Robert Burns but studying the life and work of the poet is no longer just a celebration around his birthday, but can be embedded across the school curriculum. The book looks at Ayrshire, Scotland and the wider world as they were in his time and which shaped his experiences and his work.

Read more less

An introduction about the Women's Land Army in the First and Second World Wars is followed by reminiscences, recorded recently by the editor, of ten ex-Land Girls. It is co-published by NMS Enterprises Limited - Publishing and the European Ethnological Research Centre (EERC) an independent unit within Celtic & Scottish Studies at the University of Edinburgh.

Read more less

In this book on the history of flight in Scotland you can: find out about the man who tried to fly off the wall at Stirling Castle and about Percy Pilcher and his fragile 'Bat' glider; be amazed at the story of Vincenzo Lunardi, and his balloon flight in 1785 from Edinburgh to Fife; see how aircraft are used in war, from the airships, and planes with open cock-pits, in World War I, to the Cold War V-bombers; read about UFOs in the 'Falkirk Triangle', the short-lived Rocket Post and much more; and check out how you can visit Concorde Alpha Alpha at the National Museum of Flight in East Lothian, and the other flying machines there.

Read more less

Queen Margaret died in 1093 and was canonised in 1250. Until a generation ago, every Scots child was taught a pallid and uncontentious version of her life, drawn from the hagiography written not long after her death. Even twentieth-century biographies have been uncritical and pious in tone. Eileen Dunlop has produced a book, which aims at a more balanced, psychologically probing account of a remarkable life.

Read more less

The elaborately carved Hilton of Cadboll stone, the house-shaped Monymusk Reliquary and the sumptuously decorated Hunterston brooch (all on view in the National Museum of Scotland) are evidence of the sophistication of Scottish craftsmen in the time AD 300-900. A pioneering partnership between National Museums Scotland and The Glenmorangie Company has supported a major programme of research into the archaeology of Scotland during the Early Medieval period. This is the paperback edition of the book first published in 2012.

Read more less

The objects in the Museum's extensive collection range in date from the Late Bronze Age to the Middle Ages, spanning over 2000 years of glassmaking. All four of the major techniques - core-forming, casting , blowing and mould-blowing are represented in this catalogue, and the different ways in which the glass was decorated and used are described.

Read more less

In nineteenth century Japan, woodblock prints were a cultural phenomenon, with thousands of designs issued annually. Prints were a cheap and colourful medium of entertainment, much like magazines and posters today. Kabuki is a unique combination of drama, dance, music, and acrobatics, still enthusiastically followed today. It is distinctive for its stylisation, lavish visual appearance, and intense kinetic energy. The plots concern tragic romances, feats of derring-do, and conflicts of loyalty, involving larger-than-life heroes, heroines, and villains. Whatever the story of the play, however, it was the actor above all that the audience came to see. Most of National Museums Scotland's magnificent collection of around 4,000 prints was acquired in the 1880s at the peak of the craze for Japanese art and design in Europe, and features the major artists of the time. This book features the highlights of the exhibition opening at the National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh, October 2013.

Read more less

This new edition is a co-publication between NMS Enterprises - Publishing and the Edinburgh Geological Society. It has been expanded and redesigned and has a practical flexi-binding. The book describes the varied rocks and structures that occur within the largely metasediments of the Moine Supergroup of the northern and central highlands of Scotland. The excursions are, for the most part, along major roads, allowing easy access to some of the finest outcrops of deformed and metamorphosed sandstones in Scotland. Professional geologists will find the book invaluable as will the enthusiastic amateur and the undergraduate student.

Read more less

Scottish Furniture offers a narrative account of furniture-making in Scotland, from the sixteenth century to the twentieth century. Written to scholarly standards, it disseminates a wealth of new research and specialist knowledge to a wide audience.The book is written primarily for readers with an existing knowledge of, and passion for, furniture history. It offers a broad-ranging perspective and covers an unusually long period. In addition to identifying key makers and diagnostic features, the text discusses the nature of national characteristics in material culture through time and across a range of contrasting socio-economic settings, as well as the interaction between design and making in material culture.It is thus of interest to a secondary set of academic readers, unfamiliar with furniture yet engaged with Scottish cultural history.

