Thomas the 7th Earl of Elgin’s collection of marbles and other artefacts now scattered around the globe. The specious arguments used as justification for the removal of the Parthenon and other Marbles/relics by Thomas the 7th Earl of Elgin at the beginning of the 19 century have long been discredited. The Earl’s dodgy Firman<sic>, lying…
Early days in Dunfermline, family and friends. Born into a working-class family in Dunfermline on 25th November 1835 Andrew Carnegie was the son of William Carnegie, a hand-loom weaver, and Margaret Morrison. Andrew Carnegie was something of an enigma. Andrew Carnegie’s father William was a free-thinker and known for his radical views which were published…
1816 – 2016 To mark the bi-centenary of the sale of the so-called ‘Elgin Marbles’ to parliament in 1816, I decided to review my 2004 entry and update it with new information and arguments that I feel were not adequately covered in my 2004, ‘Elgin Cheated at Marbles’ blog. At the moment it looks as…
Published on: Jul 6, 2018 Piper Alpha: To mark the 30th anniversary of the Piper Alpha disaster I felt I needed to write something about it, as, like so many in Scotland, my working life and to some extent my social life was influenced by the North Sea oil industry in general and that oil…
Published on: May 7, 2024 at 07:52 Andrew Carnegie Mass Murderer? The above headline poses a question that might seem far-fetched, but it is plausible based on recorded facts, which is more than can be said of the rose-tinted, dewy-eyed, self-aggrandising rubbish accepted as fact in Carnegie’s autobiography. Perhaps what’s more revealing is something that…
Published on: Dec 22, 2021 1850 Irish Navvy Riot or Dunfermline Ethnic Cleansing? Part One: What the papers said. Having lived almost all of my life in the Burgh of Dunfermline I was surprised and shocked to read an online article from The “Wild Geese” website by Kieron Punch entitled “Paddy the Navvy”, which told…
Published on: Jul 17, 2021 In the previous blog I summarised my experiences of freemasonry during my working life ‘on the tools’, as being less than positive. But they didn’t dominate my thinking, as there were more good guys (Masons included) than there were bad/opportunistic Masons, and largely it seemed the good guys were non-Masons,…
Falling In Love with Nicola! How my love affair with Nicola began. My one-way love affair with Nicola Sturgeon, or Mrs. Murrell as she was later to become, started on the stormy evening of the 8th of February 2006. It was the last night of campaigning before the vote in the Dunfermline by election…
If Burns lived today would he have voted for Brexit? Prior to the referendum on Scottish independence in 2014 many newspaper articles posed the question: “How would Robert Burns have voted?” So as we approach the anniversary of The Bard’s birth I thought it would be a good idea to pose the same question…
Was Israel created in Edinburgh……by candlelight? As today is the 100th anniversary of the signing of the Balfour Declaration or Balfour Letter written by the then Conservative Foreign Secretary, Arthur Balfour, 1st Earl of Balfour, it seems appropriate that we take a look at the background to his Magnum opus. But first a look at…
William, George, Billy & Scotch Myths re the Cullen Report on Dunblane This blog deals mainly with my concerns about the treatment of “Billy” (William Burns) by “William”, the then law lord William Douglas Cullen. But first some clarification regarding Baron George Robertson of Port Ellen & Baron Cullen of Whitekirk in connection with the…
This NOTE is pinned inside a Camphorwood Chest at my home in Dunfermline. For some years now I had been meaning to write a note about the purchase of this camphorwood linen chest and pin it inside, but it was only when Russell Darnley, an Australian author, sent me an audio book of his…
I confess that for some time I had a soft-spot for the lassie from East Lothian. I have long had a certain amount of sympathy for Mary Nisbet (18 April 1778 – 9 July 1855), unlike my feelings for her husband, father and friend Philip Hunt. Mary married an impoverished land-owning aristocrat on the opposite,…
THE FOUR EDITIONS OF THE ‘MEMORANDUM ON THE EARL OF ELGIN’S PURSUITS IN GREECE’ In 2002, my dormant and somewhat uninformed interest in the so called ‘Elgin Marbles’ was awakened by the writings of Professor Epaminondas Vranopoulos, who in turn was interested and angered by an anonymous Memorandum used to support Elgin’s bid to sell…
Being aware of the history of Celtic by having been involved with the Celtic Wiki for some years I had the great pleasure of attending my first Celtic Graves event on Saturday 16th August, 2014 at Kilsyth. Then the Celtic Graves paid tribute to the late great Jimmy Quinn tribute with Fergus McCann also being…
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