[Photo by and copyright of Paul Henni]

HOLYROOD IS SUCH a pleasant spot, despite the recent intrusion of an ostentatiously ugly government building designed by a Spanish architect. The other day, while visiting Edinburgh, I heeded the recommendation of the Prettiest Schoolteacher in Clackmannanshire to sample the burger at the Holyrood 9a. It was quite delicious, though not perfect, and was splendidly washed with a pint of Kozel (most un-Caledonian, I concede, but you can get Deuchars in London, you know).

Afterwards, our little party decided to have a little wander down Holyrood Road towards the Palace of Holyroodhouse, the epicentre of the Scottish monarchy.

Nestled between Calton Hill and Salisbury Crags, the Palace sits at the end of the Royal Mile that runs between it and Edinburgh Castle. With the Old Town to its west, the expanse of Holyrood Park flows off to the south and east of it. (more…)

Well, I was going to direct you over to Seraphic’s blog for an at least partial account of my Edinburgh weekend but she’s done gone and taken the dagnabbed thing down. It’s just as well, as when she described the assembled guests at a long Sunday lunch by the sea in Portobello she finished her description with “and Andrew Cusack wearing something rumpled from Ralph Lauren”. In fact, it was Massimo Dutti, but there you have it. (more…)

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The North British & Mercantile Insurance Company, No. 64 Princes Street

PRINCES STREET IS the thoroughfare of the nation, and its sad decline during the second half of the twentieth century and only partial comeback since then are reflective of Scotland itself. The architects of Edinburgh’s New Town had no idea that Princes Street would evolve into a commercial avenue, and the street was originally laid out as a handsome row of Georgian townhouses, built between 1765 and 1800, facing Princes Street Gardens and the Old Town above behind them.

Almost immediately the mercantile and social nature of the street began to assert itself, with shops and traders setting themselves up in the converted basements and ground floors of townhouses. The New Club showed up at No. 86 Princes Street in 1837, coming from previous premises in St. Andrew’s Square and before that Shakespeare Square (where the former G.P.O. now stands).

As the Victorian era progressed, more and more of the Georgian townhouses were demolished and replaced with new buildings in the varying styles of age. It was just two years after Victoria’s death that an old company built a new headquarters in a brimming Edwardian baroque: the North British and Mercantile Insurance Company. (more…)

All of Them More Beautiful than the Current Parliament Building

IT IS ONE OF those curious aspects of Edinburgh: its multiplicity of parliament buildings. The Estaits of Parliament, as they were known in the old days — consisting of the three estates of prelates, lairds, and burghers — first met in the Great Hall of Edinburgh Castle in 1140, though the first gathering of which we have primary source material was at Kirkliston in 1235, during the reign of Alexander II. The body led a somewhat peripatetic existence, meeting wherever was convenient, and even met for a year in St Andrews, where the building which housed it is still known as Parliament Hall. Indeed, that august edifice is home to the proceedings of the Union Debating Society, where the germinal gasbags of Scotland, and indeed of all three kingdoms, first enter the fray of political discourse.

In 1997, nearly three-hundred years after the Parliament was abolished, it was decided to bring it back, albeit in much reduced form. Great were the rumours and discussions about what effect the return of legislative power might have on the country, and Edinboronians pondered where the body might be housed. There were obvious choices, and less obvious choices, but in the end the Westminster government decided to go for the choice that hadn’t been suggested at all and built one of the most heinous offences against the sensibilities of taste that the land has ever seen. And so, the fact is that Scotland has three beautiful parliament buildings, none of which it uses. (more…)

Photograph by Dave Henniker.

“We didn’t know quite how to take this, but we sat there entranced.”

ONE OF THE markedly few deficiencies of the English language is coming up with a word to describe Richard Demarco. The Scottish press have generally settled upon “impresario” but even that somewhat-ambiguous word fails to do the man justice. Ricky was born in Edinburgh in 1930, grew up in Portobello, and remembers the day when his mother held him back from school because Italy — from whence he stock came — had just declared war on Great Britain. He’s attended every Edinburgh Festival since the very first one began in 1947 — as the founders put it, to “provide a platform for the flowering of the human spirit” in the grim aftermath of the Second World War.

Richard Demarco, couchant, with noted Scots caricaturist Emilio Coia.

In 1963, he cofounded the Traverse Theatre, Scotland’s theatre for new writing, and three years after that founded the Richard Demarco Gallery which promoted Scotland’s cultural interchange with artists across Europe including — very importantly to Richard — from behind the Iron Curtain that divided the continent into free and captive halves. This was during an age when many in the arts world were too busy sympathizing with the murderous totalitarianism that had subjugated half of Europe. Richard has been a deep critic of the choices made by the British government as patron of the arts throughout the decades of his life, but not too long ago he finally patched things up with the Scottish Arts Council.

