Love Scotland podcast – 2025 season

Transcript

Six speakers: male voiceover [MV]; Jackie Bird [JB]; Tom Allen [TA]; female voiceover [FV]; Gareth Cole [GC]; David Philip [DP]

[MV]
Love Scotland, brought to you from the National Trust for Scotland; presented by Jackie Bird.

[JB]
Hello and welcome back to the island of Canna. Last time on Love Scotland, we talked about the island’s history and the legacy of its previous owners – Gaelic scholars John Lorne Campbell and Margaret Fay Shaw – who amassed a huge archive of songs, stories and poetry, and whose house and collections have been restored by the Trust.

Today though, I’m on a boat, as you can probably hear, and we’re going to revel in this island’s wildlife and landscape. It’s just over 4 miles long and about a mile wide. Canna is a mix of ancient volcanic cliffs, which are soaring above me here, and rolling green meadows when we head inland. In spring and summer, the land erupts in wildflowers. 

But it’s in the air, through the cries across the cliffs, that Canna reveals its true magic: the seabirds. And that’s why I’m making my way along this spectacular coastline. But I’m not alone. Today I’m joined by the ranger here, Tom Allen. Tom, you’re going to be my companion for a great big show-and-tell! You’ve not been here for long on Canna. You’re fairly new?

[TA]
Yeah, I’ve been on Canna now for over a year. I’m the only ranger on the island. I was looking at the tysties going past, the black guillemots. They’re unusual to see this close into the land. 

[JB]
I’m chatting to you, but you’re not looking at me! Understandably, your eyes are darting around looking at the wealth of seabirds.

[TA]
It’s unusual to see. We’ve got about 5 tysties all flying around us here, so I was just slightly distracted there. But yes, I’ve been on the island now for over a year and loving every minute of it. It’s such a good and diverse role. 

[JB]
How would you describe the ecological character here, and what makes it different from other Hebridean islands?

[TA]
Canna is just so unique in terms of its wildlife and quantity of wildlife. We’ve got white-tailed sea eagles all the way to corncrakes. We’ve also got loads of seabirds, so we’re heading out now to probably one of the biggest seabird colonies on the island. We’ve also got a variety of wildlife such as moth species and butterflies – some of which are renowned for being here and only here on the island. And that’s the reason why we’ve got the Site of Special Scientific Interest for most of the island – it’s to do with its moth assemblage. 

We’ve also got plants and everything – you name it, we’ve got it! For such a small island, it’s got so much to see … and so much more to find as well.

[JB]
Well, it’s absolutely beautiful and we couldn’t have picked a better day to be here. I’m looking forward to seeing especially the puffins. So, let’s steam on round the headland and we’ll pick up later.

[gentle music plays]

Well, Tom, we’ve crept towards the cliffs. We’re about 15 metres from the cliffs and we are not alone, as we can hear.

[TA]
No, we’re not alone. We’ve got quite a lot of different variety of birds here we can see. We’ve got the calls of the guillemots just straight in front of us that are on the basalt columns. 

[JB]
The basalt columns are very redolent of Staffa, but on a small scale. 

[TA]
It is. The whole of the island is made of basalt columns. Geologists believe the fact that, even though we have volcanoes in the nearby vicinity like Rum or Skye, actually Canna’s lava form of basalt columns would have originally come from a Mull volcano. So, that’s the reason why you have the similar characteristics here, as the likes of that on Staffa. But these terraces, these little steps make the perfect habitat for the seabirds and good nesting habitats.

[JB]
Right, so back to our companions. My goodness, where do you begin?

[TA]
Well, we’ve got all the burrows here. The cliffs are mightily high, but all the grass verges, you’ll just find the puffins coming in and out.

[JB]
How high are the cliffs that loom above us?

[TA]
About 300 metres high, quite spectacularly high. If you come around the other side of Canna you get this nice slope up – and this is just a sheer drop.

All these puffins are in the burrows here; you can see them in the primroses. We did a count 2 weeks ago as part of the NTS seabirds monitoring team. We’ve got about 3,000 breeding puffins. The numbers will increase a little bit with the non-breeders later on in the year, but this is such a spectacular area to see.

And then just tucked around from the guillemots, you’ve got the kittiwakes. But when we go further around in the boat, we’ll get to the biggest kittiwake colony on the island. We’ve got seabirds all the way around, but the north coast of Canna is absolutely incredible.

[JB]
You mentioned monitoring. This is an important monitoring point, isn’t it?

[TA]
It is, yes. These seabirds do get monitored by the Highland Ringing Group and Bob Swann’s team. Bob Swann has been surveying seabirds on Canna for …

[JB]
The aptly named Bob Swann!

[TA]
Yes! He’s been surveying seabirds on Canna for the last 70 years, so his knowledge about the island is absolutely incredible.

[JB]
Didn’t they have some bad news recently that they hadn’t seen the birdlife here in a worse state?

[TA]
Yes. In last year’s monitoring they found especially the shag colony, which is a bit further around the coast here, had a bit of a terrible year. We’re not too sure what the cause was. We have seen the seabirds increasing. The puffins have definitely increased over the last five years. So, it’s just a really ‘wait and see’ what’s going to happen this year. But yeah, it was a shag colony that was seen to be the worst hit.

[JB]
There’s a little row of … what are those? Guillemots? They’re like a welcoming committee on a ledge! There must be … how many of them there for us?

[TA]
There’s about 50 there. It’s quite a nice location for them. At the end of the year, once the guillemots have had their chicks, they actually jump off the cliffs. It’s part of their way to get into the sea. From this area where they are, that’s quite a nice jumping off point to hit the water and not hit the rocks below. 

That’s one of your favourite birds also just in the sea there – there’s an oystercatcher just feeding in the shoreline.

[JB]
I love an oystercatcher. How many species are there just at this point?

[TA]
So, we’ve got guillemots, we’ve got black guillemots just behind us, we’ve got puffins, we’ve also got shags going into the caves, we’ve got kittiwakes – and just having a look up as well because this is a site where we might have a chance of seeing a white-tailed sea eagle.

[JB]
Talking of the guillemots, are these returning guillemots? Do they come back to this particular spot year in, year out?

[TA]
The theory suggests they do. Bird behaviour is always something that I always question, just to see if they actually do. But it’s really hard to say, because without trying to get the rings on the birds, it’s very hard to say if they are or not.

[JB]
Well, let me tell you something that you may not or may already know. Do you know that 10 years ago a guillemot was found here – and it was ringed – and it was 38 years old? 

[TA]
It’s incredible. The longevity of these birds is simply incredible. The Manx shearwater, another seabird we have on the island (you won’t find it during the day because it’s a night-flying species), they’ve potentially got an age of 78 years. Incredible.

[JB]
That’s astonishing. You mentioned the white-tailed sea eagle; is it likely we’ll see one?

[TA]
It’s quite likely. Generally, at this time of the day, they are using this cliff line. There’s potentially an old nest site just further along the coast here. We’ve not seen a bird on the nest this year, but potentially we might have a chance of seeing them about.

Most boat tours do come around the north cliffs to see the seabirds because, well, why wouldn’t you? Because of the variety of birds you get here. And most times they do find the birds, the sea eagles out here. 

[JB]
Why is Canna such a magnet for seabirds? Is it the location that it’s a good stopping-off place before you hit the mainland or what?

[TA]
Yeah, it’s such a good location. There’s so much habitat space: all these columns, the grassy verges – you’ve got the space to have the birds here. But it’s also the food source. It’s the marine life around the area. And I think that’s also what attracts them, and it’s also sheltered here. If it’s blowing from the west, it’s a really sheltered location. I think it’s also where it’s situated in terms of the islands around us really. 

[JB]
There aren’t many Scottish island locations where you can enjoy this sort of stillness. I mean, there is hardly a breath of wind.

[TA]
Yeah, this is definitely a spot where it’s just incredible to be. And it’s nice when there’s no wind just to hear all the seabirds, really. 

[JB]
So, those are the good things about Canna in terms of habitat. What are the biggest challenges the birds face?

[TA]
I think the biggest challenge again is the weather; I think the changing weather. We’ve seen wetter summers, a bit more stormier. I think that has an impact. I think also the food sources across the islands – the marine life is constantly changing. We just had the ban in the sandeel population around the islands. Last year the Scottish Government banned fishing for sandeels around the coast of the islands. So, we’re hoping we’ll see a difference this year in terms of species having a good successful breeding season.

[JB]
And apart from this fantastic birdlife, what about the rest of the island? What about the general wildlife population? What have we got there?

[TA]
We’ve got the likes of corncrake. Last year we had recorded 12 calling males, which is a big increase from the 8 we’ve previously been seeing – and that’s due to the work of the farm team on the island in conservation grazing.

[JB]
What is conservation grazing?

[TA]
Conservation grazing is managing habitats in a certain way depending on the livestock you have. So, for corncrakes, we’ll leave areas of fields that then will not be grazed from March all the way through until September. And that’ll allow the rich grasses to grow. That’ll create the early cover for the corncrake, which is their preferred habitat. We’ve got about 6 different areas we do that on the island. And last year we had 4 birds calling in one field, which is pretty unheard of really.

[JB]
And the corncrakes were at great risk.

[TA]
I’d say they’re still at risk everywhere else. Obviously, the changing farming practices across the whole of the UK is what forced the corncrakes into the crofting habitats. But we’re seeing a trend here that they’re increasing and hopefully that trend will continually increase.

[JB]
So, what about the other wildlife?

[TA]
Other wildlife, we’ve got Manx shearwater, as mentioned previously, another great seabird. We’re looking this year at starting a project for releasing Manx shearwater onto the island. They were here in the 70s, but due to the rats on the island – shouldn’t have rats on a Scottish island as it’s a big biosecurity risk – we saw the seabirds plummet as a result. We did the rat eradication back in the early 2000s, but we didn’t see the Manx shearwaters increase. 

But this year, we’re looking to translocate them from Rum chicks. No harm to the parents or the chick. Bring them to Canna and they do this magical thing called stargazing. They come out of the burrows at night and they look at the sky and they also then work out where to come back to. They also feel Canna in the soil and they know where to come back to, to breed. And I think it’s really important given the fact that Canna is currently trying to apply for the Dark Sky status. So, we’re going to apply for a Dark Sky Sanctuary, similar to Rum. And it’s just because the dark skies here are absolutely incredible. And that would also benefit the Manx shearwaters, so hopefully that will increase that bird’s population.

We’ve got other species, again SSSI for Special Site of Scientific Interest, and that’s for the moth assemblage.

[JB]
Now, this is something that John Lorne Campbell, who lived here and who gave his island to the Trust, he collected moths, didn’t he?

[TA]
He did. He did a lot of work on the island, improving habitats, creating habitats for these species. And during his recording of species, he found five key species, such as the belted beauty, the grey, slender-striped rufous, just to name a few. And as a result of finding them, they’re only found here and a few other sites. So, finding them means we have to manage the habitats for them, and they’re currently going up. This year we’ve just started the belted beauty monitoring, and we found 3 males, 3 females. We’ve got another count in two weeks’ time, just to finish off the numbers. You never know, I might get a count out tonight with this nice weather.

[JB]
What bowls over visitors here?

[TA]
Well, I think it’s just the scenery. I think it’s the changing scenery. One minute is different from the next. We have the sunny weather, we have the winds, the rain. Most of our visitors come by boat, and they come and this is what they first see when they come to Canna. We get trips from Mallaig, we get trips from Skye, and this is the first thing they see – it’s the towering cliffs, it’s the striking atmosphere and it’s the puffins flying around. 

[JB]
And the puffin that wants to know what we’re doing! It’s flying close to the boat to see what we’re up to.

I think it’s the fact that Canna is so unspoilt. It’s just the right size to have such a healthy array of wildlife, isn’t it? 

[TA]
It is; it’s simply a gem. I think out of the Small Isles, Canna is the least visited out of the different islands, but actually Canna’s probably … oh, the puffin is right coming in close here. Hello! I see it. 

Yeah, I think Canna’s just got such a variety of archaeological interests, wildlife interests, and I think it’s … oh, there’s a shag just flying past. It’s just simply incredible for the size of the island. And yeah, I highly recommend a visit to the island really.

[JB]
Tom, that’s fantastic. No wonder you love this place. 

[TA]
Thank you. 

[FV]
Said she wanted to make waves this year. Hey, that’s my wee sister, ever the rebel. So, I said right, we’re off to St Abb’s Head. Plenty of waves there. Those clifftop views. Talk about a natural high. Took our breath away.

Then she pipes up, let’s sign up to support this place. A rebel with a cause, for once.

[MV]
Since 1931, the National Trust for Scotland, a charity supported by you, has been looking after Scotland’s treasured places so we can all share in them. Support us at nts.org.uk

[GC]
OK, I hope you enjoyed your sandwiches. We’ve got some cakes for you now. We’ve got beetroot & chocolate and date & walnut.

[JB]
Thank you! Delicious. Thank you very much. 

[GC]
I’m Gareth Cole. I’m the owner and chef of Café Canna on the Isle of Canna.

[JB]
Gareth, you’ve been here for 8 years on Canna. Does that mean you’re no longer an incomer? Or do you have to add a zero to 8 to not be an incomer?!

[GC]
Oh, I don’t know, I think I’m one of the longest-serving incomers to the island, but it’s actually a very welcoming community. Right from the start, it’s a really beautiful place to move to.

[JB]
Well, to come to an island that’s about 4 and a bit miles long with 18 residents and find a beautiful restaurant – you must be one of the most remote restaurants in the UK.

[GC]
Yeah, I think we really are. I mean, we’re 3–4 hours’ boat ride from the mainland; we don’t get deliveries too often. Definitely one of the challenges of the place.

[JB]
You’re doing a roaring trade today. Are people surprised when they stumble across you?

[GC]
Yeah, I think they are. I always think I’m one of the luckiest restaurant owners in the world. I think when people come to the island, they’ve travelled from quite far and they come here and they’re like, ‘wow, there’s like a restaurant here!’ And then they’re like, ‘wow, it’s licensed!’ And, they’re actually doing some decent food.

So, people are delighted before they even get their food. And it’s a privilege to be in that situation. 

[JB]
We are yards from the water and a beautiful bay. You have your yacht moored just in the middle of that bay. It’s not exactly the stresses and strains of Gordon Ramsay, is it? There’s not a lot of shouting going on in your kitchen, is there!

[GC]
Well, we do get tremendously busy in the summertime and it’s a tiny little place. We’ve only got 18 seats inside. So, we’re very, very busy. And I don’t know, I guess Gordon Ramsay doesn’t have to deal with the sort of calamity that comes with this remote location, either!

[JB]
OK, back that up! What are the calamities?

[GC]
Oh, well, I mean, we only get deliveries once a week. So, if there’s bad weather on that day, then we miss those deliveries and have to deal with it. One of the reasons that we brew our own beer is that we ran out of beer behind the bar. We’ve had storms that have washed our tables away. Our dishwasher’s broken down, so we had to wash dishes by hand for months. You know, stuff like that. It’s just very difficult to get help here.

[JB]
But when you do get supplies and you get the home-grown supplies, the chef basically has to take 3 great leaps and he’s practically in the sea to get it from whoever’s caught it! What do you use that’s grown locally and caught locally?

[GC]
Well, just about everything, really. One of the things that I’m most proud of about this place is we can stand outside the kitchen door as we’re sitting now and see almost everything that goes into the menu. We can see the cattle, we can see the pots where the seafood’s landed from, see the shore where the seaweed comes from, and then over the wall in Canna House and the community polytunnel behind us is where the vegetables come from. So really, just about everything comes from the island.

[JB]
You do a lot of foraging, including for the seaweed.

[GC]
Yeah. Incredible ingredients out here and one of the most difficult things of all to source on this island is fresh vegetables, leafy greens, that kind of thing. So that’s what made me start to look towards the sea and the kelp and the seaweed that’s all around – it’s a replacement for those vegetables.

[JB]
You use gorse, those ubiquitous bushes that we don’t know what to do with. What do you do with gorse and what does it taste like?

[GC]
Oh, it’s my favourite smell of all time. It’s absolutely gorgeous. And it’s a sort of labour of love. It’s a lot of picking tiny little petals from a very thorny bush. But yeah, right now on the menu is a creme brûlée – we make syrup from the petals and then turn that into a creme brûlée. 

[JB]
A gorse creme brûlée! You’ve even written a book about Café Canna, prompted by the questions you get from people who come here. Is that because of the local produce?

[GC]
Yeah, I think people are really interested in what we’re doing. When we first started putting seaweed on the menu, I just did it out of interest, a bit of a laugh, maybe even. I didn’t expect it to go as far as it has. But, that same dish is still our most popular now, and it’s prompted a lot of questions tableside from our diners.

It’s just something we really love; we really love talking people through how they deal with seafood and where we get our produce from and how we forage for it. And so really, that’s where the book came from.

[JB]
It’s a great cookbook. Apart from the recipes, you’ve got things like the questions you’re asked from diners and your own experiences. Never joint a rabbit with a hangover. Don’t listen to music whilst picking crab. I take it that comes from hard personal experience?

[GC]
I pick a lot of crabs. Yeah, definitely! 

[JB]
But don’t listen to music? 

[GC]
Well, I think it’s good advice. One of the most important things when picking a crab is not to get any shell in the picked crab. And so we use big metal bowls, and you can hear the ting of a shell when you put the white meat in if it’s got anything attached to it. And so you don’t want anything that’s going to drown out that noise, I suppose.

[JB]
Right, so basically it’s a case of concentrate. 

[GC]
Yeah, it is. It’s a shame because it’s kind of a mindless activity and it would be quite nice to listen to some music. But it’s important, really important. 

[JB]
And the rabbit with a hangover, I think that’s self-explanatory! Now, as I say, the restaurant is full just now and you’re actually having to turn people away, but you work very hard during the summer. What happens in the winter?

[GC]
Well, it’s the time to experiment with dishes, and it’s also the time to socialise with the rest of the island. Everyone’s very busy during the summer.

[JB]
Because you’re one of the 18 residents.

[GC]
Yeah, yeah, we are indeed. We close up in about October and it’s really time to … that’s where the brewery came from. It’s that time to experiment and see what we can do. And the same with the book, I wrote that over the winter. And so, yeah, it’s nice to see everyone after the busyness of the summer.

[JB]
And in terms of sustaining the population here, is that a perpetual challenge?

[GC]
Well, we’ve got two children, so we’re doing our bit! 

[JB]
(laughing) I didn’t mean you personally, but thank you for being so candid! 

[GC]
It’s obviously a very important thing for the island. We are in the process of building some new houses so that we can increase the population. It’s really important.

[JB]
I’ll let you get back into the kitchen, Gareth. Thank you very much.

[GC]
Oh, lovely to speak to you. Thank you.

[gentle music plays]

[JB]
Well, we’re still waterbound, very happy to say the sun is still shining. It’s actually a little bit warm here, Tom.

[TA]
It is. It’s actually quite nice in the weather today.

[JB]
So, where have we moved from? We were in the north side of the island.

[TA]
Yeah, so we’re just slowly working this way, back east. We’re going to head back round to the harbour in a second, but this is just an area we know as the Sheep and Trousers Rock. 

[JB]
The Sheep and Trousers Rock?

[TA]
Yes! Some rock formations just behind you, one of them is meant to look like a sheep and the other one looks like a pair of trousers. It’s quite exciting.

[JB]
I shall wait to see. Are there particular times of year that the island really comes alive?

[TA]
I think actually your visit this week is actually when the island has come alive. Yes, early May. We’ve just had the first cuckoos coming back, the first corncrake. We’ve had quite a few warblers such as the sedge warbler, and we’ve had passing waders such as the black-tailed godwit. In the last week it’s really picked up and the seabirds are now calling, looking higher in numbers. So I think, this time of year, it’s certainly the time when the island comes alive again.

[JB]
And we’ve got a few residents here, but when the tourist season starts, a few visitors – how do they interact? What effect do they have on the wildlife here?

[TA]
I think mostly, on par, the visitors are really respectful to the islands. We do have some areas which we have signs up saying it’s a sensitive breeding area and stick to the footpaths – and I believe most of the time people do that. We have a lot of wild campers, and they do tidy up after themselves. Generally, on the whole, the visitors here are really respectful, and the wildlife is benefitting as a result.

[JB]
And if anyone was coming here for the first time, what would you advise them to do? What’s the best way to get the very best out of the island?

[TA]
Come for longer than you expect. People generally come to the island for three days. You could be here for a month without seeing everything, with all the archaeological features. So, pick a good week and just get involved. Ask the ranger, ask myself – I’ve got an office near the pier – about what’s happening, what’s the wildlife? What can you see? And just do your research and take a moment to just stand on a cliff edge and look at the seabirds and hear the waders around us and the seabirds. And yeah, just take a moment just to appreciate everything really. 

[JB]
That was right on cue, wasn’t it? Thank you very much. Thank you, Tom.

[gentle music plays]

Well, we’re just waiting for the boats to whisk us away from our island paradise. And one of the first faces and the last face that people see or hear when they leave Canna is the harbourmaster, David Philip. He’s with me now. David, hello.

[DP]
Hello.

[JB]
You’re also new to Canna; you’ve been here since October. What does a harbourmaster do on an island as small as this?

[DP]
Day-to-day, my main focus is the logistics of everything coming on and off the island. The ferry is the main focus, of course, but also other boats that come and go. We have fishing boats, cargo vessels – and also all of the supplies, things like diesel and gas and everything. So, I’m in charge of the ordering of those and making sure that everything, logistics-wise, runs smoothly.

[JB]
How often does the ferry service run here?