Read more less

Pickers came from near and far year after year – and from a variety of backgrounds – for the berry-picking season. For local people, adults and children, it was an opportunity to supplement the family income; Glasgow folk combined it with a holiday. For the Scottish Traveller community it was an annual opportunity to meet up with friends and family, and forge new relationships. Roger Leitch encouraged many of those local berry pickers to share their recollections for this book – which is published at a time of political change with challenges for the soft fruit cultivation business. He also interviewed workers in other seasonal employments such as potato picking and ghillieing.

Read more less

The Tomb in question was built for a Chief of Police and his wife in the city of Thebes (modern Luxor) at the height of the ancient Egyptian empire. It was reused by numerous people over the next few hundred years before being sealed and lying undisturbed until it was excavated in 1857. Many of the objects found were among the first to be acquired by what is now called the National Museum of Scotland.This is the souvenir guide to the exhibition The Tomb: Ancient Egyptian Burial which was shown at the National Museum of Scotland in 2017.

Read more less

Showcases over a hundred treasures from the collections of the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh, from the departments of Scottish History and Archaeology/Art and Design/Science and Technology/Natural Sciences/World Cultures.

Read more less

In the middle of the nineteenth century a sympathetic relationship between art, science and technology laid the groundwork for photography to flourish, including camera obscura and the panorama. This is a lavishly produced book on the eventful first thirty years of photography in Scotland - around 1840 - 70. The photographers whose work is discussed include David Octavius Hill, Robert Adamson, James Valentine, Thomas Annan and George Washington Wilson plus practitioners not previously mentioned in any publication. Julia Margaret Cameron's encounter with Scotland is also described as is the work of Scottish photographers abroad.

Read more less

Professor Matthew Heddle (1828-97) was a larger-than-life character, a renowned academic and one of Scotland's most famous mineralogists. His rich legacy includes: Encyclopaedia Britannica 9th edition (section on Mineralogy) A fossil fish Heddleichthys A mineral named after him (Mattheddleite) A summary of the Mineralogy of Scotland (published posthumously) 55 scientific papers 5,700 specimens from his collection now housed in the National Museum of Scotland and the National Museums Collection Centre. 10 children This book, by Heddle's great-great-grandson, is not an account of his scientific work but is about Heddle the man; it provides a much fuller picture of him than anything that has appeared before.

Read more less

Scotties are exciting, full-colour, Scottish information books for young readers, with a photocopiable black/white 8pp section for home or classroom use. The book looks at the landscape of Scotland before people, and at the islands, coasts, moorlands, machair, lochs, rivers and flora and fauna that we know now. It also discusses topics such as climate change, renewable energy and carbon footprint and at how the countryside can be enjoyed and protected.

Read more less

Co-published with the European Ethnological Research Centre in the Flashbacks series. Andrew Ramage was the son of a farm servant and he himself worked on the land in the Lothians and Berwickshire, in Scotland. Subsequently he became a dock worker, lorry driver and railwayman. Of the diary he kept over many years only three notebooks remain. The first covers Andrew's early life from 1884 until the mid 1870s and the period from November 1888 until April 1889. The last two cover July 1914 to June 1917. In his account the uncertain realities of rural employment and dwelling are revealed and they dispel the bucolic image often attached to descriptions of 19th-century country life. We learn of the travails of a young man making his way in the world at a time of great social and economic change and, later, of the concerns of parenthood and aging at a time of war-time strife.

Read more less

Travelling showfolk have been entertaining Scots for centuries and a visit to 'the shows' was a highlight of the year until recent memory. The Codonas are one of the longest and most established show families, having arrived from the continent in the late eighteenth century. The book is based almost entirely on original research and draws on interviews with three generations to give a vivid and richly anecdotal account of this ever-changing world. Illustrations, mostly previously unpublished, enhance the text. The interviews have been kept intact as much as possible, to keep the flow of overlapping individual life stories but are organised chronologically from the 1890s, when it enters living memory, up to the present. The hundred years from 1790 are described in a lively introduction including many first-hand accounts and following the family fortunes in the United Kingdom, the United States where members reached the top of the circus profession and as far afield as Hawaii.