Readers of Alexander McCall Smith’s 44 Scotland Street might recall the man who comes to speak to the Scottish Police College. The “really important person from the art world in Edinburgh”, as Mr. McCall Smith puts it, comes and tells the trainee constables about the gorgeousness of Italian carabinieri uniforms and how the Scottish psyche still suffers from the iconoclasm of the Reformation, and even suggests architectural alterations and more sympathetic decoration of the Police College. “We didn’t know quite how to take this, but we sat there entranced,” the character admits in 44 Scotland Street. Anyone who either knows Ricky or has been to one of his lectures would immediately recognize the unnamed subject of the passage.

I first met the man when I was a first-year student at St Andrews and he had come up from the capital to give a lecture. I can’t remember what the stated subject was but this is entirely irrelevant as so vast and wide-ranging is the mind & experience of Richard Demarco that he is known for (some would say “notorious for”) never keeping within the bounds of the stated subject. Those who invite Richard to speak shouldn’t bother with a subject, just make posters stating “RICHARD DEMARCO SPEAKS”, giving the date, time, and place, and a crowd of interested characters is bound to turn up. (more…)

The Cathedral Church of St. Mary (Scottish Episcopal), Edinburgh.

Sad to leave it. (I’m in London now).

A view of Edinburgh from the top of the no. 23 bus. (more…)

Perhaps foolish to title this entry ‘Journey to Scotland’ as I’ve already crossed the border into England, and indeed my train has just crawled past the beautiful towers of York Minster. I arrived in Scotland on Saturday and neglected to make the pilgrimage to my alma mater of St Andrews but instead spent all of my time in the elegant confines of Edinburgh. Saturday night beheld a splendid repast, including salmon freshly arrived from Ireland, champagne, and brandy cake. After the glories of an old-rite Mass on Sunday morning there was tea aplenty (and brief chats with Gerald Warner and Fra Freddy) before enjoying tankards of champagne near Queen Street Gardens, followed by an excellent late lunch in one of Auld Reekie’s best Italian restaurants, topped off with hot apple pie and a bit of Bas Laubade armagnac (1946).

On Monday I took a break from eating and called at one of my favourite paintings in the National Gallery on the Mound (Pas Mèche by Jules Bastien-Lepage) before a pub lunch with very good friends. A few pints in the Guildford Arms next to New Register House (home to the Court of the Lord Lyon, for those heraldically inclined) led to the standard student dinner of spag bol in a flat off Morningside Road. Yesterday, however, my old friend Richard Demarco led me on a personal tour of Arthur’s Seat and Salisbury Crags in Holyrood Park. A most remarkable guide, with a flair for the dramatic, Richard adeptly explained the ancient significance of the stunning site and declared it a monument even greater than the Pyramids because, unlike those Egyptian constructs, these crags and hills were made not by man but by God.

One of the false conveniences of the modern internet lifestyle is that global websites often redirect themselves to the local version when one is outside the United States. In Montreal just a few weeks ago, I put in “google.com” and automatically got “google.ca”. Similarly, in Scotland, logging out of YahooMail, one is redirected to “yahoo.co.uk” rather than “yahoo.com” regardless of your actual email address. More curiously, however, while passing through Northumberland, I logged on to “google.com” and was redirected to “google.se — Google Sverige”, the Swedish version of Google. Have the Northmen returned, albeit electronically, to claim back the lands that once were theirs?

I am now off to London. My aforementioned friend Richard Demarco is, for lack of a better phrase, big in the arts world of Scotland; this is so despite his strident opposition to much of the arts establishment. Richard believes that divine veneration must be the animating spirit of great art, and that the current reign of nonsense and malarchy in art stems from its divorce from the reality of the Incarnation. For veneration, then, tonight’s eve of the New Year will be commemorated at Brompton Oratory with a Holy Hour and Benediction starting at 11:00pm. Tomorrow’s feast will be marked by yours truly at Spanish Place, where a Solemn High Mass in the Extraordinary Form will be celebrated.

Arrivederci, then, to 2008, and a very happy and blessed new year to all the denizens of this little corner of the web.