[DP]
It’s got 2 timetables. The summer is very different to the winter. Now we’re in the summer, it’s pretty much every day apart from Tuesday and Thursday, and on Saturdays it has two ferries on the same day, so fairly regularly. In the winter, it’s very different. In the winter we only have a ferry on Tuesday, a ferry on Thursday and one on Sunday – so only three in the week.

[JB]
I was expecting there to be yachts in high season of summer. I didn’t know that cruise ships also came here. It must be an invasion! How many passengers come off?

[DP]
The biggest we like to take is about 250 passengers. T

[JB]
Or the island sinks. 

[DP]
Oh, I mean, yeah, we haven’t had any of those size yet so far. The ones I was just able to catch the ones from last year and they were about 50 passengers, so a bit more manageable. But yes, it’s definitely a big deal when the cruise ships of that size turn up, and we’ve got to make sure everyone’s in the know and organised because they do tend to take over, as I’ve heard.

[JB]
And in terms of island life here, you probably have to buy in just about everything.

[DP]
Yeah, our main go-to is the Co-op in Mallaig. 

[JB]
They must do a roaring trade. 

[DP]
Oh yes, yes, I think they do very well. But most people tend to stock up every chance they get when they’re off the island. You may often see people coming back with bags of tins and everything they can – dry goods and everything they can get their hands on – to tide them over for as long as they can.

[JB]
Did you have to think long and hard about coming across to such an isolated place and living here?

[DP]
It was definitely something that I considered. I actually grew up fairly nearby, near Fort William on a farm, and we were actually very isolated there to begin with because we were about halfway between two villages; about 6 miles was the next house from ours. So, in many ways actually, coming to Canna was more sociable than I had growing up because there’s actually … you know, you walk down the road to work and I always bump into someone and have a chat. But it was definitely a consideration, the island aspect of things.

[JB]
Do you have to be very Zen-like to live in an island?

[DP]
I think so. I think it’s just a different sort of mode of operation. Island time is kind of its own thing, and you’ve got to deal with things as and when the weather allows, as it works, rather than adhering to a stricter schedule that you might get with a similar job on the mainland. You know, island time is its own thing. And the joke on Canna is that no one knows what day it is. It doesn’t really matter. It’s just whatever is happening that day, we deal with it as it comes.

[JB]
Well, I have to ask about when the weather isn’t good, because today is glorious. You’ve actually got a bit of a reddening. It’s warm. There’s warmth in this sun, and there’s not a cloud in the sky. When the rain is horizontal and it’s dark at 3.30, that must take a bit of resilience.

[DP]
Absolutely, absolutely. It is definitely something that, if you’re not used to, can be quite tough. It’s part of the reason why I thought it was a good idea to actually start for the winter first to see how it was. But as I said, I’m fairly used to it, having grown up in this part of the world. And I just embrace the idea of being able to hunker down with a nice fire and get cozy.

And yeah, so it has its upsides as well, but it is definitely something that if you’re not used to, can be quite difficult.

[JB]
And as I said, you are the first face often that people see and the last face when they leave here. When you chat to visitors, what are the memories? What are the outstanding memories that they take with them?

[DP]
I think people are always with just the scenery. They’re always astonished by the green. Often people say we’re such a green island, and often times they are quite bemused by how do you all live here? How do you get your food and everything? But yeah, I think they’re quite enchanted with the small little community here and just the scenery, the cliffs and the birds as well. We get a lot of comments about the birds, the puffins in particular.

[JB]
Well, I hope this is the start of a long career for you here, David.

[DP]
Well, thank you very much. 

[JB]
Thanks for chatting.

[gentle music plays]

[JB]
I’m sitting in the grass just overlooking a beautiful horseshoe bay, not far from the harbour, just about to leave Canna, this tiny dot of land in the ocean. But my goodness, what an impression it leaves. Whether it’s the sound of those seabirds, the wide-open skies or simply just a sense of deep peace, there is something special about visiting this place. The feeling that you’ve been allowed for a moment to be part of something much older and much bigger. 

The National Trust of Scotland has looked after Canna since 1981. That’s a blink of an eye in its history. But we’re able to continue to keep it special as a result of your membership and your donations. We’ll be back with more wild places and tales from history very soon. But for now, from this jewel in the Inner Hebrides, goodbye.

[soft music plays]

The National Trust for Scotland cares for our heritage, and that heritage includes seabirds and other wildlife that shelter, breed and feed at our places, including Canna. Our rangers and other experts care for our wild birds year-round, and they couldn’t do it without you. If you’re interested in learning more, you could support our Save Our Seabirds campaign. Details are on our website nts.org.uk and on our show notes of this episode. Thank you.

[MV]
Love Scotland is brought to you by Think and Demus Productions, on behalf of the National Trust for Scotland; presented by Jackie Bird. For show notes and more information, go to nts.org.uk and don’t forget to like, subscribe, review and share.

Transcript

Nine speakers: male voiceover [MV]; Jackie Bird [JB]; Clea Warner [CW]; Karen Clark [KC]; archive recording of John Campbell [JC]; second male voiceover [MV2]; Hugh Cheape [HC]; archive recording of Margaret Fay Shaw [MFS]; Nathan Cridland [NC]

[MV]
Love Scotland, brought to you from the National Trust for Scotland; presented by Jackie Bird.

[piano music plays]

[JB]
Off the rugged west coast of Scotland lies the small island of Canna, a place of wild beauty and ancient stories. At the heart of this island stands Canna House, once home to John Lorne Campbell and his wife, Margaret Fay Shaw. The couple’s backgrounds and their personalities were very different, but their partnership worked – and their shared passion for Gaelic language and tradition shaped what was to become their life’s mission.

For much of the 20th century, they didn’t just document a disappearing world; they lived it. They recorded its music, listened to its stories and fought to preserve its heritage.

[violin music plays]

It’s about 10.30 in the morning. It’s an incredible day. It’s very still; there’s a cloudless sky; azure-blue, glittering sea – and we are just about to dock in the harbour of this most westerly of the Small Isles of the Inner Hebrides. We left Mallaig about an hour and a half ago. We saw seabirds galore and even a small whale on the way. And if this is just the start, then I can’t wait to spend the day on Canna.

Thank you very much; I’ll mind the gap! Thank you! Thanks, Ronald.

Well, here we are. I think we’ve got the harbour to ourselves. Canna, just over 4 miles long and about a mile wide, with a population of, I think, 18 permanent residents. It’s early May and the island is getting ready for the tourist season, when visitors descend here to enjoy the wildlife and the wonderful scenery. And it’s not looking too bad at the moment.

Although the history of Canna and its adjoining island Sanday, which I can just see there and its little bridge, goes back thousands of years, I’m heading inland to focus on more recent times. 

[sound of footsteps]

I’m making the short journey to Canna House, which has been repaired and conserved – alongside its collections – by the National Trust for Scotland. And with me is the Trust boss up here: Regional Director for the Highlands & Islands, Clea Warner. 

Clea, your job title! You look after 19 islands, 6 National Nature Reserves. Your brief includes Culloden, Glencoe, Glenfinnan Monument. You’re quite busy!

[CW]
I’m quite busy but also incredibly lucky. I am slightly biased, but I do firmly believe that it’s the best patch.

[JB]
Well, I think you may have something there! You ended up in a previous life looking after Stonehenge. Now, that’s appropriate because we’re focusing on Canna House and I feel that I’m ignoring a few thousand years of history on this island. Is that right?

[CW]
That you are, yes. There’s been traces of settlement here on Canna since the Neolithic times, to about 3000 BC.

[JB]
And what evidence is there? Is anything still left?

[CW]
Yes, there is. There’s lots for people to come and be able to explore for themselves. There’s traces of prehistoric graves. There’s one of the most extensive landscapes and hut circles and field systems in the whole of the Hebrides. Canna is quite unique. I think a lot of that comes from the fact that it’s a safe anchorage and has been for many centuries – that meant that people always visited here by boat.

[JB]
And what about the numbers of people who come here as tourists in the summer months? That must be considerable.

[CW]
It is, but we like to practise slow tourism here on Canna. As you can see, it’s so peaceful and beautiful. In numbers, there’s probably about 10,000 people a year come and visit this beautiful and quietly relaxing place.

[JB]
Well, it’s a long way to go, but it’s certainly worth it and I’m just about to get my first look at Canna House. Clea, thank you.

[CW]
Enjoy!

[sound of footsteps and a knock on a door]

[JB]
Hello, good day. We’ve come to visit Canna House.

[KC]
I’m Karen Clark and I’m the manager at Canna House. Come on in.

[JB]
It sounds like we’re not the first! There’s a bit of a party going on.

[KC]
Well, there is. It’s to give you a little bit of atmosphere of how the house would be in, I would say, the peak years for the Campbells when all the entertaining and all the creative friends came here.

[JB]
What are we hearing?

[KC]
At the moment you’re hearing one of their pets, of which they had many. A little dog is barking in the background. You’ve got Margaret, I would think, or one of her friends playing piano in the sitting room and just a general chatter that they had with the many, many guests that came here.

[JB]
Many guests … and many cats, I read. How many cats?

[KC]
Oh, they had loads. Their famous one, of course, was Pooni. There’s a fantastic picture of Pooni draped across that Steinway piano. And in fact, they did breed Siamese cats and there’s a cupboard upstairs that you can actually – I’m just going to take this down so we can chat – there’s a cupboard upstairs which was like a press, and they ended up fitting a cat flap to it, and the cats went in there and had their kittens. And part of the experience, if you listen when you’re upstairs, is you’ll hear the purring and the squeak of the kittens, which is lovely.

[recording of a loud miaow and someone saying ‘Pooni’]

[JB]
We’ve come into what is the beautiful stone-built villa. 

[KC]
The story we’ve been told is the son of Donald Macneil, who was one of the former owners – his son went to Glasgow with his wife, went to Kelvinbridge in fact, saw the style of houses there and his wife went, ‘Why don’t we live in something like that?’ And that’s why Canna House was built in this style, which was incredibly different to anything else you see around you.

[JB]
So, we’ve come through the hallway. The party has, well, they’ve quietened down a little bit. Where are we now?

[KC]
We’re in the sitting room of the home. Definitely an entertaining spot. 

[JB]
It’s crammed with things. 

[KC]
It’s beautiful, isn’t it? 

[JB]
Cabinets filled with books. There’s a beautiful grand piano there, a harp. 

[KC]
I know, isn’t it fantastic? The story behind this harp is Margaret Fay Shaw, as a young woman, was leaving Pennsylvania and wanted to travel the world. Her Uncle George gave her $100 for essentials, and she promptly spent $75 of that on this harp, when she didn’t even play the harp, which is fantastic! Took it with her when she went to Paris, came to Britain and eventually came to South Uist, where she lived for five years with Peigi and Mairi Macrae.

[JB]
I’m getting the feeling that this isn’t just a house for a visitor to visit and wander around respectfully. This is a visitor experience. You’re trying to convey the characters of the people who lived here.

[KC]
Definitely! On one of the first tours, I actually had a National Trust for Scotland member just say she was blown away by it because it’s so unusual now to actually have a tour where it’s so immersive and you’re taken round for 90 minutes while someone explains the collection, the history of the building, the history of the previous owners.

But I think the lovely thing that I found when I first came here, and visitors find as well, it feels like a home. It’s very welcoming, it’s very relaxing and there’s just … your eyes move around this collection. It was a lifetime of collecting and it’s just incredible to see.

[JB]
Let’s move into another room – and on the way, tell me everything here was painstakingly photographed, ordered and put back exactly where it was.

[KC]
It’s incredible what was done here.

[JB]
We’re in a very, very fancy dining room. It’s got beautiful wallpaper, lovely gilt-framed portraits on the wall, and dinner is set. We’re just in time!

[KC]
Yeah, definitely, we are!

[JB]
So, who would be joining them for dinner?

[KC]
Well, they’ve got various friends that are creatives. One of the most well known is probably Compton Mackenzie, the author of Whisky Galore! He was a close friend and confidante of John, and in fact they were going to buy Canna together. We just know, at the last minute, Compton pulled out, and John Lorne Campbell and Margaret Fay Shaw bought the island and the house together, just themselves.

[JB]
And when was that?

[KC]
That was in 1938.

[JB]
Now, John, I know, was well ahead of his time in terms of technology – and you’ve got a room dedicated to that?

[KC]
Yeah, we do. In John’s library is an actual working library, a fantastic collection of books. But we also have his technology, from the first Dictaphone that he had that used wax cylinders. And then we see how, as time progressed, we go on to a Grundig TK30 and we’ve got other more modern recording devices as well.

[JB]
And what sound effects would greet the visitor here? 

[KC]
In this room, when they arrive, we would chat to them about John. We would explain about the state-of-the-art technology that you bought in New York in the ’30s. We’ve actually got one of John Lorne Campbell’s recordings. It’s of another storyteller, a seanchaí, and this time a female one – Annie Johnson from Barra. It’s actually followed by a recording of the voice of John Lorne Campbell explaining what it is as well.

[JC]
This is tape #3. We continue with the copying of Campbell collection of wire recordings onto tape. This is still women singing on Barra, Kerryhill, Castlebay on 5 April 1951.

[JB]
What’s the reaction from visitors when they hear all this, when they’re surrounded by the hundreds and hundreds of books I can see?

[KC]
I think people are just blown away. The collection is extensive, but also just the smell in this room of old books is just fantastic. What I love is, in among the antiques here, you have everyday keepsakes. And the reaction of people who’ll say, ‘I remember growing up that my dad or my grandparent had this recording’; ‘there’s recordings of us somewhere in the family’. I think that’s the thing – people’s individual stories that they’re adding to the house is just beautiful. It’s lovely. 

[JB]
I think the value to Gaelic culture is immense. What about people who come here though, who aren’t familiar with Gaelic culture, who are foreigners or from the Central Belt? What’s the lure for them?

[KC]
It’s seeing this home, the collection, the inside of the house – every surface has something; all tastes are catered for. But I also think as well that Gaelic culture, there’s a resurgence now, not just in Scotland. You get so many different people on Facebook doing all these ‘Learn Gaelic’ things. They want to know what Gaelic sounded like. They want to learn how to speak Gaelic. I have people that follow the conversations or partly follow them; tap their foot along to the music. It’s really lovely to see people really enjoying it.

[Archive Gaelic song recording plays]

[JB]
Well, it’s a lovely house, full of memories and music. It has been beautifully refurbished, and all the items conserved. Hope you have a lovely season, and thank you so much, Karen.

[KC]
You’re very, very welcome. Thank you!

[MV2]
Impressive. For a moment I thought she was talking about me. I meant Falkland Palace, she said with a smile. Of course you did. The art, the architecture – Scotland’s history can really turn your head. So, we signed up to take care of it; keep it looking dapper.

[MV]
Since 1931, the National Trust for Scotland, a charity supported by you, has been looking after Scotland’s treasured places so we can all share in them. Support us at nts.org.uk

[AR]
This is a slow air by Purcell played on the G flute and piano.

[music plays]

[JB]
I’m now in what’s called the Red Room in Canna House, one of the guest rooms often used by this very sociable couple. And I’m with the best person to acquaint us with the two people who lived in this house: Professor Hugh Cheape, a leading historian of Scotland and a very good friend of John and Margaret. 

Hugh, the house, as we know, has been beautifully restored. When you come here now, does it still embody John and Margaret?

[HC]
I first must say it’s an absolutely stunning piece of work because I feel that they have worked so hard to keep so much of the spirit and the style really of the house in every way, and have brought it up to really working condition and accessible to all. But yet with so much of its old appearance and touch – Margaret’s touches particularly. 

It’s very, very exciting. I think every room I’ve been into, I have not yet felt that I was going into a room that I’d never been in before. I felt everyone was entirely, almost exactly as it was when the Campbells were living here and when I used to come here so frequently.

[JB]
When did you first meet them?

[HC]
Well, I met them personally in 1981 when John Lorne had an exhibition in the National Library of Scotland about his work. I met them then, but only very briefly. He wasn’t so well at the time and so I didn’t have any conversation with them particularly.

But I met them seriously in 1992 when I was asked by the President of the National Trust for Scotland, Lord Bute, to give the Campbells a hand in their advancing years, because he heard that I had a knowledge of Gaelic. He happened to be my boss because I worked in the National Museums at the time and he was the Chairman of the Board. So, this was a request I couldn’t refuse, essentially, but I was sufficiently curious to go for it.

And so, I came here then in the summer of 1992 and got drawn in and have never looked back, so to speak. I can’t tell you how many visits I’ve made here. I was a frequent visitor because they were very, very kind and invited me frequently – and I did what I could and tried to make myself useful. I always found it difficult to work too hard because John would always come in and say ‘you’ve been working for far too long; here, you must have a dram!’

[JB]
Oh, I like the sound of him! Let’s try and bring them to life because I’ve done a little bit of research on Margaret and I was drawn to her – this diminutive American who came here as a young woman in the 1920s with a camera and a bicycle. She was a feisty lady, wasn’t she? She was almost a woman ahead of her time.

[HC]
Deeply so. Really a person ahead of her time and a person who never took no for an answer; absolutely determined. 

[MFS]
John Campbell, I said, don’t you play the piano? He said no, I can’t play the piano. I can play any wind instrument. And I felt the nerve or pride of saying you can play a wind instrument, and so he could. I found he had a great knowledge of wind instruments, and a few months later – this was 1934/1935 – we were married in June in Glasgow. And there began a collaboration, you can call it – a Gaelic song collecting and so on.

[HC]
What I liked about the house is that it had the mark of her taste, which I felt was a wonderful, on the one hand, Old-World taste from let’s say colonial America; but at the same time bang up-to-date in the 20th-century art nouveaux and French styles.

And she was a very fine hostess. She had a beautiful house here which she kept in lovely, lovely condition. There’s unusual wallpapers here and the Trust have been very careful to restore those wallpapers and put them back. And in fact, it’s so stunning because I walked into the sitting room, or the drawing room as it might be called, and the upstairs rooms and I thought, oh, the wallpapers, just as I remember! This is absolutely astonishing.

[JB]
Praise indeed!

[HC]
And I was told, ‘well, in fact, we’ve stripped this back’, or ‘we took a print of an old surviving bit of wallpaper and we’ve reproduced it’. So, the ambiance of each room is really as it was. It just looks as though it’s been redecorated in the normal course of events, and in a way that Margaret would have liked and expected.

[MFS]
As I said to the Trust when John gave it to them: you don’t own Canna; you serve it. It’s beyond ownership. It’s a very extraordinary, interesting historically, and archaeology and everything concerned with it. It’s of itself, and it’s been wonderful to live here and to enjoy it. And it’s a perfectly beautiful little island. And it’s been the archaeology and so on, and the Vikings have been here. And my husband has made a splendid book, Canna: The story of an island, which tells all about it.

I love it, but as I say, you don’t own it; you serve it. And I love living on it and I’m very proud of its history and all that.

[JB]
And what about John’s character? Because they had very different personalities. It was a partnership, but it worked.

[HC]
They were certainly different characters and different personalities, but I think essentially they got on. My own feeling was that, in trying to define it and in my relations with them, I felt that his were the words and hers were the music. And that was a beautiful, natural, organic relationship. That’s how it seemed to work on a practical level – but also on a practical level, on a day-to-day basis, they would bark at each other like they’re dogs and cats. They would have a go at each other, and John might retreat upstairs and remain in hiding in the attic for – I won’t say days on end, that’d be an exaggeration – but for a long time. 

Margaret might, for example, have come across somebody in Edinburgh who she took to, or Glasgow or London or Monte Carlo, and invite them back to Canna. And of course, this was for many people a wonderful invitation. And John would be pretty furious about this because he was in the middle of some incredibly detailed piece of scholarship and really wanted to get it done. ‘I’ve got a printer’s deadline; I’ve got to get this finished’. 

So, he would not be pleased. He would retreat upstairs, and they wouldn’t speak for days perhaps. But of course, they made up because they were fundamentally on the same wavelength in every way. There’s a lovely Gaelic expression: ‘air an aon ràmh’ – on the same oar; they were rowing together.

[JB]
John, though, was very much a scholar, as you say, but he was also a pioneer of technology of its day, and that’s why the house is so important, because he was able to make recordings of what was great quality for those days.

[HC]
He came on the scene in a very good time for developing technology. The American system of Ediphone wax recorders was well on the way. They were almost into the next generation of recorders, and he was bang up to date. He would always …

[JB]
So, when are we talking about?

[HC]
Obviously he started recording in the 1930s, but he actually started with an Edison wax cylinder recorder, which was a clockwork machine, which by then was old-fashioned. He was anxious to get the latest machinery. So, he got a recorder in America and then on – I think he changed his Edison machine in the late 30s and got a new machine then – and would constantly update until he went on recording into the 60s.

[Archive Gaelic song recording plays]

[HC]
And what I found very significant was that when he got to the mid-60s, he decided to stop active recording because there were enough people and enough machines around by then for there to be plenty scholars working in the field. But he wanted to ensure that his recorded information was properly edited and made available for everybody. It was his absolutely heartfelt determination that the people should have their voice back, the people of the islands who had had such a bad deal since the previous 100 and 150 years.

[MFS]
He was an excellent Gaelic scholar. In fact, there’s nobody like him today in this country, and he was of an enormous help and sympathy and delight. And today we have in this house a marvellous collection of recordings.

I’ve got a [unclear word] made not only of song but sagas and stories and everything. It’s a very rare and very famous collection in this house, which I’m very proud today we can share; this would have been lost.

[JB]
But in terms of the bigger picture, for someone who has never heard of the couple before and had no idea what valuable work they did in terms of preserving Gaelic culture, in broad brush terms, could you explain that?

[HC]
Well, I hope so. John Lorne had learnt Gaelic at Oxford and in Barra, and he was absolutely captivated by the nature of the language: its antiquity, its importance, the way it had evolved, the learning it drew on from continental Europe and the Middle Ages – all these important strands.