Read more less

Devils, witches and evil - the insubstantial but terrifying world of the supernatural as it was seen by Robert Burns and his contemporaries is examined in this new book, brought out for the 250th anniversary of the poet's birth. Several of Burns' poems dealt with the supernatural, the most famous of which, "Tam o Shanter", is examined in detail. It is from this poem that the book's title comes: 'And roars out, "Weel done, Cutty-sark!" And in an instant all was dark And scarcely had he Maggie rallied When out the hellish legion sallied.' In contrast with the 'other world' was the everyday lives of the country people and the nature of the material world in which they lived; the book also examines this and the changes that were taking place in Burns' time.

Read more less

This memoir is by and about George Taylor: the manuscript was handed down through generations of his family. It recalls the varied and interesting life of a man who, at the age of 50, moved his family from Kelso in the Scottish Borders to Kalamazoo, Michigan, in the mid-nineteenth century. George Taylor was a gardener and nurseryman and, when settled in Kalamazoo, he soon established a successful business supplying plants and hedging. He was an award-winning horticulturalist and was responsible for the introduction of the cultivation of celery to the USA. In the course of hearing about George Taylor's life - including the death of three of his four wives in childbirth - we encounter people such as the widow of the man who supposedly served as the inspiration for Robert Burns' "Tam o' Shanter", and events such as the Great Fire of Chicago. From Kelso to Kalamazoo is all too rare a primary source testament to the realities of emigration from the lowlands of Scotland to the USA.

Read more less

National Museums Scotland is home to a world-class collection of ancient Egyptian artefacts. Though a public collection for 150 years, its breadth and depth remains largely unknown. This book aims to bring to public attention the many exceptional funerary items which include the royal burial group from Qurna, the coffin of the priest Iufenaumun, and the unusual double-coffin and mummies of the young half-brothers, Petamun and Penhorpabik. In bringing the collection to light, this book provides a wider understanding of its history, including the numerous figures who were responsible for acquiring, researching and preserving it over the years - egyptologists, curators and historians.

Read more less

Hallmarks, guaranteeing the honesty of the metal and maker alike, have been used in Scotland since the sixteenth century. The 550th anniversary of Scottish hallmarking in 2008 is being celebrated with an exhibition in Nation Museums Scotland (25 January - 27 April 08)which gathers together for the first time all the most important examples of marked Scottish silver and gold, most from NMS' unrivalled collections. The exhibition and the accompanying book are concerned not only with silver and gold vessels, from earliest surviving marked examples right up to pieces made today, but also with the people who made them and the people for whom they were made. Objects, historic records, paintings, illustrations and contemporary accounts will be combined to present a dazzling display. The book distils the exhibition, making it a must for silver enthusiasts and collectors everywhere.

Read more less

This the first book to describe the system of weights and measures used in medieval Scotland and to explain its evolution into modern times, and also the first to provide secure and accurate figures for the sizes of the units. The book's radical approach includes an emphasis on the physical evidence from surviving measurement standards, and it demonstrates that Scotland's meteorology was sophisticated and was closely involved with those of her trading partners. The book will appeal to a specialist market that includes social, economic and science historians; Scottish historians; weight and scale collectors; museums; and science and technology libraries.

Read more less

This pocket-sized, flexi-back guide gives an overview of the geological evolution of the island of Rum and provides a comprehensive selection of excursions illustrating Rum's Paleocene igneous rocks. It gives advice on travelling to the island, accommodation, weather conditions - and midges.

Read more less

This book features exceptionally important tapestries from major European collections showing the world-class research - scientific, artistic and historical - applied to their preservation. The collections, mostly of Renaissance Flemish tapestries, belong to the UK's Royal Collection at Hampton Court Palace (for example, a piece from a set depicting 'The Story of Tobias' first noted in Henry VIII's inventory of 1547); the Spanish Royal Collections tapestries at the Palacio Real, Madrid; and tapestries from several sites in Belgium. The information is presented in an understandable and practical way.