Nils Olav and the King of Norway’s Guards

The King of Norway’s Guards is the household regiment of that Scandinavian sovereign, but their honorary colonel resides in Edinburgh, where the regimental band often performs in the famous Military Tattoo held each summer. This year, the Colonel was honored with no less than a knighthood and took the opportunity of the unit’s presence in Edinburgh to inspect the regiment. Ordinarily, this would be an unremarkable event were it not for the fact that the Colonel is Nils Olav, a penguin currently in residence at the Edinburgh Zoo.

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ONE THING WE greatly enjoyed about the Scotsman in its pre-tabloid days was that they often deemed St Andrews social events worthy of coverage in their august pages. It was a source of pride to see ‘the national newspaper’, a respectable broadsheet, covering events at the oldest university in the land (which we are proud to call our own). Naturally, once the conversion to tabloid size was complete, we were rarely heard of again, which was a little saddening. The Scotsman is not what it used to be —a beautiful, well-designed, informative respectable newspaper— but it still manages to print some thoroughly worthwhile articles which is more than can be said of any other Scottish daily. (One need only point out two articles by Prof. Haldane, c.f. here and here, recently posted on this site).

“…when the diehards decided to totter the one and a half miles back to toon on foot.” Sounds familiar.

Admittedly, most of the events covered were organised by the Kate Kennedy Club, which seems to take pride in the sheer vulgarity and tastelessness with which they advertise many of their events. (This is only slightly mitigated by their superb running of the annual Kate Kennedy Procession). Still, we enjoyed the Scotsman‘s coverage and wish it had continued. I only bought the Scotsman on occasion after the switch, but often gave the Common Room’s copy a browse when I lived in St. Salvator’s. (Its Sunday edition, Scotland on Sunday is worth buying for Gerald Warner alone).

Here are a few bits and pieces clipped from the Scotsman for your perusal:

‘Undampened spirits take the party indoors‘ / Lumsden Club garden party moved indoors on account of the rain. (I didn’t go).

‘High jinks and low cuts at Kate Kennedy’s‘ / This covered the Kate Kennedy Procession dinner which takes place at the Old Course Hotel on the evening following the procession. This particular year I was in attendance myself and recall commiserating with Michelle Romero, that charming daughter of Venezuela, about the troubled state of her native land. I was their with our favorite Dane, Sofie von Hauch, and my flatmate, a member of the KK who wishes to remain unnamed on this site. Will Lyons couldn’t make the dinner himself, so he sent ‘K‘ up instead, accompanied by ‘society photographer Z‘ whom I ran into while we were on our way out.

‘Maltesers set ball rolling for charity‘ / The 2004 Knights of Malta Ball, not covered by this website because it did not exist at the time. It was a good time, especially so because I had three friends over from the States. Yalie Adam Brenner was doing his semester abroad at St Andrews at the time, and fellow Old Thorntonian Clara de Soto popped over from Boston College for the weekend with her good friend Katie Cordtz of Atlanta. The four of us together with Michelle Romero and the aforementioned unnamed flatmate of mine piled into a cab and made the hour’s journey to Edinburgh for the soirée. Poor Adam, though. Towards the latter part of the evening Archie Crichton-Stuart, an exceptionally amusing Edinburgh student, and his friend Ramsay forced Adam to consume the significant remnants of a bottle of house red. It all went down swimmingly, but came back up on the cab ride back to Fife. Freddy McNair, who was recently nearly killed by an incompetent gurkha on a training ground, sat at the table next to ours, I recall. (Also, in the lower right-hand corner of the clipping you can spy the face of our good friend Ricky Demarco peering out from an unrelated article).

Previously: Another Broadsheet Bites the Dust

BACK DOWN TO the Assembly Rooms of Edinburgh for the annual ritual of the Knights of Malta Ball and I am happy to report that, as per usual, a good time was had by all. We had a larger contingent heading down from the Auld Grey Toon than last year (when it was just Fräulein Hesser and myself), consisting of Abigail, Jon Burke, Stefano, Clare Dempsey, and yours truly. After gliding down from Fife via taxicab, we met up with Zygmunt Sikorski-Mazur, Jamie Bogle (sans Joanna, alas), and Gerald Warner at the Opal Lounge, a little past half six, and managed to pack in at least a round of drinks before heading across George Street to the Assembly Rooms (depicted in the engraving below).

Having dropped off our coats and such, we swept up the staircase to the Ballroom for some champagne before dinner. After mulling about and conversing for a while we bumped into the Cardinal Archbishop of St Andrews himself, H.E. Keith Patrick O’Brien, himself a Grand Cross Conventual Chaplain to the Order of Malta. We apologised for not maintaining his senior cathedral in St Andrews in the same state as his junior one in Edinburgh, but I did thank him profusely for allowing us an indult mass at Ravelston. (more…)

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