And he felt that he could, with a good education and with a thorough knowledge of Gaelic, bring these strands together to publish them. He was always very intent on publishing his findings because it was his very strong view that the people of the Hebrides had been denied their voice.

So, he did all the recording. But at the same time, he did a huge amount of serious research in the National Library, in the Edinburgh and Glasgow University archives and libraries, and discovered the most amazing things in terms of particularly storytelling and songs. I mean, all the aspects of a living culture.

[Archive Gaelic recording plays]

[JB]
This house was a house full of love, full of respect; two people very different but who completely complemented each other; full of laughter, full of guests whether John wanted them or not, and full of whisky a lot of the time – they were very sociable. It must have been terribly hard when John died and Margaret was left, because John died in 1996 and Margaret stayed in the house and she was very elderly. 

[HC]
I think it was very hard, very hard. But there was a slight counter movement, which I think helped her in some ways or helped her in many ways, I dare to say. 

I found myself trying to proselytise in the universities on behalf of the Campbells and their work. I was worried that they might drop off the radar and people forget about them. And it was, after all, a responsibility of mine to try and promote their work and what they had done. I went around the universities – particularly Glasgow, Edinburgh and Aberdeen – and I asked the professors of Gaelic/Celtic what they might be able to do to help us. And all the universities gave Margaret honorary degrees and she, I think, was thrilled by this because she said, ‘I haven’t even got a school certificate; here I am getting a doctorate!’

[JB]
The story that I love is that she continued to make her way to America occasionally and to the mainland, certainly even in her later years, on the ferry, which can be rough, accompanied by a bottle of bourbon.

[HC]
Yes! Her favourite drinks were bourbon and Wild Turkey. And she said, ‘now, now dearie’ – she called me dearie – ‘What’s your choice? Would you like Wild Turkey or bourbon?’ I said, ‘Oh, Margaret, I’d love some Wild Turkey if you’ve got some!’

[JB]
So, Margaret died at the age of 101?

[HC]
101, yes, in 2004. 

[JB]
And their legacy, if you could sum it up?

[HC]
Well, I think now that the NTS have put their house back together, this is a wonderful legacy in their memory. But of course, their legacy is inspiration, I would like to think – inspiration for people particularly interested in music. So often what people are using in pursuing their enthusiasm for Gaelic music, Gaelic song, or so-called Celtic music if you like in general, it’s recordings made by John Lorne Campbell and are such a precious record.

[Archive Gaelic recording plays]

[JB]
Nathan Cridland, I am going to smuggle you home on the boat with me because I am on the front lawn of a spectacular garden and you are the gardener here. Describe what’s around me.

[NC]
Canna Garden is a walled garden of about 2 acres. It’s certainly a mix of pleasure and production. It’s got apple orchards with pear trees, a lot of wall-trained apples as well. We’ve got vegetable beds for all sorts of greens that you need through the year, and a croquet lawn for whenever you’re feeling a bit more relaxed. 

[JB]
Everyone needs a croquet lawn in their garden! And this wasn’t just a garden for Margaret Fay Shaw and for John, this was part of their reason for being – to conserve, to make things beautiful in the island.

[NC]
No, certainly it was a hideaway from the outside, but also a place where they could study what they loved. Margaret loved her photography and her videography, but she also seemed to be a fairly avid gardener. We’ve got a few logs from plants she bought over the years, and plans she had for the garden, which all seem great and hopefully something we can keep in the garden in the future.

John’s passion about butterflies and moths as well show up in the garden with the amount of pollinator-friendly plants that pop up everywhere. Everything they enjoyed, they seem to put in the garden alongside it. 

[JB]
And this is a sort of heritage garden. Have you been able to find out their original plans for the garden? Because it seems they kept everything.

[NC]
They did, and I’m sure they’re hiding away in the archives there somewhere. We’ve got scraps here and there. A lot of what I go from is actually the photography that has been found and brought out. So, you can certainly see what things were planted and where. The garden has changed a little bit over the years, but I think there’s bare bones that we can follow.

[JB]
What are the challenges of Canna’s weather? Normal Canna weather, not the idyllic conditions we have today …

[NC]
Oh well, there’s a bountiful amount of challenges with the Canna weather! The wind is the most drastic. The garden here is luckily – because of the wall and the shelter belt that was planted – much more sheltered than the rest of the island. So, we’re really protected from the wind. But the storms that can come through late can cause just chaos. We’re in the process of building a Polycrub, which is going to make a world of difference because last year I had a lot of my vegetables and flower seeds destroyed by the late frost and wind. So, that will be something that’ll protect us in the future from any changes we face.

[JB]
And in terms of being a gardener, that’s not even the beginning of your talents. I know because on an island everybody mucks in. What else do you do here?

[NC]
Oh well, yes, as you say, everyone mucks in. For a while I was the acting pier manager to cover a job gap. At the moment, we’ve got a new pier manager and he’s fantastic. So, I muck in whenever he needs an extra pair of hands or if he needs a holiday break. And then I’m also on the crew of CREEL, which is the electrical company on Canna.

[JB]
How does the power work on the island?

[NC]
Canna is 100% self-sufficient in terms of power supply. We’ve got wind turbines, solar panels and a diesel generator, if all of those failed, alongside it. And then a battery bank to make sure everything can keep running all smoothly. Everything comes on island rather than plugged in from the mainland.

[JB]
You must be very proud of that.

[NC]
It’s quite nice, yeah! It does mean we’ve got a self-reliance that you don’t get in some other places, but it does mean there’s some extra workload for everyone.

[JB]
So, we’re sitting here in May – what are the plans for the garden over the summer?

[NC]
Oh well, this is the time of year when you get everything going, so we’ll be very busy with all our fruit and veg, and lawn mowing. It’s mow, mow, mow now. Everything’s growing, everything’s going, so you’ve got to keep up with it.

[JB]
And dodging the visitors!

[NC]
Dodging visitors, yes! The visitor numbers are definitely set to increase with this weather.

[Violin music plays]

[JB]
And that’s all from Canna, for now. The refurbishment of Canna House and the conservation of its collections have been helped hugely by donations from the National Trust for Scotland Foundation USA. That generosity means we can all enjoy John and Margaret’s life’s work.

I can’t leave this beautiful place without exploring its natural attractions and its wildlife – and hopefully its sea eagles and puffins – and of course chatting to some of the humans who call Canna home, so we’ll do that next time on Love Scotland. I hope you’ll join us. Goodbye.

[MV]
Love Scotland is brought to you by Think and Demus Productions on behalf of the National Trust for Scotland; presented by Jackie Bird. For show notes and more information, go to nts.org.uk and don’t forget to like, subscribe, review and share.

Transcript

13 speakers: male voiceover [MV]; Jackie Bird [JB]; Bob Brown [BB]; Ben Farrington [BF]; Nan Morris [NM]; 4 walkers [W1, W2, W3 and W4]; second male voiceover [MV2]; Kieran Fogarty [KF]; Kieran Maltby [KM]; Andrew Dempster [AD]

[MV]
Love Scotland, brought to you from the National Trust for Scotland.

[sound of footsteps crunching over stones]

[JB]
One of the most glorious and uplifting things you can do in Scotland, even on a greyish day like this, is to head out to our gorgeous natural landscape. And that’s whether you’re a seasoned hill walker, an intrepid mountaineer or simply a lover of nature who enjoys a ramble to escape the stresses of life. You might spend your time like me, looking at the scenery around you. But today we’re going to be dealing with what’s under our feet – the paths and route ways that make the National Trust for Scotland’s special places accessible for hundreds of thousands of pairs of boots each year, whilst also protecting the precious natural environment we’ve all come to enjoy.

So, who are the unsung heroes and heroines who carry out this often back-breaking work in all sorts of weathers in some of our remote landscapes? Well, today we’re going to meet them.

[more crunching!]

I’m in Glencoe, already one of the Trust’s most popular locations, and post-COVID there’s been a dramatic increase in visitors. We’re in a busy car park right beside the road, not far from the Glencoe Visitor Centre. It’s the starting point for a walk to one of the most popular routes in the whole of Scotland: the Hidden Valley.

But to help walkers get there, the Trust’s Mountain Path team is hard at work. Although I have to say, the boss isn’t! Bob Brown, I’ve outed you! The team manager, you’re here with me. What’s the project and why aren’t you working?

[BB]
That’s me caught; I’m in the car park! So, what we’ve done, we’ve already upgraded the car park and now we’re upgrading the path that leads down to the access route to the Hidden Valley.

[JB]
And who are the team? Who are we going to meet?

[BB]
We’ve got Kieran; another Kieran …

[JB]
Oh, that’s helpful!

[BB]
Yeah, two Kierans. We’ve got Nan and Ben, who’s the team leader today. 

[JB]
Well, let’s head down there and you can tell me more about what you’re up to.

[BB]
Excellent.

[sound of footsteps and people chatting in the background]

[JB]
Ben Farrington, you’re the team leader in this particular project. It’s fair to say that this isn’t really representative of the work that you normally do. What are you up to at Glencoe?

[BF]
They’ve recently had a new car park instated, and the paths leading down to Coire Gabhail and to Coire nan Lochan need to be improved or upgraded.

[JB]
We’ve come down a path of about 100 metres, which you’re about 2/3 finished, I think, and there’s a huge pile of boulders at the car park. First question, how the heck do you get those boulders down here?

[BF]
Now, for the most part, we do it by hand. We do have a power barrow – that’s a motorised barrow, if you will – but mostly all of our stuff is by hand. We have to use our strength and we can sometimes use metal pinch bars to help us navigate the stones down safely, but everything is by hand!

[JB]
And you were saying sometimes you roll them down. That must be good fun!

[BF]
Yes, it can be. And it’s better when gravity’s on your side, rather than the other way. Because when we’re going back the other way – if stones are at the bottom of a gully – we sometimes have to use a winch because it is physically impossible, even with our great strength combined, we wouldn’t be able to take so many of the larger stones up the hill. So, in this instance today we’re lucky that, even though there’s a big pile of stones probably 50/60 metres away, at least we’ve got gravity on our side so we can roll them down.

[JB]
What’s your background particularly? How did you end up here?

[BF]
Well, in May this year, I will have worked for the Trust for 20 years.

[JB]
Congratulations!

[BF]
Yes, I know! I began in this line of work in 2003. Robert Brown, the manager for the Upland Path team …

[JB]
You’ve given him his Sunday name. That’s Bob we’ve been talking to! 

[BF]
Yeah, Bob, yeah. He ran a training course back then to do with footpath work. And I happened to be on that training course. And all those years later, I’m here speaking to you as the team leader of the Footpath team. So, it’s been very much in house and that’s why I’m here. I have a background from environmental stuff, from university, and I just hadn’t found my way. And eventually this job found me, I guess, and I found it! So, I’m still here because I love working in these fantastic landscapes, seeing the wildlife, and then just building something by hand, as it were, crafting it if you will, that’s going to be there for generations to come, hopefully. 

[JB]
20 years of back-breaking work – it must take its toll out of you physically. You look as fit as a poacher’s dog, as we say, but it must take its toll.

[BF]
It does, yeah. I’m in my 50s and I wouldn’t say I’ve got another 20 years left of me in this job, to be fair! But, you’ve got to take care of yourself. And yes, you do get little niggles from time to time, but you have to work smart and safely in terms of what you do. You don’t push yourself over the top. And if you need a hand, you get people to help you because, yes, if you’re not careful, you can injure yourself. Stones are not light. It’s hard physical work, but if you get the balance right, I think you can have a long time in the job let’s say.

[JB]
And the personal characteristics you need to be out in all weathers in complete wildernesses?

[BF]
Absolutely, yeah. I think a sense of humour comes into it at some point, and a gritty determinism I guess as well. A lot of the members of our team are quite determined, let’s say, strong-willed – which is important because a lot of people would give up on the first day if the weather was awful.

We’ve had people helping in the past or volunteers, which is great of course, but sometimes it’s like, how do you do this? Today’s quite nice, but you can imagine some days you’re blown off your feet, your fingers are cold, you’re soaked to the bone. So, it’s a state of mind. It’s not for everyone to do this. But yeah, I would say a sense of humour does help, and just being determined.

[sound of a pick axe against stone]

[JB]
Nan Morris, we’re sitting here in the shadow of the Three Sisters, Glencoe. You’ve been working with the Trust for 16 years doing this. I’m a girlie; I’m allowed to ask a sexist question! You do not expect to find a woman lugging enormous rocks and doing this sort of work.

[NM]
No, there aren’t a lot of us doing it, but there are a few. I’m not the only one; there are a few of us.

[JB]
There are easier jobs, surely?

[NM]
There are easier jobs, yeah, but this is really satisfying. I got to a point where my son was growing up and I wanted to get back into work again. My criteria was basically to work outside and to do something physical – and this ticks those boxes.

And it’s a job that I don’t feel guilty about doing. I’ve got quite strong environmental views and there are a lot of jobs that I would feel bad about doing because they’re damaging to the environment. Whereas this one, I’m actually making a positive difference rather than a negative one. This ticks all my boxes really. I’ll be doing it until I physically can’t do it anymore. 

[JB]
One of the pressures the team all has to share is the Scottish weather. Now, the conditions today are fairly benign. We think the rain’s moving in; the mist certainly is. What are the worst conditions that you’ve worked in?

[NM]
Probably the midgies.

[JB]
Oh really? I was expecting rain or storms or something.

[NM]
Nooooo, I think probably the midgies can really do you in at times. Yeah, that’s …

[JB]
And how do you cope? Do you have some sort of wonder …

[NM]
A midge net! A midge net is the only one. Yeah, a full body midge net, not just a head midge net.

[JB]
What’s a full body midge net?

[NM]
Well, you get one that covers. It’s like a jacket basically, a midge jacket, and it’s got elasticated wrists and elasticated waist and a hood which zips open. And if you’re wearing that, you can eat your lunch inside it and not get midged. So, ideally that’s the way I would go.

[JB]
For the walkers that pass you, it must be pretty hilarious seeing you wearing something like that, but after 5 minutes I bet they wish they had one!

[NM]
Well,  when they’re moving, you’re not really getting midged too badly if you’re walking along. It’s when we’re digging in the ground, we’re staying in one spot down low. 

[JB]
And you’re sweating.

[NM]
We’re sweating, yeah, but we’re also low to the ground, and they tend to stay quite low to the ground. And you’re digging into the ground, you’re kind of digging them up. You’re in among the bushes where they’re all hiding. So, even on a breezy day, we can still be getting midged. Whereas if you’re standing up, you’re all right; you’re getting enough of a breeze. 

The weather is what it is. You’ve just got to wear more clothes and get on with it. When it’s really frozen solid, that can be difficult to actually work in because we can’t break into the ground then. Or if it’s thick snow, then obviously that can impact how much work we can get done.

But we tend to move around the country really and find a bit that isn’t frozen or isn’t snowed up. And we move obviously higher and lower on the hill, and different aspects – we can maybe find something that’s facing south and it’s not quite as frozen solid. We can usually find something. There’s not that often that we’ve actually been weathered off work. 

[JB]
And are the walkers here generally appreciative of what you’re doing, when they bump into you?

[NM]
Absolutely, yeah. I get some brilliant comments from them.

[JB]
What do they say?

[NM]
Thank you, most of the time. Most of the time they thank us for our work, which is absolutely lovely. And I think everyone should get thanked for their jobs … and a lot of people don’t. Because it makes a huge difference to your day, just somebody coming past and giving you a smile and saying ‘I appreciate what you do’ – that makes a massive difference to how you feel about your day.

[JB]
And the walkers who come to you and say thank you, what is your best advice to any walkers listening to this when they’re out and about in the hills?

[NM]
Stay on the path please, wherever you can. Please do not go around the path, because when you have one person walking on the grass, it doesn’t cause any damage – but 1,000 people walking over the same bit of grass will kill off that vegetation and will start eroding the ground underneath. The ground then washes away with the next rainfall.

You end up losing whole ecosystems this way, and when we’re high up in the mountains it can take decades for these ecosystems to recover. So, if the path isn’t too bad, please stick to it as much as you can.

[more pick axe and chatting]

[JB]
Excuse me, ladies, come on over. We’re talking to these fine people who are making the paths you’ve been using. Have you had a good day walking?

[W1]
We’ve had a lovely morning, thank you. It’s been great.

[JB]
Do you ever think of the footpaths under foot?

[W2]
Do you know what? We actually do! 

[W1]
We’ve just set up a brand new Ramblers hiking group in North Yorkshire for people in their 40s and 50s, and we’ve been a member of Ramblers for about 15 years, so pathways are really important and the maintaining of them as well.

[W2]
Today’s walk has been so much easier because of the pathways. Yesterday we went up a mountain without a footpath, and we can absolutely tell the difference. So yeah, good job.

[W1]
Absolutely. Appreciate there’s a lot of hard work goes into it. Thank you!

[JB]
We’re just talking about the paths and the work that goes into them. When you’re out in the hills, do you notice the paths or, oh my goodness, who did this and how did it get here?

[W3]
I do notice the paths, yes. Our son did geography and we do field trips with him sometimes and he’s done projects about erosion – people that go off the main path and what that does to the paths.

[JB]
So, you’re very well versed then on how important they are?

[W4]
Yeah, we are. I guess you do wonder how people get to certain remote locations to do the maintenance. 

[JB]
This is practically in the city centre compared with some of the work they do out in the remote locations! And I think it’s the case that sometimes walkers just think the paths are there, that they’ve just arrived there miraculously sometimes. But they’re pretty vital. And you already know why.

[W3]
Yeah, absolutely. And they’re invaluable for people like us who can go out and enjoy them and have a good path to walk on. It makes it much easier to do your walk if the path’s in good condition. 

[W4]
And also we don’t get lost as well!

[JB]
That’s a very important point! Thank you very much. That’s brilliant.

[MV2]
You need to smell the flowers, said my bro. Turns out wild heather works just as well. We were up Ben Lomond like mountain goats. Couldn’t believe it was so close to home. At the top though, life was a million miles away, so we signed up to help look after it. We all need looking after.

[MV]
Since 1931, the National Trust for Scotland, a charity supported by you, has been looking after Scotland’s treasured places so we can all share in them. Support us at nts.org.uk

[JB]
Now lying in the grass with me, which sounds … [laughing]

[KF]
We’ll start that one again, I think maybe! What time does this go out?! 

[JB]
There’s much hilarity here because I’m now joined by the two Kierans and I was trying to set up our chat by saying we were all lying in the grass, and for some reason you two thought it was funny.

[KM]
Oh wow, this is a watershed moment there. 

[JB]
OK, serious faces on. Kieran Maltby, hello to you and Kieran Fogarty. The two Kierans – clearly a double act.

[KF]
Definitely. 

[KM]
Unfortunately.

[JB]
How did you two get into this game?

[KM]
You go first, if you want?

[KF]
Well, I got into doing mountain pathwork many years ago, actually with a contracting firm after doing some work out on the Hebrides, doing invasive species monitoring actually. And yeah, it was totally by accident. And then loved it so much that I stayed doing it.

[JB]
And Kieran Maltby, you’re the new boy here. Two years; a couple of years.

[KM]
Yeah, just two years.

[JB]
How did you find your way into pathwork? 

[KM]
I was living down in Oxfordshire and I saw the job advert, just applied and then moved up and started. So, there’s no background; I just started doing it.

[JB]
And what are the attractions of this job?

[KM]
You’re outdoors all the time. 

[JB]
Beautiful … 

[KF]
Definitely. I mean, if you like the mountains and like being wet and cold a lot of the time, and covered in mud, it’s great! It’s not a job for everyone, but for me anyway and I think probably for all of us.

[KM]
It’s physical as well.

[KF]
It’s a good bit of exercise so we don’t ever have to pay a gym membership. And yeah, it’s just getting to spend time with these fantastic views around us. On the good days: best place in the world. 

[JB]
But on the bad days, pretty challenging … 

[KF]
Definitely – worst place in the world!

[Laughter]

[JB]
But there seems to be clearly a lot of camaraderie here, and I suppose with such a small team that’s important.

[KM]
Yeah, it’s forced. 

[KF]
I’m glad you said it! Like you say, it’s a very small team so we have to work closely together obviously as well. On a serious note, we’re messing around with big rocks. They’re very heavy, all of the materials that we use. So, we have to communicate with each other. We operate in a safe environment. And as you’ve seen today, there’s a lot of public around; they come out in the nice weather. And so we have to be very mindful that no one gets squashed.

[JB]
And what I hadn’t realised is that you all, of course, live all across Scotland. You come together for a project and you work, what, four days on?

[KM]
That’s four days on, yeah. 

[KF]
We literally live in all four corners, I think. Ben’s furthest north and I’m right down in Edinburgh.

[KM]
This is like our main hub though. We often congregate here and then depending, say if we’re working in Torridon or whatever, we’ll meet the truck here and then we’ll drive up to Torridon.

[JB]
And when you tell people what you do, what’s the response?

[KM]
Not everyone really understands what it is – it’s hard to explain what you’re doing. 

[KF]
My girlfriend thought these paths just existed.

[JB]
I think a lot of people do. 

[KF]
Until we met, she’d never met anyone who’d built footpaths before, and I think that’s quite …

[KM]
Lots of people think they get flown in, don’t they? A lot of time for working on the hill. 

[KF]
Yeah, definitely. They don’t realise it’s usually a group of guys and lasses just grafting away, repairing them day in, day out. But it is a niche industry, and so usually folk have been in it for a while, the old hands. You do know each other even though you’ve been working for different organisations and contracting firms.

[JB]
And it’s very technical because what I wasn’t expecting, as Bob was explaining, there’s a huge pile of rocks that you’re working from, and they have to be the right colour. They have to be the right density. There is a lot of technical knowledge.