Read more less

Lochmaben is situated in the ‘debatable lands’ on the main route into Scotland north from Carlisle. The area has historic connections to the family of Robert the Bruce. This close-knit community has lost several of its basic amenities in recent years but the recent community buyout of the Castle Loch has been a great success with many volunteers coming together. ‘Lochmaben Voices’, a project to collect the memories of the town’s residents by recording interviews with them, was set up in 2011. The eldest interviewee was born in the 1920s and the youngest in 2000s and the transcriptions reflect the various accents heard in the region. For this book, three broad categories were identified: Lochmaben, both as a physical place and a community; personal recollections of living in the town; memories of the town during the Second World War, including military connections.

Read more less

This illuminating book traces the development of Scottish women’s writing in English from its genesis in the late eighteenth century to its flowering in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Hindered initially by the hostility of the Presbyterian Church and the self-serving attitude of the male hierarchy which denied them a proper education, an astonishing number of women found opportunities, in the midst of domestic obligations, to write, and often publish – novels, poetry, diaries, journalism, letters, essays and reportage. Charlotte Waldie and Christina Keith visited, respectively, Waterloo and Flanders in the immediate aftermath of battle. Another intrepid writer, Emily Graves, wrote a memoir of her travels in Transylvania in The Light Beyond the Forest – from which Bram Stoker directly lifted the most blood-curdling elements of Dracula. Others remembered include literary multi-tasker and businesswoman Christian Isabel Johnstone; playwright Joanna Baillie; working-class poets Marion Bernstein and Janet Hamilton; novelist Susan Ferrier; memoirist Anne Grant of Laggan; and writer and scientist Mary Somerville, depicted on the cover, after whom Somerville College, Oxford is named.

Read more less

Thoroughly revised and expanded from the 2012 edition (twice the number of pages, almost double the number of illustrations) this book pays tribute to the man and his diverse works and achievements. James Hutton (1726-1797) was one of the first environmentalists, a man ahead of his time. He developed a grand theory of the Earth in which he tried to make sense of a lifetime of observation and deduction about the way in which our planet functions. For example, he connected temperature with latitude. His measurements, with rudimentary thermometers, of temperature changes between the base and summit of Arthur’s Seat, were remarkably accurate and he studied climate data from other parts of the world. A leading figure in the eighteenth-century Scottish Enlightenment, he was also an innovative farmer, successful entrepreneur and a man with endless intellectual curiosity. The year 2026 will be the tercentenary of his birth. There will be many special events leading up to and in that year organised by The James Hutton Institute, Scotland’s premier environmental and agricultural research organisation.

Read more less

Whithorn: An Economy of People is an exploration of a unique face-to-face society in Galloway in the south west of Scotland. It paints a picture of a largely cashless economy based on trust, frugality and the skilled labour and strategies of its residents to remain independent of the rest of the world while keeping closely connected to each other. Between 2012 and 2013 Julia Muir Watt interviewed twenty-nine individuals from Whithorn and the Machars about their memories. From those interviewed we learn what it was like to grow up, to go to school, and to work and to play in Whithorn in the twentieth century, before and after the Second World War. A great strength of oral history is that it can provide a direct insight into a lived life. In this collection, we have many such insights into life in and around the burgh of Whithorn. In telling of their experiences, those interviewed also provide an understanding into what it felt like to live those lives. Co-published with the European Ethnological Research Centre based on the research undertaken by them in their programme Dumfries and Galloway:A Regional Ethnology – part of a wider research programme the Regional Ethnology of Scotland Project (RESP).

Read more less

Roman glass from indigenous sites is a key source material for studying the impact of Rome on Iron Age Scotland, but it has never been properly studied. This work fills that gap. This study is based on the Roman glass vessels found on non-Roman/native sites north of Hadrian's Wall, dated mainly to the Roman Iron Age (0-400 AD). It sheds light on aspects of Roman-native relations, most importantly the exchange of goods and ideas, and considers the problem of whether the finds of glass on native sites represent loot or plunder as has been argued, or whether they were the outcome of some peaceful enterprise such as trade, exchange or present giving.