[KM]
Definitely. There’s a bit matching and stuff. The easiest thing to maybe compare it to is probably drystone walling – matching stone and stuff, especially when you’re looking at trying to stick a couple of stones together. A little bit goes into it. But what is it we always say about doing a load of work and make it look like you’ve not done much work?

[KF]
Yeah, yeah. Exactly! We end up digging a lot of deep holes, a lot of heavy landscaping. And then by the time we’re finished …

[KM]
You’ve done a metre’s worth of path!

[KF]
Yeah, it doesn’t look like we’ve done anything, but that’s the whole point. You’ve got a secure path surface, but you landscape everything just so it ties in with the natural environment that you’re building a path in.

[JB]
And a lot of people, you say, imagine that the paths just magic themselves here. But the fact that the Footpath Fund has been going for nearly 25 years, and that people have been so very generous, shows you that there are people who are very, very appreciative.

[KF]
Definitely. Yeah, yeah. Like you say, I mean, the Footpath Fund funds our jobs, basically. 

[KM]
What’s nice as well is that every time someone walks by, they usually say thanks.

[JB]
Have you ever found anything interesting when you’re doing all this digging in land that’s tens of thousands of years old. 

[KM]
Tell your story again! 

[JB]
Is this a well-trodden part of the story?!

[KM]
Oh yeah!

[KF]
The most exciting thing I’ve ever found is an undiscovered Bronze Age burial. But I accidentally put my pickaxe through it! But it did survive mostly intact! It was only when … the hole I was digging to actually mine material, to get material for the surface of the path, something appeared in the hole which I didn’t think looked right. On closer inspection, it turned out to be some pottery. We got some archaeologists involved. And it turned out to be a 3,500-year-old funerary urn burial. And on further investigation from that, they found it was the cremated remains of a 35–45-year-old woman who was cremated with two pigs and buried in what would have just been a flat burial, probably marked with quartz stones and pebbles. But yeah, it was totally unknown until I smashed it up!

[JB]
Kieran and Kieran, thank you very much and I’ll let you get back to work. Actually, have you any spare shovels? Any spare picks? Do you want to show me the correct techniques – and hopefully there are no Bronze Age pots hanging around.

[KF]
Definitely, we’ll get you kitted out now. 

[more footsteps and pick axe sounds]

[JB]
So, basically it’s a downhill section of the path which has split. And you are trying to guide people away from this split and landscape it so the stones form a sort of staircase, a natural staircase? 

[KF]
That’s correct. We would call this type of splitting braiding because it’s almost like an interweaving braid of hair. And so, we want to consolidate the path into one line. So yeah, ultimately where we’re standing now on the braid will just be landscaped grass and stones.

[JB]
Do  you have to remove the stones from the turf?

[KF]
Yeah, exactly. We have to remove all the stones. You can use the pick end if you want to pick out …

[JB]
So, I try and get a bit of the turf off. 

[KF]
That’s right. 

[JB]
It’s like a rug … and that’s it. 

[KF]
Yeah, great, Jackie. That’s great. You say that there’s no easy part of this job, and you’re walking to work sometimes an hour, two hours uphill, carrying all your equipment. And yeah, that’s burning energy before you even start the day’s labour. 

[JB]
As you say, getting to work for you is what most people would describe as a good hill walking day. And you haven’t even put in a bit of your shift yet!

[KF]
Exactly! You’ve got it. 

[JB]
That’s great. Right, I think it’s time for tea and cake. 

[KF]
Great stuff.

[JB]
I’ll give you your pick back. There you go. 

[KF]
Thank you very much!

[fading pickaxe sounds]

[JB]
Bob, you started with the Footpath team 20 years ago. More than 20 years ago …

[BB]
Yeah, just over 20 years now.

[JB]
What got you into it?

[BB]
I think, to begin with, it was the stonework; I was really interested in stonework. I worked with the Scottish Wildlife Trust for a while. I really enjoyed the stonework we were doing, but it was the attention to detail in the work that really intrigued me. So, that’s what got me going.

[JB]
Well, it’s clearly worked out, 20 years later. Can you give me an overview of the miles of path that the Trust covers, that you cover? Is that possible to do?

[BB]
Yeah, the Trust manages over 440 kilometres of upland footpath. That’s just the mountain stuff, not including all the parks and stuff as well. Yeah, it’s pretty epic. You just have to start on very small sections and take it from there. You don’t learn it all at once. That distance is quite hard to comprehend, so you’ve got to take it in bite-size chunks. 

[JB]
As they used to say, painting the Forth Rail Bridge, that’s got nothing on what you do.

[BB]
Absolutely. It’s an endless task. We’ve got limited resource obviously, so through the Footpath Fund we can fund an in-house team.

[JB]
So, you’re dealing with hundreds of kilometres of footpaths. How big is your team?

[BB]
It’s a very small team in comparison. We’ve got four full-time and one part-time person.

[JB]
Of course I knew how big your team was! I just want to reaffirm, that’s a tiny number of people.

[BB]
Yeah. They’ve got 100 kilometres each, if you put it that way. Obviously you can’t cover it all. We use contractors as well for some pieces of work, some of the larger pieces. But the team are critical because they’re my eyes on the hill. I can’t be everywhere. And because they rotate around the mountain properties, they see far more than I do. They’re more up to date with what’s going on in the hill.

[JB]
Do you also have volunteers?

[BB]
We do have volunteers, yeah. Sometimes people come in, usually again working with a team. Sometimes we have volunteer events where we’ll get people to come and do a few days here or there. A lot of the properties manage that for us as well, so that’s really helpful.

[JB]
Conversely, it’s not necessarily to make a path for people to walk on; it’s to make a path to keep people from walking anywhere else.

[BB]
Yeah, quite a lot of people struggle to understand when I say I’m not doing this for people. Erosion control is the main purpose. We’re trying to protect the landscape because we’ve some really delicate landscape vegetation types, soil types in Scotland, and combined with the weather, it’s really fragile – or sensitive is probably a better word than fragile.

What we’re trying to do is contain that damage. So, we want people to still enjoy the mountains obviously. They’re not ours; they belong to the nation. To get people out without causing any damage, that’s why we maintain the paths.

[JB]
What are your biggest challenges? Is it people or is it the changing environment itself?

[BB]
Change. Change, definitely, I think.

[JB]
What are you noticing? 

[BB]
A lot less snow cover in the winters now. In the winter, if you imagine large sections of mountain covered in snow all winter, that’s not a problem. You walk wherever you like; you’re not even touching the ground, so vegetation’s protected. That’s not happening so much now. This place in Torridon, for instance, where we used to get maybe one or two snow melts a year. It would snow, freeze, maybe melt, maybe snow again, melt and that would be it. Now, that’s happening maybe 6, 7, 8 times a year. And every time it floods, that’s causing erosion as well; it’s eating away at the ground. Because it’s not freezing for very long, the ground’s no longer protected by the frost. 

Those kind of changes, in the scale of a mountain, the time I’ve been working there is minimal, but I can see those changes. So, that’s the biggest challenge I would say – it’s unpredictable. We had an ambitious idea to try and camp on Beinn Alligin. So, we looked into what are people using on Everest Base Camp almost. Let’s not mess about; we’ll get some serious kit. So, we got expedition stuff, which, long story short, lasted about two days in Torridon. The Scottish mountains well and truly beat it.

We were very unlucky with the weather that we got. The first day was beautiful, stunning. I’ve got pictures of the sunset that evening with the guys sitting up there with a tent and everything. And then the next day we got gale force winds, which didn’t stop for about 3 weeks. I think it was fairly unprecedented. But yeah, that didn’t go so well. But do you know what? They just moved down the hill and carried on camping! They did most of the job out of tents, just not where we intended to.

[JB]
It’s hard graft. It’s pickaxes, shovels. Does it get any more technical? It must do in some occasions.

[BB]
A lot of it is hand tools. A lot of the work is done by hand because it’s quite subtle. We have to … you’re literally fine tuning what you’re putting in the ground. We do have a mechanised power barrow, which is like a wheelbarrow with caterpillar tracks, which is handy for moving stone about. And obviously, people are aware that we do helicopter materials around sometimes.

[JB]
Yeah, tell me about that. That’s a major exercise, isn’t it?

[BB]
It is, yeah. It’s not something we take lightly either. We don’t just do it for the sake of it. It’s always … sometimes you can have a site where there’s either no material at all. 

[JB]
Because what people might not know is that when you go to a site and it’s well out of the way, you basically scavenge the rocks that are around, to reinforce or to make a path. But sometimes you just can’t. 

[BB]
Sometimes there’s either not enough there or if you were to take the ones that were there, there would be none left. Every stone’s a habitat. So, you can’t just be … you really have to think about what you’re moving on the hill. If there’s not a lot of stone there, then every stone’s precious. 

So, for that, we’d be looking at maybe bringing in stone from usually as close by as possible, maybe from a different location on the mountain. We would look for areas where there was a predominance of stone, like a big scree slope. That gets checked for biological, for minerals – everything gets checked to see that it’s OK to move it. And then that gets flown to the site that we’re working on.

It’s an expensive business, flying materials. But if we were to do it by hand, like physically move stone, I think somebody did an equation once – it was moving stone the same distance by 80 metres, it’s cheaper to fly it … plus the health and safety. You can imagine – you’ve seen the team today moving stone about. Imagine if we were to move 160 tonnes of that – it’s not safe. So, the helicopter is a lot safer way to do it as well, and it’s all done in one day. 

It also means that the job is a bit cheaper to do because the material is then right next to the path. We can literally pinpoint where the material lands. The pilots are amazing. They’ll put it right where you point, every time. That allows us to get the job done quicker.

[JB]
So, the helicopter drops and the manpower, etc, that brings us to the cost and it brings us to something called the Footpath Fund, which is 25 years old this year. Tell me about that.

[BB]
Yeah, 25 years. It’s incredible. It’s the only appeal that the Trust runs every year. I like to say that’s why it’s so successful. Its success, I think, in some parts is that it’s such a tangible fund. People can see directly where their money’s going. I have literally taken donors and said ‘your money started here and ended here’, and I’ve walked them over the piece of path.

[JB]
Oh, that’s wonderful!

[BB]
It’s really nice. It’s nice for them; it’s really lovely for me to do as well. But the Footpath Fund, that’s critical to all the work we do; that’s what’s paying for it. We do get other donations coming in, but they all come in through publicity from the Footpath Fund. 

As you know, the bigger grants and stuff are less accessible now we’re out of Europe and all that. So, grants are harder to come by. But the Footpath Fund, it continues to grow each year as well. 

[JB]
Well, there’s a target this year of, because it’s 25 years, £250,000. But judging by the appreciation that we’ve heard in the short time we’ve been here today from all the walkers, you can see why people are generous.

[BB]
I rarely get to see actual donations. People now tend to just put money in the bank or whatever; they’ll donate. But every now and then, I’ll get a letter and it’ll be £5 from somebody who has a beautiful memory about a mountain from maybe 50 years ago. And then the next day I can get an email going, oh, somebody’s just donated £75,000. And whether it’s £5 or £75,000, it’s all critical, and the stories behind these donations …

[JB]
And the satisfaction of the job for you?

[BB]
I love visiting sites that we’ve worked on. Just going over stuff that’s maybe now over 20 years old, and it’s worked and it’s growing back. I was on Arran last week, literally just bouncing over some bits of work because it’s just so good to see that this massive, hideous scar on the landscape has restored. There’s a nice path. People are sticking to the path but unaware of the scar; quite oblivious to it all. I was up there with the contractor that did some of the work, and it’s just fine-tuning it now. That’s all that’s required. I think seeing those scars disappearing are big for me.

But sometimes it’s just like minute things, tiny bits of detail that I see on the hill that just make me smile. I remember when I used to actually use tools, stones that I put in myself – I always get a wee smile when I walk over the stuff that I built.

[JB]
Well, that’s clearly coming through because I love that phrase you used earlier, Bob, I think that sums it up: it’s not just the massive effect you make on the landscape; it’s the attention to detail. You said every stone is a habitat, and that is lovely. Keep doing what you do. Thank you very much indeed for taking some time off today to join us.

[BB]
Not at all. Thanks for coming out.

[JB]
And that’s all from Love Scotland in beautiful, dramatic Glencoe. What a dedicated and hardy bunch the Footpath team are. They are truly the unsung enablers of the hillsides and mountains, allowing us to access some of our most beautiful places without damaging the very landscape we’ve come to see.

What’s that they say about superheroes not always wearing capes? Well, sometimes they carry picks and spades as well. And as this is the 25th anniversary of the Footpath Fund, the aim of the Trust is to raise £250,000 to help protect, improve and maintain the footpath network. It’s a tall order, but there are some pretty tall mountain routes out there and so many special places that bring pleasure to so many people.

If you’d like to make a donation, the details of how to do it are on the notes page of this podcast or just head to the National Trust for Scotland website and search Footpath Fund.

I hope you enjoy whatever you’re up to in our great outdoors. Until next time, goodbye.

And if you want to hear more about some of Scotland’s famous mountains, search out our podcast, ‘The Munros: mountain myths and milestones’.

[AD]
Often when you stand on the Munro and you look out and you see other summits, they’re all of that same level. Again, it’s just a nice round figure. Let’s be honest, it sounds good, 3,000 feet. The measurement of foot came from the Romans and the Greeks. So, in some ways you could say they’re responsible for the Munros that we see today.

[MV]
Love Scotland is brought to you by Think and Demus Productions on behalf of the National Trust for Scotland; presented by Jackie Bird.

For show notes and more information, go to nts.org.uk and don’t forget to like, subscribe, review and share.

Transcript

Five speakers: male voiceover [MV]; Jackie Bird [JB]; Fiona Watson [FW]; female voiceover [FV]; Steven Veerapen [SV]

[MV]
Love Scotland, brought to you from the National Trust for Scotland; presented by Jackie Bird.

[sound of chanting, monastic music]

[JB]
Today, we’re travelling back more than 1,000 years. It’s the dawn of the 11th century and the birth of a baby who will grow up to become perhaps the most infamous king in Scotland’s history. Some fear the very mention of his name Macbeth, invoking as it does a power-crazed despot and murderer who was goaded by his evil and ambitious wife.

But there is another story of Macbeth, in which he is a strong and able leader who ruled his people well and his wife was actually quite a nice lady. So, which is closer to the truth? Well, in today’s podcast we will be dispensing with William Shakespeare’s use of artistic licence for his ‘Scottish play’ and dealing with the facts … or as close to them as we can get. Was Macbeth really such a bad man or is he the most maligned Scottish king ever? 

To try to get a bit closer to the real story, I’m joined by historian and writer Dr Fiona Watson, who, despite the great superstitious threats to any future acting career, has made a study of Macbeth and his life and times. Welcome to the programme, Fiona.

[FW]
Thank you, Jackie.

[JB]
Now, the fact that Macbeth has had quite a bad rap is undeniable. So, what was the spur for you to try to get to the truth?

[FW]
Well, I think, like everybody, you grow up on the play; I’m sure I did it at school. Yes, I definitely did it at school for Higher. And then you just tangentially come across stuff that makes you go, oh, hang on a minute, hang on a minute. I mean, it’s not really my period of history, it must be said, but I thought I could give it a go. 

[JB]
I think it’s a really complex period in history; you’re right. Everyone is called Malcolm. 

[FW]
Yeah! What is it about Scottish history? Just when you think you’re getting somewhere, somebody appears … two people with the same name and you go, I don’t know which one we’re talking about!

[JB]
A brief recap. As it stands, Shakespeare has him – now you correct me – as a Scottish king who murdered a kindly old man Duncan for his crown and a few others, who had a shrew of a wife who then went crazy and killed herself. Correct?

[FW]
That’s Shakespeare. Yep.

[JB]
OK, so can we begin then with the writing of the play? Because what I hadn’t fully realised was the link between the fictitious Macbeth and another king from Scotland, whom we know a bit more about: James I & VI. And your story really begins with James.

[FW]
Yes, obviously for Shakespeare, with James coming down to London, he had to change tack from what he had produced for Elizabeth, James’s predecessor and cousin. So, he wanted a Scottish story – and he sort of did what he always does, which is to dive into the histories in English that might provide some impetus for creating a Scottish play.

And in the 1580s, a few decades before Shakespeare was writing, a guy called Raph Holinshed created these Chronicles of Scotland, England and Ireland. Shakespeare dived in there and found the story of Macbeth already fairly fully formed, although he did nick other, much earlier kings of Scots, just to make the full dramatic impact of the man that he wished to put on stage.

We can’t prove that James VI & I saw it, but it seems pretty daft for Shakespeare to not have performed in front of the Royal Court. So yes, it does start with James.

[JB]
But even the Chronicles on which Shakespeare based the play, those were – to use a contemporary term – those would have been fake news as well though, wouldn’t they?

[FW]
Oh, total fake news! And deliberately so. The most important thing to realise is that we Scots had done in Macbeth long, long before Shakespeare got there. 

[JB]
So, Shakespeare finds the Chronicles; he wants to write something of interest to James. He nicks a few other stories from the same source to spice things up, but he also includes bits about witches and the supernatural.

[FW]
That’s already in the Scottish sources, so he doesn’t even have to add that in!

[JB]
But he does include it because he knows James is quite into this sort of thing.

[FW]
No, you’re absolutely right. He pushes that button totally for James. I think James is probably over his obsession with witches; he’d certainly written a whole book about it. But nonetheless, Shakespeare would have hoped that the appearance of the witches would have been a good showstopper for Macbeth, a good part of the story.

But, again, the Scots had got there first. They’re in there, I think, from as early as the 15th century, if not before.

[JB]
But what I don’t understand is the play is a bit of an unflattering picture of ancient Scotland, with the barbarism and it’s very tribal. Wasn’t that a little bit risky for Shakespeare to portray that for his new king?

[FW]
I take your point, but I think to some extent James shared that view, not with regard to Scotland as a whole – although James, when he became king in 1603, said, ‘Oh, I’ll be back every other year; don’t worry’. And then of course only turned up once ...

He was quite happy with all the flattery and all the pomp and ceremony, and the sheer wealth of the English Crown compared to what he was used to in Scotland, where people were a lot more up close and personal. So, he also worried very much about the Borders and the Highlands and Islands in his own time. He did very much view those parts of Scotland as barbarous and wanted to get proper royal law and order in as a step to creating, for him, Great Britain.

[JB]
And of course, Fiona, the Scotland of those days bears no relation to the Scotland we know now. There were lots of warring kingdoms in the North East. Another historian we spoke to in another podcast said the ‘kingdom of the M6 and the M74’ … and the islands were something different. And then we had the northern islands as well. 

Macbeth and his family came from Moray. Now, there is a Moray today but it’s much smaller. Tell me about where the real Macbeth’s family came from.

[FW]
Yes, absolutely. Moray in the Middle Ages was pretty huge. The Spey acts as the eastern boundary, but it extends right across Scotland towards Glenelg, opposite Skye, and also controls most importantly the Great Glen, which is a fantastic conduit for people coming and going.

Moray is very, very important. Moray at some point had been part of Scotland, but by this period, by Macbeth’s time, it’s slightly independent; it’s doing its own thing. And indeed, the rulers of Moray, they make claim to being kings of Scotland.

So, we’ve got a contentious history of Moray not really being part of Scotland, not really being ruled by the kings of Scots, who by this time are situated in the Perth/Angus region, but nonetheless playing some very, very important role in Scottish politics. So, Moray has a very difficult history.

[JB]
And there is another king who is on the throne, and that is Malcolm II. And this is an unsettling period in Scotland: direct dynastic rule, son following father, etc, that wasn’t yet the norm. And instead, you end up with distant cousins from various lines all having a go and killing anyone in the way. 

[FW]
Frankly, you didn’t know who was going to be on the throne tomorrow. And that’s exactly how Malcolm II himself had come to the throne, by killing in battle. He’d come back from exile, probably in Ireland, and he kills his predecessor again in Perthshire.

[JB]
Well, you have perfectly set up a passage from your book because this sums it all up, and let me read it to you:

‘The sad truth is that after 952, Scottish kings could expect to meet a violent death as a matter of course; and if foreign enemies did not get them first, their internal ones would.

‘However, from 995 onwards, the blood feuds became deadly serious as one king after another was murdered by his successor. Even new kings could not rely on enjoying much of a honeymoon period before getting wind of the first challenge to their throne.’

So, against that backdrop, Fiona, we come to the real Macbeth family. Their power base is in Moray, as was. What was their claim to the throne? And do we know when Macbeth was born into all of this?

[FW]
Well, we think that Macbeth was born around the millennium, around 1000 AD, and his claim to the throne, well, it’s a wee bit murky to put it mildly, but we think it probably came down the maternal line. We do know that his father Finlay was known in the Irish annals as King of Scotland.

Macbeth’s father Finlay had put out that he was the rightful King of Scots. He couldn’t make anything of it but nonetheless that the rulers in Moray were, by the time of Macbeth’s father, claiming to have the right to sit on the throne of Scotland.

[JB]
He was born into an elite family. Do we know what his early years were like?

[FW]
Well, as usual in Scotland – as well as Moray and in Ireland – the practice of fostering a child would have happened. At a very early age Macbeth would have been sent away to be brought up with a foster family, and it seems quite likely that that was in Ireland. The contacts between Scotland and Ireland were very, very strong, but particularly in Moray because you can get down the Great Glen and away onto the western seaboard. So, we presume that.

[JB]
And was he taught to be a future king? Was he taught to be a warrior?

[FW]
Certainly a warrior; yes, he must have been. All the attributes of the warrior culture of the time – that’s obviously how to sit on a horse; how to hold all your weapons; but also how to hunt, which is the training to keep you match fit, if you like, for war; and all the feasting, how to be a good giver of feasts and to take the wonderful praise poetry that might be coming at you; to reward people sufficiently so that they feel that you’re a good guy to hang on to, but also to chastise people if they need it without offending them, so that they’re going to go off in high dudgeon. All those complicated skills that a warrior nobleman of the period would have to know and understand. 

[JB]
But then he becomes a land agent, which doesn’t sound quite so glamorous.

[FW]
[Chuckles] Well, no, because we always think of the medieval nobility just as hunting and hawking and feasting and occasionally going to war, but actually they were the rulers of estates. They had to know how to land manage in a much more hands-on way than we maybe give them credit for. His father, as far as we can tell, certainly some early sources say that he was the Thane of Cromarty – Cromarty being on the Black Isle, north of Inverness, which is probably the heartland of Moray, Inverness area.

It’s quite possible that his father, as the ruler of Moray, sent his son to go and do some work managing the estates of the rulers of Moray just a bit further to the north. Although of course, they are knocking up against the Norse, who are by this point very firmly settled in Orkney and have designs on the top bit of Scotland: Sutherland and Caithness. So, that’s a bit of a frontier war zone there. And again, an ideal training ground for a would-be warrior king.

[JB]
But then Macbeth’s dad Finlay is murdered – not by the Norse and not even by Malcolm, by the king, but by his own ambitious nephews. There’s Scotland in all its glory again.

[FW]
Yes, it is very much a symptom of the period. Yes, it’s possible that Finlay didn’t do very well against the Norse and had been defeated, sent back with his tail between his legs. And he hadn’t been able to make good on this claim to the Kingdom of Scotland; he’d done nothing about that. So, at some point his nephews, the sons of his elder brother – those lads are called Malcolm, just to be really helpful. [Chuckles] This is going to pose a problem!

And Gille Comgáin, they murder Finlay. We don’t know how or where or whatever, but he’s killed. And we presume that Macbeth, who presumably has come back from being fostered, has to go on the run again. This is quite a common thing for noblemen in this period: that when they’re out, they’ll go off somewhere else to try and survive, regroup and hopefully come back.

So, Macbeth’s off, probably to the west somewhere, probably back to Ireland. And the rulers of Moray are Malcolm, the older one, with the help of his brother Gille Comgáin. We know that these two certainly try to make good on their family’s designs on the kingdom of Scotland. But we also know that Malcolm II, who does have the crown of Scotland, is not very keen on making headway. 

And that is then complicated by the fact that Malcolm II, who came to the throne by killing off his predecessor, decides, oh no, we’ve had enough of that. We need to move to a more dynastic approach to kingship. We want to keep that within my own immediate family – more specifically his grandson, because he didn’t have any sons of his own but he had this grandson.

[JB]
Please tell me the grandson is not called Malcolm!

[FW]
Thankfully not, but you might well recognise it from a certain Scottish play. His name is Duncan.

[JB]
I see, so we’ve got to this stage. Macbeth has gone to ground and regrouping and planning his revenge. 

[FW]
Oh, he certainly is, and he got it in spectacular fashion because we know that Gille Comgáin, the second son – Macbeth’s younger cousin, if you like (Malcolm, the older cousin, probably has died by then) – is killed in his own hall house (presumably a timber-framed building) by 50 of his men. Well, nobody’s saying it was Macbeth, but I’ll leave you to draw your own conclusion.

[JB]
Well, if Shakespeare can do it, so can you. So, Macbeth marries the widow.

[FW]
Yes, he does. And this is a very special lady for a number of reasons. Because she’s known now as Lady Macbeth, but she’s probably been traduced by Shakespeare even more than her new husband. So, this is a lady called Gruoch, who is in fact the first named queen in Scottish history.

And she’s very royal. She is part of the royal family of southern Scotland, and that’s probably why she was married to Gille Comgáin in the first place. And it’s certainly, I’m sure, why Macbeth married her, because that gives him, as well as his own claim, a tie in to the royal family of southern Scotland.

[JB]
And at that point, let’s pause for breath. We’ve had lots of killings, lots of Malcolms. We’ll be back in a moment. 

[FV]
18 feet, the Soldier’s Leap at Killiecrankie. My heart leaped when my other half brought me here years ago. I still feel it today. The waterfall, the wildlife, the history really stirs the senses. We jumped at the chance to sign up and help care for it, so others could fall in love with it too.

[MV]
Since 1931, the National Trust for Scotland, a charity supported by you, has been looking after Scotland’s treasured places so we can all share in them. Support us at nts.org.uk

[JB]
Welcome back to Love Scotland. I’m joined by historian and writer Dr Fiona Watson, who is helping us tell the real story of Macbeth with all its complications. Fiona, when we stopped for the break, Macbeth had married Gruoch, who was the widow of one of his cousins – the cousins who had murdered Macbeth’s father.

[FW]
That’s right.

[JB]
OK, now as Lady Macbeth in Shakespeare is a huge character, does Gruoch bear any resemblance to Lady Macbeth?

[FW]
Well, funnily enough, you will not be surprised to know we know even less about her than we do about her new husband Macbeth. But I think that she should be given her due as the first named Queen of Scots. 

She is a very, very royal lady with connections to the royal family associated with Malcolm II. We will go on to hear that she plays an important role. She’s clearly playing an important role with her husband. We know that she has lands of her own, probably in western Fife in the area around Kinross and Loch Leven.

[JB]
And she has a young son.

[FW]
And she has a son. She already has a son by Gille Comgáin, who becomes Macbeth’s stepson –Lulach – and he’s going to become very important.

And there’s no reason to think … I mean, you’ve got to think about it, don’t you really? What would it have been like for your first husband to be murdered and then you’re left on your own. You’ve got a young son. The man who murdered your husband is making overtures to you. You can either run away and hide in a monastery somewhere, or you can say, well, he’s proved that he’s good with the sword and I need protection for my son. I don’t want him coming after my boy. So yes, marrying him makes sense. 

We have no way of knowing what she thought, but it sounds plausible to me in that period of time. And certainly there’s no reason to think that Lulach, who was very young when his father was killed, viewed Macbeth with suspicion or enmity. He’s very much part of Macbeth’s family and will prove, as far as we can tell, a loyal son to him.

[JB]
So, we get to around 1034. King Malcolm II, he’s getting on a bit. He’s been on the throne for about 29 years. Macbeth knows that young Duncan, his grandson, is earmarked for the throne. What does he do?

[FW]
Well, to begin with, he doesn’t really do anything. Malcolm II is attacked at Glamis by some disgruntled nobles who maybe did feel that they didn’t want Duncan to become king, that they wanted the old system to continue because presumably they were a part of the power block that was about to lose out.

Malcolm II manages to fight them off, but is mortally wounded in the battle and is carried back to the hunting lodge at Glamis, where he dies. And we know that within 5 days of Malcolm’s death, Duncan, his grandson, is inaugurated as king at the traditional place of Scone, which is about 24 miles to the west of Glamis.

That’s pretty quick; they weren’t hanging around. They didn’t want anybody else to start coming out of the woodwork – get him on the throne! So, that’s done and dusted. Duncan becomes the king.

[JB]
Now, how is he? Because in another podcast we did about the early kings and queens of Scotland, another historian, Richard Orem, described Duncan as a complete and utter numpty.

[FW]
Yeah, I think I would agree with Richard on that! I mean, he’s in good company. Even his grandfather, Malcolm II, made a spectacularly unsuccessful raid into Northumbria. The Scottish kings, because of the Norse encircling the west and the north of Scotland, the obvious thing to do if you want to go raiding, which they do, is to go into Northumbria. And they’ve already got a bit of Northumbria, they’ve got Lothian. Why not nibble a bit more? So, even Malcolm II had spectacularly failed in his first foray there. 

So, his grandson doesn’t take a leaf out of that book and stay away from Northumbria. I always say that if kings of Scots go over the bridge at Coldstream, there should be a big sign: if you’re a King of Scots, go back now! 

[JB]
Don’t do it! 

[FW]
It won’t end well! Occasionally, it does, but most of the time it’s just not a good idea. But no, he did – and he was spectacularly routed. This is about five years into his reign, and we really don’t have much information about those first five years. But presumably, if he was feeling the need to go raiding, he was trying to keep his men happy and maybe stop some of the back-biting – ‘You’re not doing anything. You’re not very good’.

Anyway, he comes a cropper and comes back to Scotland, and almost immediately, as far as we can tell, he either decides to try and get over this terrible humiliation by picking on someone else, or he hears that there are moves up in the north to oust him. Whatever. We know that Duncan took a small army, probably by boats, so we’re not talking thousands and thousands of men, which these battles tend not to be anyway, they’re more like war bands. He takes some boats up to around Lossiemouth and comes out. 

Macbeth obviously has heard that Duncan is coming after him, for whatever reason. Whether Macbeth had made it known that he was after the throne, or whether Duncan just wanted to show that he was capable of being a warrior king, we know that they met near Spynie Castle as it is now – a place called Pitgaveny – between Elgin, Lossiemouth and just a wee bit inland. There was a battle and Duncan was killed.

So, if you’re a thinking person in the Middle Ages, you would conclude that God didn’t think very much of King Duncan either, because he’d awarded the victory to his distant cousin Macbeth.

[JB]
So, he was not stabbed by Macbeth in his sleep. There are no daggers that Macbeth can see before him. That is how he died.

[FW]
That is how he died. Duncan is probably younger than Macbeth, certainly could be the same age – but he’s certainly not an old venerable man who was killed under trust in Macbeth’s own castle. This is all nonsense, but as I say, it’s Scottish nonsense. Shakespeare obviously made it into something universal and amazing.

[JB]
Macbeth, then, is in his late 40s, and despite claiming that obviously Shakespeare exaggerated a lot of his character, he’s pretty ambitious. He’s finally got what he wanted. 

[FW]
As far as we can tell. We don’t know if it was self-defence because Duncan came after him, or whether Macbeth was using the defeat in Northumbria to make good on his claim to the throne – a claim to the throne that his father and his cousins had failed to do anything about.

We certainly know that in 1040, around the age of 40, quite late really, Macbeth becomes king. But we also know that there is a three-week hiatus between the death of Duncan in the north and Macbeth’s inauguration at Scone. Now, of course, it takes a wee bit of time to get your best clothes together and get down from the north. But you could also imagine that there would be a bit of negotiating, because Macbeth taking the throne isn’t straightforward. He’s not particularly well known, as far as we can tell, in Alba/Scotland proper. He’ll need to be talking to people and saying, I’m a good guy; I’ll look after your interests; you can trust me. 

But the other thing is, given that Duncan’s wife and his two sons who do feature in Shakespeare – that’s Malcolm and Donalbain, which you will remember from the play – they flee, as you would expect, because they’re not going to survive for long otherwise.

And they probably, rather than the Shakespearean story of them going to England, almost certainly they went north to Orkney, where again they had relatives. So, as far as Macbeth is concerned, there really isn’t anybody else, which is quite handy. Malcolm II had done such a good job at getting rid of any claimants that Macbeth actually had a pretty good run to begin with, because there really wasn’t anybody to challenge him.

[JB]
How does Macbeth rule? Is he a good king?

[FW]
Well, this is the thing. He is! The Chronicles – OK, it’s hard to tell how contemporary they are – but we do seem to have a praise poet. He’s getting paid to praise; it’s in the name. They’re not going to come out with, well, he’s a bit naff or he’s a bit stingy – although sometimes they do say that. But Macbeth’s praise poet had nothing but praise that this was a time of peace and prosperity, and he was a very generous king. And that seems to be corroborated by more than one source, even after he was dead.

I think even climatically – we know that in England and elsewhere, there are very bad harvests, there are bitterly cold winters – and we can’t imagine that Scotland would have not got that. But nonetheless, because there seems to have been peace, because we didn’t have these war bands within Scotland rampaging on behalf of a would-be king or for the current king. That probably in itself was great for the rest of Scotland, who probably didn’t much care who was king as long as they left them alone.

So, we do have this impression that Macbeth ruled well and ruled wisely. If his wife Grouch is the first named queen in Scotland, Macbeth is the only king of Scots to do something quite amazing, which is to make a pilgrimage to Rome.

[JB]
Why did he do that?

[FW]
Well, I think in the first place, the great English/Danish king Canute of the Waves – a very, very great ruler maybe 20-odd years earlier – had made a very successful pilgrimage to Rome, which had really … The southern Europeans didn’t think much of northern kingship and they were quite impressed with Canute.

Canute had spread alms to the poor, scattered coins for the poor, which is what you’re supposed to do, both when he arrived in Rome and when he left. Most people only do it once. Canute was there showing off that I am an impressive, wealthy man about Rome; a Christian king.

I think that a lot of northern kings saw that and thought, oh, yeah, that’s something we should do. So, Macbeth may just have been wanting to do that. I don’t think we need to do anything particularly sinister into his going here in terms of expiation of sins. Yes, he had blood on his hands, but who didn’t in this period? 

[JB]
I think it probably shows how settled he felt because, as you say, anyone who had a claim on the throne Malcolm had already done for, and he must have felt pretty confident in himself and his rule.

[FW]
You’re absolutely right. Given that a pilgrimage to Rome in this period would take a minimum – and that’s with the winds in the right direction – of six months, if not the best part of a year. You could not imagine even Malcolm II making that journey because things were just too unsettled. So, yes, this really does attest to the fact that Malcolm II had done a good job in bumping off all competitors, but Macbeth himself had not gone after anybody. He’d said, Look, this is the time to make the most of peace. I’m not going to start any wars unless you want to pick a fight with me.

[JB]
I have to confess at this point, Fiona, I’m beginning to become a little bit more sympathetic with old Shakespeare because we have Macbeth as a kind and bountiful king with a nice lady wife. He’s good to the poor. He goes on a pilgrimage, he rules well, he comes back. Can we jump to the juicy bits?!

[FW]
I was gonna say, boring!

[JB]
Right, how did he meet his demise? 

[FW]
Well, we’ve mentioned Lulach, who was Grouch’s (Macbeth’s wife’s) son by her first marriage. Lulach – we’ve no proof of this – but probably looked after Scotland while Macbeth was away on pilgrimage to Rome.

[JB]
And is there some suggestion that he encouraged Macbeth to retire?

[FW]
Well, you could imagine that conversation! Do you really want to be doing this, Macbeth? And Macbeth going, do you know what? It’s maybe time for the younger man. There is precedent in Scottish history for that. He either goes for a round of golf or perhaps retires to a monastery. Who knows? But certainly there is the suggestion that Lulach became king, and that was unfortunate for Lulach because it’s precisely at this point that a serious challenger to the throne reappears in the form of Malcolm, Duncan’s son, who, if you remember, had been brought up in Orkney.

[JB]
So, he comes back. Lulach is effectively king. Macbeth, sort of sidelined, enjoying his retirement – golf club, nice life. There’s a battle …

[FW]
There’s a battle, yes, in the North East on the boundary of Moray and Aberdeenshire at a place called Essie. There is a suggestion Malcolm arrived with his brother-in-law, who’s a Norwegian nobleman, and they’re just looking for trouble. They think they might invade England, but Malcolm persuades the Norwegians to come to Scotland first. It looks as if perhaps Malcolm arranged to have a little discussion with Lulach, and while they were treating, Lulach was killed.

There is some suggestion in the Chronicles that this was done under trust, that it was a heinous act. It wasn’t in a battle particularly. Anyway, Lulach’s dead. That doesn’t mean, of course, that everyone’s going, oh thank goodness Malcolm’s back, that’s great. They weren’t.

And if this order is correct, then there is a hiatus where presumably Malcolm is trying to build up some support. And poor old Macbeth goes, oh crikey, what did I do with my armour? He gears up to do something about this challenge to his line, because although Lulach does have a son, he’s not old enough at this point to become king or do anything helpful. So, it’s down to Macbeth again. 

[JB]
Once more into the breach. No, that’s confusing! 

[FW]
That’s a different one! Absolutely! So, Macbeth has to go north or come out from Moray, wherever the heck he was, and he goes to meet Duncan. He meets him at a place called Lumphanan, again in Aberdeenshire. And this time he does not survive. This time, Malcolm wins.

[JB]
So, finally, finally, Macbeth is done for. Listeners, I hope you’re following this! I said at the beginning it’s a complicated period in history. 

[FW]
It’s terrible, isn’t it?

[JB]
As a result, after 17 years on the throne, the short-lived dynasty of the Moray dynasty ends and it’s back to the Malcolm line. Do you think that now you’ve done your bit in your book, do you think we will ever be able to divorce the real Macbeth from the story of this nasty piece of work? Is there some revisionism beginning? Is there a push back?

[FW]
No, no, not at all. I don’t think anybody’s really that interested in the real king. Maybe it is because he’s boring! Maybe it is because the Scots don’t like success. They want the turmoil and the turbulent. The English like to think of us as completely at each other’s throats. And I always say, well, have a look at English history. No, I think Macbeth isn’t selling any plays or books or whatever. And Shakespeare, he’s such a master. The human nature that he reveals in Macbeth and Lady Macbeth is so powerful, so beautifully written that nothing will ever dislodge that. 

I wish more Scots did know. Many Scots do, and particularly up in Moray, I think there’s a great pride in the positive aspects of Macbeth as King of Scots. But I think most of Scotland and the rest of the world doesn’t care. Give us Shakespeare every time.

[JB]
Well, I think you have certainly made your point that he is the most maligned king in Scotland’s history. Fiona, thank you for taking us through it and for rehabilitating. 

[FW]
I think you need a good lie down now!

[JB]
I think I do! Fiona’s book, Macbeth: a True Story by Fiona Watson, is published by Quercus.

And if you love your history, you’ll know that the National Trust for Scotland looks after some of our most famous historical landmarks, so they are preserved for generations to come. We couldn’t do it without your support, your membership and your donations. So, thank you.

In the meantime, I’ll be back with another episode of Love Scotland very soon. Just hit the button to subscribe and you’ll never miss an episode. Until next time, goodbye. 

And to hear more about the king Shakespeare was trying to impress with his tale of Macbeth, have a search in our archive for another podcast entitled ‘James VI & I: Wise Man or Fool’.

[SV]
The reason his popularity started to fade was that when he’d been trying to game the system, when he’d been trying to win the English crown, win support for it, he’d made quite a lot of promises to people – that when he became king, he didn’t keep.

[MV]
Love Scotland is brought to you by Think and Demus Productions on behalf of the National Trust for Scotland; presented by Jackie Bird. For show notes and more information, go to nts.org.uk and don’t forget to like, subscribe, review and share.

Transcript

Eight speakers: male voiceover [MV]; archive newsreader [AN]; archive song [AS]; Jackie Bird [JB]; Shania Buckley [SB]; Lynn Abrams [LA]; second male voiceover [MV2]; Harriet Richardson Blakeman [HRB]

[MV]
Love Scotland, brought to you from the National Trust for Scotland; presented by Jackie Bird.

[AN]
The raids go on. Glasgow is the latest city to come under the fire of Nazi bombers by night. Once again, we see the trail of destruction that follows the path of this war started by Hitler in his ambition to rule the world. It was the first big attack on this great city of Scotland. 

Out of the dust and smoke there rises a new determination. Each time we live through such experiences, we harden our resolve that Germany shall never again be able to plunge the world in misery.

[AS]
We’re going to hang out the washing on the Siegfried Line. 
Have you any dirty washing, mother dear?

[JB]
History is made up of stories of the exceptional and of the mundane, and today – as part of our series marking 80 years since the end of World War II – we’re looking at life on the Home Front, specifically through the experiences of an ordinary woman during this extraordinary period.

Agnes Toward lived in Glasgow, the city featured in that newsreel. Her home, the National Trust for Scotland’s Tenement House, is where I am today. It consists of four rooms which have been frozen in time. Luckily for us, Agnes was a prolific collector of ephemera, and it all remained in this remarkable time capsule.

The Second World War sparked a period of great challenges and change for civilians. Much of what we see in the ‘stiff upper lip’ movies made at the time was carefully choreographed to keep up morale. But delving into Agnes’s treasure trove of memories reveals life on the Home Front may have been resilient, but it was also a complex and scary time.

So, to discuss not just Agnes’s experiences, but what life was like more generally, I’m joined by the Trust’s Shania Buckley, who’s based here at Tenement House, and by Lynn Abrams, Professor of Modern History at the University of Glasgow. Hello, and welcome to you both.

[SB]
Hello Jackie, nice to be here. 

[JB]
Thank you for joining us as we go back in time. I think really we should get a flavour of the room that we are in and this extraordinary building. Shania, can you do that for me? 

[SB]
Yeah, of course. We’re currently in the parlour, which is the good room of the house. Some of the pieces that are in here include the writing bureau from 1750 as well as some horsehair armchairs and balloon-back chairs. And we also have a lovely view into the bed closet that was banned in 1900. 

[JB]
A tiny little cupboard with a bed inside. Now, what we also have here, which Agnes didn’t have, is the distant sound of a massive great motorway outside the windows, because there would have been a building almost within touching distance during Agnes’s time. Now, Shania, you’ve spent a lot of time reading through Agnes’s work. She kept everything – her letters, her diaries. What sort of woman do you think she was?

[SB]
I think … Agnes, obviously she lived until she was 89 years old, so she had different phases in her life. And just from reading some of her letters, she seems to be such a kind and considerate person. She had a lot of friends who kept in contact with her throughout her life – some who moved to Canada, some who moved to London. And she often holidayed in Largs and Kent, and they were always quite happy to hear from her and thanking her for little gifts and things like that. So, she was just quite a nice person and she had a really full and happy life. 