Read more less

Parliaments existed in Scotland, off and on, from about 1200 till there was the Union with the English Parliament in 1707. In 1998 the Scotland Act decreed that 'There shall be a Scottish Parliament' and the new, devolved Parliament opened on 1 July 1999. This Scotties activity book for children aged 9-12 gives the early history of Parliaments in Scotland and then looks in more detail at how the present Parliament in Holyrood works. Scotties are exciting, full-colour Scottish information books for young readers. Each title contains a wealth of interesting facts, stimulating activities for home or classroom use, a list of websites, and suggestions for places to visit.

Read more less

'Galoshins' was a seasonal folk drama learned orally and performed, mostly by boys, in people's houses. They were rewarded with food or pennies. It took place on New Year's Eve ('Old Year's Night')or on Hallowe'en in central and southern Scotland at the very end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th. The drama took the form of a fight, sometimes with 'swords', and then a 'doctor' performed a comic turn in bringing the injured party back to life. These oral reminiscences, gathered for the first time in book form, were collected in the 1970s for the School of Scottish Studies Sound Archives, University of Edinburgh.

Read more less

David Livingstone rose from being a factory boy to become an African explorer and a hero of the Victorian age. This volume of essays, rich in new scholarship, tie in with an exhibition at the National Museum of Scotland (beginning 23 November 2012) which commemorate the 200th anniversary of his birth. The exhibition has been produced in collaboration with authorities in Malawi - Livingstone was the first European to document Malawi in the mid 1800s and he continues to be remembered there - and with the David Livingstone Centre in his birthplace, Blantyre, in the west of Scotland, which holds a wide range of his personal belongings and travel aids. Together, the essays present a twenty-first-century view of David Livingstone - the man, the myth and the legacy. They engage not only with matters of history - his life and work as explorer, doctor and missionary - but also with the ways in which he has been memorialised, and his contemporary significance.

Read more less

Steam traction engines were most widespread in Scotland from the 1880s until the 1940s - mainly for road haulage, powering threshing mills, ploughing and,in steam roller form, in road making. The book describes the use of steam power on Scotland road and field, and places National Museum Scotland's 1907 traction engine in its historical context with details of its construction, acquisition and restoration.

Read more less

This is a companion volume to A Geological Excursion Guide to the Moine Geology of the Northern Highlands of Scotland, published in 2010 by NMS Enterprises Limited - Publishing in conjunction with Edinburgh Geological Society. Although new roads and bridges have been constructed since the excursion guide to the Assynt district of Sutherland was published in 1979, the dramatic landscape of the North-West Highlands of Scotland remains remote. This guide describes the bedrock geology from Ullapool northwards, including many classic localities in the Moine Thrust zone and its foreland. The area largely corresponds to the North-West Highlands Geopark. In preparation for this edition, a large team was assembled to provide up-to-date interpretations of the structural relationships, sedimentology, and metamorphic history. the 16 escursions vary from roadside stops to full-day mountain walks over rough terrain, with weather liable to sudden change. Advice is given on access, and on local accommodation and transport.

Read more less

Published by NMS Enterprises Limited - Publishing on behalf of University of Dundee. The development of academic research has brought to the fore a new generation of craft practitioners and as a consequence new methods and methodologies, which are impacting on the way craft in the future will be perceived, marketed and purchased. Past, Present and Future Craft Practice explores new directions and perspectives in contemporary craft and exemplifies this step through a series of ten works. The book is based partly on a five-year-research project which posed the question: Is there a future role for craft? It is also based on the editors' work as craft practitioners - Louise Valentine's as a textile designer and Georgina Follett's as an enameller.