[JB]
She was born in 1886, so she was 53 when the Second World War broke out. Her widowed mother – also helpfully called Agnes – she’d lived with her, but she died in 1939. Agnes Junior, I was thinking about it, she had been an adult during World War I, so she was of a generation that knew of the potential horrors to come – and the fact that World War I was supposed to be the war that ended all wars. That must have been an awful thing to think about, Lynn.

[LA]
Yeah, I think people really had an understanding of what total war was. And of course, the First World War was devastating and completely destructive. So many young men went off to war and didn’t come back. We don’t know, but that might be one of the reasons why Agnes never married – because there was a shortage of men. And I’d rather say that than a surplus of women, as is often described. But there was a shortage of men in the interwar years, and so many women of Agnes’s age wouldn’t have had the opportunity to marry.

[JB]
When you think about it, there must have been an innocence in 1914 – and certainly not an innocence in 1939. Many people in society just knew what they were in for.

[LA]
Well, yes, and of course by the 1940s, by 1939, they knew what they were in for, but they didn’t really have an understanding of the war on the Home Front, because most of the First World War had happened overseas, but it hadn’t come home.

[JB]
Absolutely, and that’s what we’re going to be focusing on today – a lot of those differences and a lot of the very real fear that they felt in the Second World War, because they were expecting invasion; they were fearful of gas attacks. What sort of things do you have in front of you, Shania?

[SB]
We have a lot of things from our archive. Agnes kept, as we know, everything – including from a newspaper, it’s Beating the Invader as a title. And so, ‘Stand Firm’ was obviously something that was told by the government to the people. One of the things that is mentioned in this, it says ‘What do I do if fighting breaks out in my neighbourhood?’ And just a little snippet of this says: ‘Keep indoors or in your shelter until the battle is over. If you can, have a trench ready in your garden or field, so much the better.’

[JB]
What I hadn’t considered, and looking at all the officialdom that’s in front of us, is how households were inundated. A huge information initiative swung into action. And it covered everything from what to do if there’s fighting outside your house to infectious diseases.

[SB]
Infectious disease, that’s another thing that we have. It’s a whole pamphlet that we have here. It is titled as Urgent and it is on the prevention, recognition and restriction of infectious diseases. This just goes through a lot of different diseases such as measles, whooping cough, influenza, scarlet fever and infantile diarrhoea. There was a lot of things that people had to worry about.

[JB]
To get back to Agnes, now she was a working woman. She was a shorthand typist?

[SB]
She was a shorthand typist and she started working in 1907 for a shipping company called Miller & Richards. And then in 1914, at the time of the First World War, she started working for Prentice, Service & Henderson until her retirement in 1960. And she boasts that she could write at 120 words per minute!

[JB]
That’s not bad going!

[SB]
And 50 words a minute if she was typing.

[JB]
And Lynn, we know that in the First World War, many women took up jobs that had been held by the men who’d gone off to war. I presume the situation was the same in the Second World War, but on a bigger scale?

[LA]
It was, although women weren’t conscripted until 1941, and then only women …

[JB]
Did you know, I did not know women were conscripted! A horrible gap in my knowledge.

[LA]
It’s interesting it wasn’t until 1941 actually, because you might have expected it to be earlier than that, and then only women between the ages of 20 and 30 and women who didn’t have young or dependent children. So, it’s not all women. And Agnes was already working, so she would have already been in a job … and a job I suppose was regarded as relevant to the war effort.

[SB]
Yeah, of course, in a shipping company. 

[LA]
If she’d been younger and if she’d been conscripted, then she would have had the choice to have either joined up to the auxiliary forces – all the three main armed forces had auxiliary women’s units – or she could have worked in a civilian occupation. So, it could have been in a munitions factory; it could have been in the civil service; it could have been on the buses or trams. 

[JB]
A lot of women were actually working in the heavy industries; they went into shipbuilding, to the steel mill. 

[LA]
They did. In Glasgow, what happened there was that because the women had not been trained – they hadn’t had long apprenticeships in order to learn how to work those jobs in, let’s say, shipbuilding – they broke up the jobs into jobs that women could do. They divided up jobs into the constituent parts. 

That caused all sorts of problems, because at the end of the war men came back, and there was a real fear that they would come back to jobs that had been devalued and they would be paid less for them. But certainly, women did a fantastic job in munitions factories and in the shipyards and so on.

[SB]
I think it’s quite interesting too, because even on the street, Agnes would have gotten coal delivered to this flat. Obviously, men were being drafted to war, and we do have some knowledge that the coal man’s daughter on the street actually took over. So, that’s really interesting to consider. 

[JB]
Wow. That is an impressive job to do.

[SB]
That’s a heavy, strong job. 

[JB]
And they were preparing, as we’ve said, for an invasion. The literature is fantastic, if not terrifying, because if I was a woman like Agnes living on my own, and these things kept coming through the letterbox … What else have you got for us, Shania?

[SB]
It must have been really frightening. Agnes did have a lot of pamphlets, as we said. This war emergency information and instructions, details on identity labels. A paragraph from here says: ‘You should carry about with you your full name and address clearly written. This should be on an envelope, card or luggage label, not on some odd piece of paper easily lost. In the case of children, a label should be sewn onto their clothes in such a way that it cannot easily come off.’ Things like that would have been scary – to have to identify yourself. 

[JB]
Something about carrying a tag, there’s something scary about that. There was, as we all know and from the clip we heard at the beginning of the programme, that threat from the air. Now, that’s something obviously that really hadn’t been a major fear in the First World War for places like Scotland.

[LA]
No, not really. But come 1941, it was a really serious threat. Anywhere that had heavy industry or had shipyards was under attack during the Blitz, and Glasgow was included in that.

[SB]
Some of the information that Agnes had was about air raids and information on how to deal with those. Just from memory, I read one of those and it did say if you were walking to work, just continue to walk to work because you needed to get to safety. And obviously walking to work, you don’t know where safety is. Things like that, you just have to keep on living.

[JB]
Women specifically, because, as I say, we’re dealing with Agnes’s life, they were asked, Lynn, to shoulder responsibility, I would imagine, like they never had before. 

[LA]
They had to deal with all the privations of war. If they had children, they were having to deal with the children. They were having to deal with rationing, plus all the normal stuff that women have to deal with actually – you know, the burden of keeping a home, maybe working, and so on and so forth.

And we know that that the wartime was really stressful for women. We know from other women’s diaries that women were extremely stressed and felt extreme strain, particularly during air raids and the fear of another air raid that night.

We know from Nella Last’s diary – she wrote a diary from Barrow in Furness, which was another target of German bombers – that she suffered extreme headaches all the way through the Blitz. Because every night you would hear the planes come over; every night you would hear the bombs drop. You would get up in the morning – you might have tiles off your roof or your windows might have blown out. It’s so scary. And then you think it might happen the next night as well. She had a shelter in her dining room, but we’re not sure what Agnes did for the air raids …

[SB]
Because Agnes lived in the Tenement House building, there was no basement and there was no bunker out in the back to our knowledge. She did actually live quite close by, in walking distance, to both St George’s Cross subway station and Cowcaddens subway station. So, it is quite possible that she would have walked over there, maybe took shelter there.

But we do have some writing from a friend of hers, who had to deal with the air raids, that I can read out. She does mention, and I quote: ‘As your address is still the same, I take it you were carrying on the house yourself? I hope you have some company and are not living alone.’ And then she does continue to talk about how she dealt with the air raids herself. 

[JB]
And she’s living in London, which bore the brunt of course. 

[SB]
They mentioned about how at night time it was terrifying. In the daytime it wasn’t too bad; of course, it was still awful, but thankfully Agnes continued to have community, especially in the tenement house where she lived. She had friends, neighbours and her colleagues. She had all of that community to count on.

[JB]
And we have a vivid representation of the threat they were living under on the table between us. It’s too fragile for us to take out of its rather austere-looking cardboard box, but it’s Agnes’s gas mask. The government produced 38 million of them, one for every man, woman and child. They must have believed that the threat of some sort of gas attack was real. 

[LA]
They were really concerned because the Germans had used gas in the First World War on the combat front, and so that’s why they felt that there might be a poison gas attack on Britain. That’s why they issued everyone with a gas mask. 

Everyone hated their gas mask and they had to carry it around all the time, but everyone hated it. Apparently, they smelt horrible. They were never used. It had asbestos in it! They were never used. Children were issued with Mickey Mouse gas masks. 

[JB]
Do you know you could buy one for your dog if you so desired? Yes, you could. 

[SB]
You got to keep everyone safe! 

[JB]
And just having that on your person all the time, that must have increased the psychological …

[LA]
It’s hard to know, isn’t it? It’s really hard to know because my guess is that over time people got used to it. They did gradually get used to it. War weariness set in; human resilience. Fed up with the war, they really wanted it to come to an end, by about 1942.

[JB]
Well, talking about life going on, Agnes’s life sort of went on because she went on holiday during the war. Where did she go?

[SB]
She did, yeah. She mostly holidayed in Largs and Kent. 

[JB]
That’s Largs on the west coast of Scotland, so that’s not too far away from here. It’s by the sea.

[SB]
No, it’s quite close by, and I think that’s why she liked it so much. We even have a recipe of apple and bramble jelly that she wrote, and she collected the apples mentioned in Largs. It was 1941, so it was the time of the war. A lot of recipes in homemaking. I think it was quite comforting to her. Even despite her holidaying, she was still trying to keep rationing.

[JB]
How austere was the rationing?

[SB]
It was quite intense. 

[LA]
Not everything was rationed, so fruit and vegetables weren’t rationed, but they weren’t really very available. And of course, there’s those stories about oranges and bananas, and people not actually believing that oranges and bananas existed by the end of the war because they hadn’t seen one. 

[SB]
But then things like 1 egg per person a week. 

[JB]
A week?

[SB]
A week. 

[JB]
Oh, I like my eggs. 

[LA]
Or you could have one packet of powdered egg for a month. 

[JB]
She has lots of recipes. They don’t sound too great. 

[SB]
We have tried some, and one of them was shortbread, and I wasn’t working here at the time, but I was told that it tasted horrific. But then, there’s a lot of other recipes that tasted absolutely fine. So, it was all just about making do with what you had. Agnes has a lot of things, even for clothing – the campaign Make-Do and Mend, and the character of Mrs Sew-and-Sew. 

[JB]
And fuel was rationed, so you couldn’t just take off if you felt like it really?

[LA]
No, no. I wonder if she went to Largs and to Kent, and that was an opportunity to purchase or have some nicer food actually. Because it would have been quite difficult in Glasgow.

[JB]
Well, Agnes wasn’t the only one on the move because we’re going to take a quick break and when we come back, we’ll talk about evacuees. And if you thought it was all rosy-cheeked city kids becoming at one with the countryside, then you, like me, are in for a surprise.

[MV2]
Impressive. For a moment I thought she was talking about me. I meant Falkland Palace, she said with a smile. Course you did. The art, the architecture – Scotland’s history can really turn your head. So, we signed up to take care of it; keep it looking dapper.

[MV]
Since 1931, the National Trust for Scotland, a charity supported by you, has been looking after Scotland’s treasured places so we can all share in them. Support us at nts.org.uk

[JB]
Welcome back to Love Scotland. Today we’re at the Tenement House in Glasgow talking about the Home Front during World War II with the Trust’s Shania Buckley and Professor Lynn Abrams from the University of Glasgow.

We talked earlier about air raids, and I’ve got some figures here. It’s estimated that 2,500 Scots were killed in air raids, but the most devastating one was the infamous Clydebank Blitz. I think that was 1941, when 1,200 people were killed over a couple of nights and 1,000 injured. So, you would imagine that people with families were growing scared as the war progressed and then evacuations. Now, Lynn, as I hinted at, it wasn’t entirely a storybook initiative.

[LA]
No, it wasn’t. But evacuation started much earlier than the air raids. People registered to evacuate their children in 1939, right at the very beginning of the war. And lots of children – and sometimes children with their mothers – were evacuated really very quickly in the first weeks and months of the war.

If we think about Glasgow, some went privately. If you had family in the country, if you knew someone to go to, then perhaps you would go there and stay with your relatives for a while. Others were sent as part of the government initiative, and they would be sent out of Glasgow to places like Argyll.

But as we know, at the beginning of the war there was a bit of a phony war. Nothing really happened, and a lot of them came back. They didn’t really want to be living away from their friends and family, and they came back to Glasgow. But numbers did stay and additional went, particularly when the air raids were underway.

For some children, it was wonderful. They were sent out of the city. They loved country life; they had lovely foster families. Some had never seen farm animals and so on and so forth. And some of them had a wonderful time. For others, it was much more difficult. For those who went with their mothers, you can imagine a mother and her children staying with another big family … You can imagine the friction that might have happened in those houses where you’ve got two mothers and lots of children. So, that was very different and those often broke down.

There were also difficulties with finding homes for the children when the children were evacuated when they were on their own. Particularly children from places like Glasgow, working-class kids who didn’t look like country kids, who turned up in often very poor clothing with hardly anything with them. They might have had nits in their hair; they didn’t wash very often. That was working-class life in Glasgow. But that really often rubbed up against the practices of people who took them in in the countryside. 

[JB]
There was a sort of clash of cultures. I didn’t know that in some of the rural areas there were campaigns to send families back.

[LA]
Yeah, there were. I think it was all very difficult. 

[JB]
And that’s something you don’t see in the movies that were, as I said in the introduction, for propaganda; they were for morale. 

I think Agnes, in some of the clippings I saw, she was very wary of the threat of communism, which was pretty widespread. We can’t obviously know what she was thinking, and we don’t know what every newspaper clipping she kept was for, but it’s still quite interesting because it was quite relevant at the time. 

[JB]
There was also something called a Mass Observation project, which also sounds Orwellian. What was that?

[LA]
It wasn’t Orwellian at all, and we still have Mass Observation today, actually based at the University of Sussex. But Mass Observation was set up in the 1930s as a kind of sociological, anthropological project to observe the daily lives and record the daily lives of people in Great Britain. But they did send out people during the war to observe what was happening during the Second World War at the everyday level, at the street level, really. 

[JB]
How did they keep tabs on it, Lynn?

[LA]
Well, the Ministry of Information was in charge of supplying information to the populace, but also trying to supply propaganda, it must be said, and also keeping morale high. Probably people would be familiar with all the posters that would go up in public areas and in trams and buses and so on, telling people how to behave. But we also know that the government in some ways tried to keep people’s emotions in check, so that people were stoic, did not become hysterical when people were lost. People kept their emotions to themselves, and so on and so forth.

[JB]
And on that note, I’ve found an excellent book. It’s called Scottish Society in the Second World War, Lynn, and it’s a study by Michelle Moffat and it actually puts flesh on the bones of what the government was worried about, because (I’ll read a bit) it says: 

‘At the peak of subversive activity in Scotland in March 1941, the Ministry of Information commissioned an investigation into morale in Glasgow specifically. The resulting report laid bare the extent of the situation there. The lack of close identification with “the English war” is clearly a dangerous tension, wrote the Ministry investigators. Locals talk about the South and London as if they were in another war or another country.’

Now, the book does say that those differences did tail off later in the year, but it’s interesting to know that there were contrasting perspectives.

[LA]
Hmm. Probably Glasgow would have been the place where they would have noticed that so-called subversive behaviour with its history of left-wing activism, membership of Communist Party, socialism, activism within the docks and so on.

[JB]
Meanwhile, Shania, Agnes, like many others, their worries were very, very human. They weren’t talking about the big picture. She was keeping abreast of what was happening on various war fronts.  She actually bought a wireless just at the outbreak of war.

[SB]
In 1940 she bought the wireless – it cost her over £9. That was about 3 weeks’ wages, so she obviously really wanted to keep up to date with the war or just general news. We don’t know the exact reason she bought it, but the timing is quite clear that it might be to do with the war.

[JB]
And she didn’t lose anyone close to her in the war, or we don’t think so?

[SB]
In the Second World War, not to our knowledge; but in the First World War while her mother was still alive, living with her, Agnes Toward was quite close with a man called William Wood. He unfortunately was missing in action in 1916 and presumed dead. We don’t know their relationship, but it could be a possibility that maybe it was an old flame of hers. So, definitely going into the Second World War, she would have been feeling all of that loss again of William. 

[JB]
The National War Museum in Edinburgh has the name of 57,000 Scots who died in the Second World War, but it’s widely suggested that that figure is much higher and the impact of death on that scale on so many families must have been absolutely terrible.

On the other hand, dealing with that, it was transformative for women for all the reasons that we have dealt with, Lynn.

[LA]
It could be transformative for women, particularly those who were entering into the workforce at this time – younger women, middle-aged women who may have got to do jobs that they would never have been able to do before or got to put on a uniform and become part of the war effort. They got to travel, they got to meet people, got to meet very different people. So, it’s really quite transformational for that generation.

[JB]
What did they take with them post-war?

[LA]
There’s a really interesting story about women’s work in the Second World War because it looks as if everything changes in relation to women in the workplace. The government makes it easier in some respects for women to work. It provides workplace nurseries. There are a lot of workplace nurseries that are set up. Most of those close down at the end of the war or maybe just keep going for a little while. So, there was a great opportunity to really change things for women, to allow them to have a career and have a family.

Women really never got paid the same as men during the Second World War; for the most part, women left the labour force and went back to the home, or they stayed in jobs that were unsatisfying or they really didn’t enable them to have careers. Things only really start to change in the 1960s with the next generation.

[JB]
 Who’d lived through the war as children. Would that have had any impact?

[LA]
I don’t think it did. It might have had an impact from the point of view of their mothers. It was their mothers who’d been born before the war, who’d lived through the Second World War, who had really become those stoic women, those self-sacrificing women who’d given up everything for the country, for their family.

They’ve been told to keep their emotions in check and they still really adhered to many of the moral attitudes and attitudes towards sexual division of labour right the way through into the 50s and early 60s. It’s their daughters that really change. It’s their daughters who had the opportunities in the 60s.

[SB]
Thinking about the change that happened, a lot to do with beauty and fashion and what they would have seen, even the bright red lipstick, that was something that Britain especially pushed. It was just be seen as a brave face and looking your best.

Whereas, say, in Germany that was the exact opposite. It was all about natural beauty and being the homeworker. So, I think being the children of those women in Britain, it would have been quite powerful to see that change. 

[JB]
And as for Agnes, she lived through the war and went on to continue working for a very long time.

[SB]
Agnes did work for a long time and she retired at the age of 73, so that’s quite a long time to be working. Sadly, she did go into a hospital 5 years after her retirement for 10 years. But, she was a working woman and she kept that up.

[JB]
How old was she when she died?

[SB]
She was 89 when she died.

[JB]
And she left this fabulous treasure trail for us. Is there anything within it that can give us an insight into what she thought of the war?

[SB]
Yeah, so we thankfully do have one letter where she is after lending a book to her friend. The book was titled Mr Wu. And in the letter, she mentions about how she hopes that the Brotherhood of Man will continue with that sense of community, which is something that she could only hope for.

[JB]
Oh, that’s nice. That’s a lovely note on which to end. Shania Buckley and Professor Lynn Abrams, thank you very much for your time and your insights today. And Professor Abrams’ book Feminist Lives: Women, Feelings and the Self in Post-War Britain is published by Oxford University Press.

If you’d like to learn more about Agnes and her mother and about life during such a significant chunk of the 20th century, please come and visit Tenement House. I’m sure it will spark a memory or two. You can find all the details on opening times on the National Trust for Scotland website. It’s here and looked after because of your membership and donations.

And that’s all from Love Scotland for now. To never miss an episode, just hit the subscribe button where you found this podcast and they’ll be delivered to you. I’ll be back very soon, but for now, goodbye.

And if you’d like to hear more stories of Trust properties during times of war, dip into our archive and search out an episode called ‘Scotland in the First World War: The homes that became hospitals.’

[HRB]
The War Office had underestimated the number of beds that they were going to need. They had estimated something like 50,000 war-wounded were likely or were possible, which sounds a lot. And so eventually there were about 200 that the Red Cross were operating in Scotland.

[MV]
Love Scotland is brought to you by Think and Demus Productions on behalf of the National Trust for Scotland; presented by Jackie Bird. For show notes and more information, go to nts.org.uk and don’t forget to like, subscribe, view and share. 

Transcript

Five voices: male voiceover [MV]; Jackie Bird [JB]; Claire Russell [CR]; Jean Glately [JG]; Simon Welfare [SW]

[MV]
Love Scotland, presented by Jackie Bird.

[JB]
Today I’m in the heart of rural Aberdeenshire, before me the mansion of Haddo House. A fusion of gorgeous Georgian architecture and opulent Victorian interiors, the house is fronted by lawns and terrace gardens, with its sprawling estate beyond.

Standing here, it’s easy to imagine Haddo in its heyday when royals, prime ministers and all the dignitaries of the day came to enjoy its lavish hospitality. But there was a time when Haddo was more state than stately. And today, as part of our series looking at the war years of National Trust for Scotland properties, we’re going to find out how this magnificent family home became a makeshift maternity hospital. Over those war years, it offered refuge to women from across Scotland fleeing Hitler’s bombs. They gave birth to a special group of infants forever known as Haddo Babies. 

[sound of a baby crying]

Well, the interiors of Haddo do not disappoint. I’m now in a spectacular drawing room. The walls are lined with gold-framed portraits, gold leaf on the plasterwork, a magnificent chandelier in the centre of the room. And I’m joined by Claire Russell, whose job it is to tell Haddo’s stories to visitors and who’s been delving into Haddo’s war history and how astonishing those years were. Tell me a bit about the background to the hospital. Whose idea was it and to make it a maternity hospital rather than just, say, a hospital for troops who had come off the Front?

[CR]
It was the idea of the 2nd Marquess of Aberdeen, George. Everyone called him Uncle Doddie. He wanted to do something for the war. He thought it would be a nice idea to have mums and babies here as a place for peace, for them to come safely to have their babies.

[JB]
How old was George roughly at that time?

[CR]
He would have been in his 60s, I believe at this point. 

[JB]
There are photographs of him with a grey beard, greying hair. He looks like a kindly gentleman. He just looks like that. 

[CR]
He was a very, very kind man. He loved babies. He would greet the mothers every single morning. He would give every baby born a silver sixpence, which in those days was actually quite a lot of money, and he gifted the 1,000th baby born a bond certificate.

[JB]
So, he didn’t have a family of his own?

[CR]
No, he didn’t have any children. He married a woman that was much older than him, but he was renowned in the family as loving children, loving babies. 

[JB]
I know that he had a little welcome speech that he used for the arrival of the groups of women who came here. I have a copy of a bit of it. Let me just read it. He says: ‘We need more men to win this war. And now, thank heaven, the manpower problem will be eased, and you will help Mr Bevan.’ Clearly the ladies who were assembled. ‘Another thing I’d like to say is this: in Aberdeen we’re all supposed to be stingy and so mean, and I’m glad to see that you help keep that spirit alive because 50 of you travelled on that train with tickets for 25!’ Clearly a reference to the expectant mothers. ‘So now I hope you’ll all settle down and be quite happy here, and I will be here to welcome you when you return next year.’ I presume that got a bit of a nervous laugh from the ladies!

[CR]
It would have done, yes.

[JB]
What did it take to turn this house and elegant rooms like this into a sort of semi-clinical ward?

[CR]
It would have taken a lot of effort; it wouldn’t have been easy. They would have had to remove all the furniture in this part of the house. Uncle Doddie would have stayed completely in the south wing. So, he gave up this square part of the house and the north wing completely to the mothers and the midwives and the doctors.

You’d have had to empty all the rooms. You would have had to buy beds, mattresses, any equipment that would have been needed. There are notes from Uncle Doddie to the Health Office asking for a sink to be placed into the house. Even changing furniture and furnishings like that was part of it as well. 

[JB]
So, there was a huge upheaval for the family. A lot of planning went into this. I understand that he had written to the War Office in June of that year, and war wasn’t declared until the September.

[CR]
That’s right; he would have written to the Health Office, and they would have had to approve him first before he would have been allowed to turn his home into a maternity home. 

[JB]
And Haddo wasn’t immediately a success. When did it open for business? When was the first baby born?

[CR]
It opened for business on 1 September 1939, which is 2 days before the war started. Mothers started to arrive from 5 September. The first baby born at Haddo was on 20 September.

[JB]
Was it always aimed at women from the Central Belt and the cities, who were expected to undergo the worst of the bombings?

[CR]
Yes, it was aimed primarily for Glasgow mums. They believed Glasgow was going to be heavily bombed during the Second World War, so they aimed it for those mums particularly.

[JB]
And I understand the mums initially were reluctant to come here, which you can sort of understand, can’t you?

[CR]
That’s right, they didn’t want to come up to Haddo. Haddo was very quiet, which they weren’t used to. There weren’t restaurants, the cinema; there weren’t shops. It was very boring from what they were used to in Glasgow. Their families also weren’t here. If you had mums that already had children, they were coming quite a fair bit away to spend time at Haddo before they had their baby. So, they were quite reluctant. A lot of them would have said no to begin with, or they just didn’t like their time here.

[JB]
So, you had 27 babies born here in 1939.

[CR]
That’s right, yes. 27 in 4 months.

[JB]
And how did it progress after that?

[CR]
We had 11 babies born in 1940. That was the year that the house actually closed down for 8 months.

[JB]
Why was that?

[CR]
Because no mothers were coming. Glasgow hadn’t been bombed at that point. They thought it was a waste of time, a waste of money. The mothers decided not to come up and use this space, so they closed the house down. 

[JB]
I suppose you also have to remember that at that time, almost the majority of babies were being born in the home. So, not only to come so far away from home without your husband – if he was doing war work – and without your family, to surroundings that were just so alien, and to a house like this, a house the like of perhaps you’d never seen.

[CR]
Yes, it is a very, very grand house. It’s a mansion house. It was the home to the Earls and Marquesses of Aberdeen. It’d have been very, very different to what the pregnant mothers would have been used to from Glasgow. 

[JB]
We had 27 babies born in 1939; 1940, not so many. There was a bit of a hiatus. The house closed, as you say. When did things change and why?

[CR]
When Glasgow got bombed, the Clydebank Blitz, that changed things for Haddo. We had 239 babies born in 1941; 146 in 1942. However, in 1943 we had 426 babies born.

[JB]
Where did the medical staff come from?

[CR]
Some midwives were new; they were just trained – trained during the war to come here. You would have had more experienced midwives, but they would have come from all over Scotland. Some midwives were new to this as well, coming here to the country, coming into a home like this; it wasn’t their usual setting. So, they also would have been feeling a little worried, a little scared about coming and doing something like this.

[JB]
And when were the mums brought up here? At what stage in their pregnancy and how long were they expected to stay?

[CR]
They came here in the last month of their pregnancy. They would have spent one month here in the hall, which was used for recreational purposes before the war. And then when they started their labour, the mothers would have walked up from the hall, up the main staircase, up through the second staircase to the bedrooms.

[JB]
They used this room as a sort of recreational area? 

[CR]
They probably would have used this room for recreation, yes.

[JB]
Do we know how they spent their days?

[CR]
It would have been similar to how they would have spent it at home: reading, needlework, knitting would have been a very big pastime, going out for walks … just relaxing, resting really. 

[JB]
There were some unintended consequences – some very good ones – because many of the women had come from perhaps poor, built-up areas; cramped conditions; perhaps the food wasn’t so great. And they found themselves in the middle … I’m just looking outside at the beautiful countryside and the trees. This helped – the clear air here and the good food.

[CR]
Yes, that definitely would have helped. It would have helped with the mothers during their labour because they would have been well fed. Every Wednesday the estate workers would bring fresh rabbit. That would have been a very good source of protein, which would have been very, very helpful during labour. The vegetables that would have been grown on the estate, they would all have been brought in. So, even with your rations, the estate provided for feeding the mothers as well.

[JB]
You said that they had to make their way upstairs to the birthing rooms. Which rooms were used?

[CR]
The rooms used were Prince Albert and Queen Victoria’s. Uncle Doddie is known to have said, ‘If it was good enough for Queen Victoria, it’s good enough for our mothers’. 

[JB]
So, these are rooms where Queen Victoria and her husband stayed?

[CR]
That’s right. Queen Victoria and Prince Albert visited here in 1857.

[JB]
Can we follow in the footsteps of the expectant mothers? [Of course] Can you take us out? Where are we heading first?

[CR]
We’re going to go through into the ante room, take a little shortcut to the staircase. This is the second staircase up to the bedrooms. And as we climb it, you see it’s quite a steep staircase.

[JB]
It certainly is. Again, beautiful centuries-old family paintings adorning the walls and marble busts and intricate plasterwork. But I suppose the ladies who made their way up here had other things to think about.

[CR]
There is one story of a mother that was so far into her labour she stopped on the staircase and the midwife had to push her on to get her up the stairs by saying, ‘You’re going to have your baby on this staircase if you do not move quicker!’ 

[JB]
Just before we leave the landing, midway up the stairs – because I’m quite out of breath myself – is that Uncle Doddie?

[CR]
Yes, there’s a brilliant portrait of Uncle Doddie on the staircase of him looking very kindly in this portrait. It’s a nice one that I do like to point out to any visitors that we have because it does show that he was a kind-looking man.

[JB]
He certainly does. So, we are going to the room where many would have given birth. Now, this is the Prince Albert room.

[CR]
That’s right. If you come this way, we’re going to go left. 

[JB]
A maze of corridors. 

[CR]
And here we are now in Prince Albert’s Room.

[JB]
And very grand it is too, with some beautiful furniture and an astonishingly ornate bed taking centre stage. Now, this bed, I take it, was made for Prince Albert for that visit.

[CR]
The furniture in this room was made for Prince Albert during his visit in 1857, yes. 

[JB]
When the royal couple came to stay, it wasn’t just a lick of paint. 

[CR]
No, the family reportedly spent £6 million in today’s money redoing the house for their visit. 

[JB]
Now, a number of the upstairs bedrooms were used during the war. Do we know how many babies were born, for example, in this room?

[CR]
We don’t know how many were born in each room. Records like that were either not kept or just never recorded. We know in Haddo we had 1,259 babies born between 1939 and 1945.

[JB]
Do we know about the health of the babies? As we’ve heard, a great deal of time and trouble was taken to make it as like a hospital as possible. Were the babies all healthy?

[CR]
When you came here as a mother, you would have had to have been a low-risk pregnancy anyway. So, that would always have been on your side. The fact that you had a good diet while you were here, which was very rare in those days with it being during wartime. So, most of the babies were – well, in fact near all of the babies would have been – healthy babies. There is one story of one baby being born with spina bifida and they got transported straight through to Aberdeen with one of the midwives.

[JB]
And what about the babies who return here? How many have come back?

[CR]
We’ve had loads of babies. We had loads of babies come for the 1987 baby reunion where they came with mothers and the babies being grown up, along with the midwives. Since then, we have them periodically come back. Usually, they’ll let us know and say, ‘I’m a Haddo baby. I would like to come in and see the room where I was born’, and we’re always open to that. Every Haddo baby is welcome here at Haddo, and they do get free entry. 

[JB]
That’s the least you can do! Well, let’s take a quick break at that. And when we come back, we’re going to have a look at that other grand maternity room just next door: the Queen Victoria room, no less. And you never know, we could bump into someone whose relationship with Haddo House goes back a very long way.

[MV]
They say sharing’s caring. Join the National Trust for Scotland and you’ll discover it’s true. Over 100 places, 1,000s of experiences and millions of memories included with every membership.
Historic homes, wild woodland trails, glorious gardens, amazing collections plus some cracking wee cafés. Become a National Trust for Scotland member from just £5.55 a month for a year’s membership to protect, enjoy and share it all.
Join today at nts.org.uk

[JB]
Welcome back to Love Scotland. We’ve been enjoying a tour of Haddo House with Claire Russell, and I am thrilled to say that we are now in Queen Victoria’s room with an even more special visitor: a Haddo baby. Jean Glately, thank you for coming along and can I say welcome home?

[JG]
Yes, you can!

[JB]
There aren’t many people who can visit almost the exact place of their birth – and such an aristocratic one. Let’s go back to 1943. Where was your mum living and how did she end up here?

[JG]
My mum was living with her gran. She lost her mum at the age of 6. After babies were born, it was a rheumatic of the heart – and it was Tollcross.

[JB]
That’s in the East End of Glasgow. So, your mum fell pregnant. She was due to give birth in the early summer of 1943. The bombing raids over cities like Glasgow had intensified. What happened then? Who asked her that she might actually be evacuated to give birth?

[JG]
She was attending a doctor in Tollcross where she lived, and he said, ‘Look, you’ve got the future generation there in your tummy and we don’t want anything to happen. So, we’re going to send you by train with a nurse from the surgery to take care of you, in case something goes wrong – up to a place called Haddo House in Methlick, Aberdeenshire.’ ‘Oh, where’s that?’, she said. ‘Oh, and myself, my husband?’ No, no, he had to stay behind. He was an engineer; work was needed. So, she came on her own with a nurse and came here and just fell in love with the place.

[JB]
And it was a troop train, wasn’t it?

[JG]
They were. They were sharing. It was a bit of both. There were carriages and seats for the pregnant ladies. There was more than my mum in the five years of the war, because they started in ’39, putting his house up for that.

[JB]
So, I take it your mum had never been out of Glasgow before?

[JG]
No, no, she never had. They didn’t have a lot of money.

[JB]
Was your mum apprehensive about coming up here?

[JG]
I don’t think so. Nothing ever bothered my mother. She just was a great mum.

[JB]
And what about her first impressions when she saw the magnificent drive leading up to Haddo House? 

[JG]
She thought it was lovely, but she had to walk it after she got off the bus from Aberdeen – the little local bus – and she had to walk the full length of the drive. To get that postcard, she had to walk.

[JB]
She sent a postcard of Haddo House to your dad because your dad didn’t really know where she’d ended up.

[JG]
He didn’t know any of it. 

[JB]
That’s a pretty impressive drive and a lady weeks away from giving birth. 

[JG]
And not to have anybody that’s close to the family. Remember, she just had to go it alone.

[JB]
We’ve heard about a lovely welcome given by Uncle Doddie. Did your mum have any memories of that?

[JG]
Oh, she thought he was wonderful. He came in with his slippers on in the church service and she thought that was hilarious, because normally you would dress up to go to church. But no, he was in his own house. He came in the back entrance, joined the ladies; that was it. And all sang and had a nice time for that wee while in the church. 

Back to their rooms, washed her hair, sat outside and let the sun dry her hair – a nice dark auburn colour she was. I think everybody was so pleased to be away from the bombing, especially Clydebank was flattened. I mean, that was not far away; that was the West End of Glasgow. 

[JB]
So even though you were in beautiful surroundings, you took your worries with you.

[JG]
Yes, yes, of course. She never asked to be kept on longer. It was just how you were feeling, how you’ve got over the birth. They didn’t rush you away back home – as long as there was bed space for somebody else to come in. And she was here for 6 weeks.

[JB]
How did you find out you were a Haddo baby?

[JG]
Well, I listened to my mum’s stories and saw the birth lines one day. She’d let people see the birth lines to prove Haddo House, and I was christened in the chapel here as well. She didn’t want to take me home in case of any chance of being killed, so she wanted to make sure I was christened.

[JB]
What about the stories? You say she didn’t really tell you stories. What are the tales that you recall?

[JG]
Just that everybody got on very well and the food was great. Oh, she was always one for food and she was a good cook herself anyway. But the ladies that worked here were Tarves ladies, Methlick ladies, Oldmeldrum maybe as far as. But remember there wasn’t cars in those days, unless you were a very wealthy family, you might have a car. But they would have to do a lot on and off the bus, the wee bus.

[JB]
And how did your dad find out that you’d been born and that all was well?

[JG]
The postcard was a start of ‘I’m still around, I haven’t gone yet, but this is the best I could do; get the card’. 

[JB]
So, she sent a picture showing Haddo House …

[JG]
Yes, because that was the first he had known where she was really. There was no letter writing or anything; she just got the card, and it had to do until I got home with her and mum.

[JB]
So you found out you’re a Haddo baby. You were of aristocratic birth. When was the first time you came up here?

[JG]
My husband got me at the airport to bring me to show me the new house. 

[JB]
Ah! Now, that’s another story. Because you were living in the Central Belt; you never thought of coming to Aberdeenshire but for your husband, who’s in the room with us. He got a job and didn’t tell you where.

[JG]
He told me where, but it was a Peterhead boy told them that there were some lovely houses in Tarves. So, naturally he said, ‘Where’s Tarves?’ And they said, ‘quite near Ellon, Aberdeenshire’. He said, ‘well, I’ll head there’. 

[JB]
So, you were driving along the road that you weren’t really familiar with. You passed a sign that said … 

[JG]
Haddo House, 1½ miles. I said, I was born there! He went, eh? He did! He was flabbergasted. But at the same time, stories came back to him because I had told them through my marriage, and I think it just suddenly registered with Bob. Oh, you’ve mentioned that to me before. I said I’m going to prove it. I’ve got my birth lines. Oh, that’s fantastic. Oh, I’ve brought you home. That’s what he said.

[JB]
So, you have ended up living about a mile and a half or something from the very house that you were born in. Now, there have been reunions over the years. Did you attend any?

[JG]
Just that one in ’87. That was the only one Lady Aberdeen ever told me about. 

[JB]
And did your mum come with you to the reunion?

[JG]
Yes, yes, she was there.

[JB]
What was your mum’s reaction to come back here?

[JG]
She was weepy and that, and she said it’s such a lovely place. Doddie was great, with the slippers and things. It was nice to hear that it was such a friendly place to come. Bringing ladies away from their husbands and maybe other members of the family, to come away all this distance from Glasgow, in those days it was a distance – you couldn’t do it very quick.

[JB]
No, Now, Claire is still here. Claire, the reunions, they sound like fabulous affairs. You had about 1,000 people here.

[CR]
That’s right. It was 1987. It was hosted by Lady June herself; she organised it. And yeah, most of the babies, I think, came back for that one.

[JB]
And that’s where you started learning a lot of stories. Was there a bond at the reunions between the mums, between the babies? 

[CR]
Most of the stories we have of the Haddo babies – because there wasn’t really a lot of records kept at that time – most of the stories we have actually are from the reunions. I sat next to this lady; I had that midwife deliver my baby … So, there’s those kind of bonds made; they were able to reconnect because they wouldn’t have seen each other for years. 

[JG]
That’s the thing. I mean, the taxi driver was a great story from Lady Aberdeen. She told it to everyone: I just said, I’m Lady Aberdeen from Haddo House. ‘I was born there!’ And the guy was a taxi driver in Glasgow.

[JB]
And that gave her the idea for the reunion.

[JG]
She thought if she’d met one, maybe she’d meet quite a lot others. And she did! I think it was over 1,000 people turned up.

[JB]
Does it still feel special for you when you come here?

[JG]
Oh yes.

[JB]
And you say that whenever you do come here, you feel closer to your mum. Explain that to me.

[JG]
Yeah, I sit on that bench out there quite often and look at that lawn. My son was married; he got the chance to be married here as well in the chapel.

[JB]
Oh, how lovely! 

[JG]
Lady Aberdeen gifted that to me. She was going to stop doing it completely, didn’t want any more fuss in the house. But she let me because I was a Haddo baby. So, my middle son Craig was married here, and in the library he got his picture taken with his wife.

[JB]
And when you’re sitting on that bench, what are you thinking of?

[JG]
I think about my mum drying her hair in some part of that lawn, just sitting enjoying the sun. Lucky, I think it was good weather. I think there was some good weather in July.

[JB]
A very special story; a very special birth. A very special story and loads of memories you brought along with you. Lots and lots of photographs that really bring it to life. Claire, when was the last baby born here?

[CR]
20 June 1945. 

[JB]
And remind us once again how many Haddo babies there were. 

[CR]
1,259.

[JB]
Right. Well, well done, Uncle Doddie, and well done, Haddo. Claire, thank you very much indeed for giving us the tour of this wonderful house. And Jean, thank you very much for being here, for coming back to your birthplace and telling us all your fabulous stories. Thank you.

And that’s it from this edition of Love Scotland. Haddo, with its history and gardens, is a marvellous place to visit. You can find details on Haddo’s opening times on the National Trust for Scotland website. 

That’s all from us for now. Don’t forget to click on the subscribe button and all the Love Scotland podcasts, which are published fortnightly, will come to you. Until next time, goodbye! 

And there’s another Haddo story from our Love Scotland archive. Look out for the podcast called ‘Riches to Rags: the legacy of Lady Aberdeen’.

[SW]
They didn’t really think about money in the way that people think of how they’ve got money, they must keep it. They thought that they were there to help out, and Ishbel particularly had lots of really good ideas about how to help people.

[MV]
Love Scotland is brought to you by Think and Demus Productions on behalf of the National Trust for Scotland; presented by Jackie Bird. For show notes and more information, go to nts.org.uk and don’t forget to like, subscribe, review and share.

Transcript

Four voices: male voiceover [MV]; Jackie Bird [JB]; Murray Pittock [MP]; Flora Fraser [FF]

[MV]
Love Scotland, brought to you from the National Trust for Scotland; presented by Jackie Bird.

[JB]
The Battle of Culloden, 16 April 1746. Around 40 minutes of fighting on a boggy Highland moor that finally ended the Jacobite dream of restoring the Stuarts to the throne of Great Britain.

Those of you with even a passing interest in history will probably know the names of Culloden’s key protagonists: Prince Charles Edward Stuart and his nemesis, the Duke of Cumberland. Today though, we’re going to talk about another key figure, not just at Culloden but within that entire Jacobite campaign: Lieutenant General George Murray.

And in a unique podcasting link-up, for this episode only, our friends at the National Trust are providing a different perspective on Culloden as they tell the story of a soldier on the Government side, James Wolfe, who later in his military career became known as the ‘Hero of Quebec’. You’ll be able to find that podcast on our feed later this month.

But back to our story. And for me, what makes the role of Lord George Murray so fascinating is that amid the battles of the ’45 rebellion, an internal war was being waged between Murray, who was the chief Jacobite commander, and Charles Edward himself. It was a clash of wills and personalities that some argue would have an impact on the outcome of the campaign itself.

My guest today to discuss Lord George Murray and his role is another Murray – Professor Murray Pittock, a historian at the University of Glasgow and author of the book simply entitled Culloden. Welcome, Murray.

[MP]
Delighted to be here, Jackie.

[JB]
Well, let’s set the scene. Lord George Murray was born in Perth in 1694, the sixth son of the 1st Duke of Atholl, so not high in the family pecking order. What sort of life would have been mapped out for him?

[MP]
He would have been educated at university, as he was. He would have joined the army probably, which he did. He joined the British Army as an ensign in 1711. After serving as an army officer, he would probably become a sheriff depute and he would be involved in the administration of justice and Atholl authority locally on behalf of his brother, who probably by that time would be the Duke.

[JB]
So not something really to make a name for himself?

[MP]
No, no. If he had stayed loyal to the British government, he would be much less famous than he is. 

[JB]
But even from those early years, he was always going to be a bit of a character, wasn’t he? Because he ran away, age 17, to Flanders to join the army.

[MP]
Yes, indeed, he was a wild one, as you might say. He spent a year at the University of Glasgow and then off he went to be a soldier.

[JB]
And age 21, he took part in the 1715 rebellion, which wasn’t successful, and he had to flee really for his life to France.