Read more less

This is a new edition of this best-selling "Scottie", recast and rewritten for readers of 10 upwards. The aims of the Jacobites and the background to the risings of Viscount Dundee (1689), the Earl of Mar (1715), and Charles Edward Stuart (1745) are explained, and this colourful but bloody period in Scotland's past brought vividly to life. The telling is illuminated by extracts from original documents, genealogical chart of the royal families of Scotland and England, and maps and battle plans. Illustrated in full colour with drawings, and with portraits, prints, and objects from National Museums Scotland and other national collections, this work includes an additional 8-page section in black and white that includes Jacobite songs and story-poems, a Jacobite quiz, and the original Rob Roy board game.

Read more less

'For we are very lucky, with a lamp before the door And Leerie stops to light it, as he lights so many more...' The picture of a small boy peering from a window at dusk to watch the lamplighter in the street is one of the enduring images of 19th-century Edinburgh, and the child probably the most famous ever brought up there. Robert Louis Stevenson loved to conjure up a dashing, romantic lineage for himself, dreaming that he was descended from the colourful outlaw Rob Roy MacGregor. The reality was less flamboyant but no less remarkable and he would learn that the street lamps of Edinburgh owed their brilliance to the scientific work of his own great-grandfather. This welcome addition to the Robert Louis Stevenson canon gives a concise account of his life - his family background, childhood and adolescence in a Calvinist, hard-working household in Scotland, his travels in three continents and his final years in the South Seas.It examines his relationships with his parents and his nurse, with English and American friends, particularly the family into which he married, and with the Samoan islanders among whom he died at the age of 44. Stevenson's childhood experiences and Scottish identity fed his fertile imagination wherever he found himself. His legacy includes travel writing, essays and poetry, and novels such as "Treasure Island", "Kidnapped", "The Master of Ballantrae", "Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde", "St Ives" and "Weir of Hermiston", still read and enjoyed more than one hundred years after his death. "Robert Louis Stevenson: The Travelling Mind" is an insightful introduction to the life and work of one of the world's best-loved writers.

Read more less

What would we have seen if we looked out over the landscape of Scotland at its very beginning, before the impact of mankind? What would it be like to swim in the Jurassic sea? Or stand early one morning in the dragon-fly haunted coal forests of the Midland Valley? This book captures in words, drawings, paintings and photographs the dramatic sceneries - erupting volcanoes, colliding continents - and ever-changing landscape of Scotland. A second volume by Andrew Kitchener, describing the origins of wildlife in Scotland, is scheduled for 2006.

Read more less

Based on a 'national collection of the national instrument' now assembled in National Museums Scotland, this book offers an account of the musicology of the bagpipe in its European context, including the remarkable influence of the Baroque on Scotland's musical traditions. The record is meagre for the evolution of the bagpipe in Scotland and perceptions of the 'national instrument' have depended on a stereotype Great Highland Bagpipe assumed to have a continuous history from a distant past. The evidence, as far as it goes, suggests that Scotland adopted a 'great pipe' from the European bagpipe tradition and made it, through the strength of the Gaelic language and its music, very much its own. This edition does not have the accompanying CD-ROM of the first edition but is otherwise unaltered.

Read more less

In 2017 an intense fundraising campaign ensured that what came to be known as 'the Galloway Hoard' was saved for the nation. Since then work has been ongoing to preserve and understand it. Over 5kg of silver bullion, many unique and enigmatic gold objects, the rare preservation of textiles and an unusual range of other materials, make the Hoard the richest collection of Viking-age objects every found in Britain and Ireland. Dr Martin Goldberg and Dr Mary Davis provide the first full description of the Hoard and place the find in a wider historical and geographical context.

Read more less

The humorous and intricately designed Lewis Chessmen were discovered in 1831, one of the most significant archaeological discoveries ever made in Scotland. To preserve the hoard as intactly as possible in a public collection, the majority of the pieces were acquired by the British Museum where they are on permanent display. National Museums Scotland holds 11 pieces, again on permanent display. An exhibition of 30 pieces will tour Scotland from May 2010 to June 2011. This is the book produced to accompany the exhibition; it also stands alone. It looks at the mystery and intrigue surrounding the chessmen and their discovery, and shows how the characters reflected society at the time they were made.

Read more less