[MP]
Yes, he did. And then to Rotterdam, and then he returned in 1719. He had a Lieutenant Colonel’s commission in 1715. In 1719, he became Brigadier General in the Jacobite rising of that year, which was supported by  Spain and irregular Spanish troops. In that capacity, he fought at the Battle of Glenshiel, where the Jacobites were defeated by General Wightman. 

[JB]
So off he went, price on his head, and for about 10 years his father tried manfully to work behind the scenes to have him pardoned. 

[MP]
He did, and he made a secret visit to see his dying father before he’d been pardoned. But eventually George II pardoned him, and he was allowed back, as it were, into Atholl society under the Hanoverians in 1730. Whereupon he appeared to live not just the life of a retired Jacobite, but the life of a loyal servant of the Crown, working hard to get patronage for his eldest son James, who was to go to Eton.

And on the outbreak of the 1745 Rising, he was actually given a Captain’s commission in one of the British regiments – Loudon’s – though for understandable reasons he never took it up. 

[JB]
And he also worked with the Hanoverian commander in Scotland, General Cope.

[MP]
Yes, he did. He was appointed sheriff depute to effectively root out the disaffected in 1744/45. A French invasion was expected in 1744 that didn’t get through, and he worked with Cope as Commander-in-Chief in Scotland to identify and round up disaffected Jacobites in Perthshire. He didn’t actually identify any disaffected Jacobites in Perthshire. Perhaps he just spent his time looking in the mirror!

[JB]
This is what I don’t understand, but hopefully you can inform me of what was happening, because he seems to have nailed his colours firmly to the Hanoverian mast. So, was this the case or was he being politically adept?

[MP]
He was probably being politically adept because there isn’t very much doubt that Lord George Murray was a consistent Jacobite throughout his career. However, his closeness to the Hanoverian government certainly raised a lot of suspicions in the minds of his fellow Jacobites, many of whom had suffered inordinately, stayed out – or if they had been received back into countenance of the British Government, were hardly the sort of person you would invite to parties. He was in with the woodwork. 

The other thing was the transition whereby he went to Perth Grammar School and his son went to Eton was one which was beginning for the Whig aristocracy in Scotland, but which was regarded as highly suspect by the Jacobites, who fundamentally associated themselves with Scottish patriotism, Scottish values, the Scots language and Scottish tradition. So, that was grounds for suspicion. 

And also, Murray was not as keen as other Jacobites on ending the union, so that too was grounds for suspicion. So, he’s a committed Jacobite, but he’s always under suspicion by a proportion of the Jacobite command, and that gets worse as the rising goes on.

[JB]
He went to London, didn’t he, to pay homage to King George himself?

[MP]
Yes, he did. He met the king in the beginning of the 1740s.

[JB]
And so, to 1745. Why did Murray by then, clearly a clever 50-year-old man, risk everything to join the Prince?

[MP]
He risked everything because he was a convinced Jacobite. ‘This is my Prince, and I must fight for him.’ 

[JB]
There’s a lovely quote from his wife who called him her Don Quixote. 

[MP]
Yes, tilting at windmills, of course, Don Quixote is famous for. But – and this is one of the interesting things about Murray’s commitment in the ’45 – Murray thought, certainly from the early/mid stage of the Rising, that the Jacobites were bound to lose.

[JB]
Really?

[MP]
Yes, he absolutely thought they were bound to lose. 

[JB]
Because I want to come on to that – whether or not he was just a pessimist or a realist in that.

[MP]
He’s a pessimist. 

[JB]
The Prince landed at Glenfinnan in the middle of August. By early September, Murray was by his side. However, he wasn’t really a fan of the Prince. He called him a ‘reckless adventurer’,  which is another reason why I can’t square the circle of someone who gave up everything to join the Jacobite rebellion when he didn’t like its leader.

[MP]
The issue is, I think, that a lot of people have taken Lord George Murray’s assessments quite straightforwardly. And indeed, Chevalier Johnstone, who is his aide-de-camp, who wrote a history of the ’45, did a lot to … I mean, he’s responsible for the phrase ‘if the Prince had gone to sleep and let Lord George Murray command, he would have found the three crowns of Great Britain and Ireland on his head when he woke up.’

[JB]
How would you describe Lord George Murray?

[MP]
Arrogant, determined, intelligent without having had the scope to exercise that intelligence in a lot of his career.

[JB]
Was he a good soldier?

[MP]
He was not a great general, which some people make out. He would have been a good battlefield commander, staff officer, junior general in a major conflict in the 18th century. He had real capacity in that direction. But he’s not a military genius. He thinks he’s a military genius.

[JB]
Hmm. And the Prince?

[MP]
The Prince is charismatic, passionate, headstrong, very smart and gifted intellectually – very good at what would be called modern theatre politics. I mean, employing a Gaelic tutor and marching in the front of the army in tartan is all very, very … 

[JB]
The optics were good.

[MP]
The optics were good. Exactly! And liable to fall into psychosomatic illness and paddy and sulk when he didn’t get his own way, and especially when he thought that the cause was being undermined by people who were overly cautious.

[JB]
The progress of the Jacobite campaign was overseen by a Council of War, and it just appears to be a succession of disagreements over strategy, tactics … everything. 

[MP]
Most Jacobite commanders didn’t want to march into England. The British Government were rather concerned that they would call in French troops to Edinburgh and simply re-establish a Scottish parliament, dissolve the Union. Charles Edward Stuart persuaded a majority of 1 to invade England, but he worked on them until he got a small majority. He wanted to invade England because he was convinced that the military and financial power generated by London, its access to capital markets, would destroy him if he didn’t take it.

So, he was right, fundamentally. Their view was not sufficient or accurate – and his was. But then after he’d only got a majority of 1 to march into England, naturally there was a huge amount of scepticism as they went further into England and the recruits didn’t roll in in large numbers. They’re probably about 1,100 in all, and at Derby they refused to go any further.

[JB]
Should they have continued or, at the time, was that the right decision?

[MP]
It could never be the right decision if you were prepared to risk as much as they’d already risked. The military situation they were facing was they were facing a few battalions of the trained bands, the Black Watch who weren’t trusted and a few other odds and ends, frankly, at Finchley. And after that, they would have entered London. They would certainly have got to London first, and they probably would have lost even so. 

But remembering that the British army depended a great deal on troops from continental Europe, who were not committed, should we say, to the state, but were there because of Hanover and its alliances, then it’s quite possible that they might have won in certain circumstances. There wasn’t a big chance, but retreat and there’s no chance.

[JB]
Well, let’s take a break there. The Jacobites are in retreat, the relationship between Charles Edward Stuart and our man George Murray is not going well, to say the least. And Culloden is yet to come. We’ll be back in a moment.

[MV2]
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They do it for the love of Scotland. And you can play your part too. Just head to nts.org.uk/donate

[JB]
Welcome back. Professor Murray Pittock, we are heading for the final showdown between the retreating Jacobite army and the Government troops led by the Duke of Cumberland, whose forces are chasing them towards Inverness. It seems at this point that relations between George Murray and the Prince have truly broken down.

[MP]
Absolutely. They break down particularly after the final moves north of Crieff, because then the Prince discovers that George Murray’s been lying about, or misrepresenting, the extent of desertion from the army.

[JB]
Was this just to strengthen his own case, that it was the right thing to do?

[MP]
It’s difficult to know what his motives were, but I think he wanted out by that stage. For example, when he moved north, he tried to negotiate a prisoner exchange with the Prince of Hesse who was coming in to aid Cumberland. Hesse was quite willing to discuss it, and Cumberland was absolutely not going to discuss it. So, Hesse refused to actually fight on with Cumberland’s forces because they wouldn’t take prisoner cartel. 

But Charles Edward didn’t authorise those discussions. Lord George Murray was looking for a way out by the last few weeks of the campaign.

[JB]
Do you know, as we talk, I’m beginning to take the side of the Prince! It must have been a heavy load to bear. This is your chief strategic commander, and from the beginning he seems to be the voice of doom. We haven’t got a hope. We shouldn’t go further. We shouldn’t go into England. Now we should turn back. Oh, let’s turn back here. Oh, let’s turn back at Derby. 

[MP]
And it was combined, of course, with the fact that Murray and his allies on the Council disliked the Irish officers and chiefly John Sullivan, who was the Quartermaster General … who had the other ear of the Prince. 

But then Sullivan was, and continued to be when he returned to the continent, a lifetime French regular with extensive experience of guerrilla warfare, particularly in Corsica. There is a modern view that actually Sullivan was not so bad at all, and the Lord George Murray supporters traced Sullivan as entirely incompetent. But again, Sullivan looks if he was a pretty decent staff officer; he just didn’t agree with Lord George Murray. And the Prince trusted him and not Lord George.

[JB]
And the fact that this entire Council of War was just full of divisions and rancour. The site of the Battle of Culloden in that boggy moor that I talked about in the introduction, with no hope of a successful Highland charge – that charge that had proven successful in battles like Prestonpans. Who chose that site? And did Murray have anything to do with it?

[MP]
So, the story, which is not usually told about Culloden, is there is a fight over the site. Cumberland is approaching Nairn. Inverness is the last considerable burgh the Jacobites hold. They’ve got to block the road to Inverness; it’s the rational thing. So, the first thing they choose is a site at Dalcross Castle, which is towards Nairn. And then Sullivan vetoes that because there’s a ravine and the ravine is less than 50 metres across, so that’s within effective musket range. He thinks that they could be trapped in a firefight. So, he vetoes that. 

Then Lord George Murray tries to enlist Irish officers, who are not Sullivan, to go and look at a site on the other side of Nairn, which doesn’t defend the road and looks like a prelude to retreat. And they all say, well, this won’t do because I’ve been to that site. It’s an awful site. And then they line up about a kilometre east, where the land is drier, on 15 April. Sullivan approves that site. And then the night attack is called …

[JB]
Yes, let’s talk in a bit more detail about that night attack. It was a cunning plan on the eve of battle. What was it and what was Murray’s involvement?

[MP]
Murray and the Prince effectively led two columns to carry out the night attack on Cumberland’s camp. It was Cumberland’s birthday, and their supposition was that a large portion of the soldiers would be very drunk.

[JB]
And that wasn’t the case, was it? It didn’t turn out like that.

[MP]
No, they were not. A surprise attack might nonetheless have worked if they had managed it, but Cumberland was a better and also stricter and more puritanical commander than to allow all the soldiers to get drunk on his birthday. So, Murray called his column to retreat because it was too late.

[JB]
And how many men were in the column?

[MP]
Roughly speaking, there were about 2,000–2,500 in each column. 

[JB]
So, two columns set off under cover of darkness to try to ambush the Government troops before they woke up. Is that the case? 

[MP]
That’s right. They had set off late because it’s April and the Royal Navy was in the Moray Firth, so they could be seen by telescope as long as it was light.

[JB]
They set off and there were a few stragglers, and one of the columns was going much faster than the other and had to keep stopping.

[MP]
Yes, that’s right. 

[JB]
It sounds farcical. 

[MP]
Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time.

[JB]
Was this Murray’s idea?

[MP]
No. Murray consents to it, and indeed in some accounts he suggests it. I suspect it emerged as an option. But the difficulty was that the Scottish and Irish regiments in the French service and some of the Lowland regiments couldn’t really go over rough ground in complete darkness at the pace that some of the units who were closer to home could.

And so, one of the columns got much closer than the other. The closer column could see the sentries, but by that time it was notified to the Prince that Lord George Murray had called the retreat effectively of the other column. A surprise attack with 2,500 men with terrific skills in hand-to-hand combat in the early morning might conceivably have worked.

[JB]
And what was the size of Cumberland’s army?

[MP]
It was 9,000 officially, but probably a bit closer to 7,500–8,000 in terms of … there’s a gap between official strength and the number of people who are actually there. 

[JB]
I’ve got a line from a Jacobite soldier who described the night march to Nairn as one of confusion and disorder. Does that sum it up or am I being unkind? Or was he being unkind?

[MP]
It depends which part of the army you were in. That was one of the reasons the Prince saw it as a betrayal – one of the columns couldn’t make progress and the other one did make reasonable progress. But it was always too tight an ask to walk several miles over rough ground in the dark, when dawn is reasonably early and dusk is reasonably late.

[JB]
So, Murray and his column, they got back to base camp, to Culloden at dawn.

[MP]
Yes. Well, a bit after dawn. 

[JB]
And the other column that hadn’t been told that they’d turned back, they were still following behind. 

[MP]
They were informed that Murray had turned back, and the Prince was livid and then they turned back. And so, what you have is the Prince goes to Culloden House for breakfast with his officers. He and they are tired out. A lot of Jacobites just fall asleep in clumps, but they fall asleep by Culloden House, which is actually a kilometre further west towards Inverness than the site chosen by Sullivan the previous day, when the troops were put in battle order.

There are still soldiers trying to come back. There are soldiers arriving in the battlefield when the battle’s going on because they’ve been walking back from the night march. [Good grief!] And they hear Cumberland’s new musical commission, which is 236 kettle drums, which he puts out at the front. And they can hear them, of course, from about 3 or 4 miles away. His answer to the pipes.

[JB]
And is it the case that even an hour or so before the battle began, Lord George Murray was so concerned about the location and thought it was so wrong that he was still trying to suggest alternatives?

[MP]
He was unhappy, but at this stage he said: ‘We’re going to put an end to a very bad affair. We’re going to turn out and fight, and then we’re going to get beaten.’ That was his inspirational message.

[JB]
We’re not going to go into detail about the Battle of Culloden – we don’t have the time, and it would take more than one podcast, presumably, to do it justice. But can you give us a precis of the numbers in the sides which lined up, and of the casualties?

[MP]
There were 4,500 Jacobites, roughly speaking, because many of them are away or haven’t got back. [Still trying to march back!] Or some of them are actually trying to get the French gold, which has landed in the north. So, there are about 4,500 on the field. There are about 8,000 British army. 

The basic approach taken by Cumberland’s commanders, and I think probably the credit should go to General Bland, is not to use the cavalry straight away, as they’d used it at Falkirk and Prestonpans; to hold back the cavalry – and then to try and envelop the Jacobite army because of their big cavalry strength. The Jacobites long had very much in the way of cavalry. The big cavalry strength allowed for their envelopment. The Jacobites resisted the envelopment; it was not successfully carried out. But that’s more or less all they did. They did break the British frontline on the left, but not on the other side.

On the day, probably about 1,000 Jacobites died and officially 50 members of the British Army – though in reality I’d say there are a significant number of people who seem to be mortally wounded and died very soon afterwards, so probably we’re safer saying 150–250.

The thing was not that 1,000 were killed on the day; another 1,500 were killed in the next 48 hours because the wounded were killed – orders were given for the wounded to be killed on the battlefield. 

[JB]
And that’s why we come to Butcher Cumberland?

[MP]
Yes, exactly. And the massacre on the road to Inverness. Most of the Jacobite casualties happen in the days following the battle, rather than on the battlefield itself that day. 

[JB]
On that note, there is a quote attributed to Murray before the battle that the Jacobites ‘should give no quarter’. Can you explain the significance of this? And was it even said? Because that is used by Cumberland latterly to say, well, we had to do this because they were going to do the same.

[MP]
Well, there were orders which were allegedly signed by Lord George Murray saying to give the Elector of Hanover’s troops no quarter whatsoever. That was not the practice of the Jacobite army at any other engagement. Murray himself had been with the Prince to the forefront in trying to stop people being killed at Prestonpans, and to prevent them being killed in the pursuit and to save their lives.

It was a forgery. We can’t say that it was authorised by Cumberland but it suited his purposes, and extensive use is made of it. 

[JB]
A bit of spin, perhaps, after the fact.

[MP]
A bit of spin, absolutely, but it didn’t help him in the end.

[JB]
During the battle, what happened to Murray?

[MP]
Murray, deciding that all was lost, what would he do if all was lost? Well, he did what Murray tended to do in these circumstances, which is he charged. 

[JB]
He’s a complex, contrary man, isn’t he?

[MP]
He certainly is! He, and the portion of the Atholl Brigade who went with him, captured some of the cannon in the front line, and then his horse was shot from under him. He continued to fight on, came back, rallied the Ecossais Royal (the Scottish troops in the French service), and had a last ditch firefight in the second line to keep back the cavalry envelopment, after which he escaped the battlefield.

[JB]
So, he escaped; the Prince escaped. Not together, unsurprisingly!

[MP]
No, not together. No, no.

[JB]
Did each man blame the other for the outcome?

[MP]
The Prince thought he’d been betrayed by Lord George Murray.

[JB]
Specifically how? 

[MP]
That Lord George Murray frankly continued to be a Hanoverian loyalist and was acting as a fifth columnist throughout the campaign. He was more and more convinced of that.

[JB]
Do you think there’s any truth in that?

[MP]
No, because Lord George Murray got no rewards frankly. Moreover, he was substantially so committed a Jacobite that France even wanted to use him in 1759.

The Prince’s view was supported by others. For example, John Roy Stuart, who commanded the Edinburgh Regiment, calls him ‘Lord George Murray, that flatterer of merciless guile’, which is yet another depiction of Murray. 

But the Prince’s order was to rally at Ruthven in Badenoch, and the troops rallied there the next day but one – I think 18 April. And all they received at that point was a safekeeper order: Let every man look after himself. Lord George Murray then wrote him a stinker of a letter saying it’s all your fault. Why have you left us all in the lurch? That was, frankly, the complete end of their relationship. 

[JB]
Murray and the Prince eventually ended up on the continent. Murray had a relationship with the Prince’s father, the Old Pretender, as he’s called. He got the Pope to give Murray support, I understand, but meanwhile Prince Charles is writing to his dad saying that man should be thrown in jail!

[MP]
Yeah, that’s exactly right. Yes, he is. King James, and most of Europe, was very fond of Murray and he regarded him as a loyal supporter. 

There are some biographers of Charles Edward – Frank McLynn is perhaps the most prominent among them – who really argue that Charles had got some kind of Freudian father complex, and he just couldn’t deal with older men. And there is something of a pattern in that – with the Earl Marischal, with Lord George Murray. He finds older-generation Jacobites, who have an assumption of wisdom and authority, really annoying, because basically he thought they were all losers. That’s why we’re still here. What we need is new and spiriting young ideas. And that’s me!

[JB]
Ah, the youth of the 18th century! It was ever that, yes. So, what happens then to Murray? He gets some money from the Pope. What then?

[MP]
Well, he effectively goes into retirement in the Netherlands, in Medemblik, and he dies in 1760 when his sons are commissioned in the Dutch brigades. His family join him out there because his wife and children are thrown out of Blair Castle by the Duke in late 1746/early 1747. So, they just go and join Murray on the continent.

[JB]
And does Murray remain a Jacobite until his dying day? Because if there was ever a time to finally turn coat, that was it! 

[MP]
Well, there is a last major Jacobite Rising that doesn’t happen and yet does happen, which is the sending of the French invasion fleet from Brest to attack England in 1759 and restore the Stuarts. Lord George Murray is canvassed as a Commander on that expedition, though he doesn’t actually take up the offer. But he’s regarded as a strong enough Jacobite to be worth canvassing. 

[JB]
So, in its simplest form, you have two men who just did not like each other involved in a seismic battle, which was a turning point in British history.

[MP]
Yes, it is. And it’s a turning point too in the history of the world. Understanding Jacobitism in its international context: Jacobitism is the arm of French foreign policy that seeks to create a set of British kingdoms, where Ireland and Scotland are fully separate kingdoms. Rather than a unitary united state, we have a multi-kingdom monarchy, and also one which is at peace with France.

And therefore, you don’t get the Seven Years War, and you don’t get the final battle for who is top dog in the European empires. You get an amicable (hopefully) division of the spoils between France and Great Britain, so you can get to a situation where there is no Seven Years War; there is no American War of Independence – because the French are still in Canada and the Americans can’t afford the threat. And you get no French Revolution because the French don’t run out of money. And then you get no Napoleon. It’s wonderful how you can go on like this.

I’m not suggesting all these things are necessarily the case, but there isn’t any doubt, not so much with Culloden, but if the Jacobites had won, that would have changed the face of British and global history.

[JB]
Professor Murray Pittock, thank you very much for taking us through the life and battles of Lord George Murray. Thank you.

[MP]
Thank you very much, Jackie.

[JB]
And if we’ve inspired you to work out where perhaps you’d have positioned your Jacobite army, why not visit Culloden itself? It is such an atmospheric place and is in the care of the National Trust for Scotland. If you’d like to help the Trust protect the battlefield and the views that surround it from the increasing threats of development, you can donate to the Culloden Fighting Fund. All the details you need are in the show notes.

And don’t forget that twinned Culloden podcast from the National Trust, which will be available later this month.

That’s all from Love Scotland for now. Why not subscribe to the podcast and never miss an episode? Until next time, goodbye.

And if you’d like to know more about the events before and after Culloden, we have a clutch of podcasts in the Love Scotland archive, including ‘Flora MacDonald: Young Rebel’, the fascinating afterlife of the young woman who ferried her fleeing Prince over the sea to Skye.

[FF]
These Hanoverian officers and men are within a mile or so of Charles Edward, and he looks a total ruffian. He’s covered in midge bites. He’s unshaven. He’s a mess. And he’s been sleeping in the heather, hasn’t slept in a bed since Culloden – and Flora says help, help, help him.

[MV]
Love Scotland is brought to you by Think and Demus Productions on behalf of the National Trust for Scotland; presented by Jackie Bird. For show notes and more information, go to nts.org.uk and don’t forget to like, subscribe, review and share.

Transcript

Five voices: male voiceover [MV]; Jackie Bird [JB]; Alasdair Raffe [GB]; second male voiceover [MV2]; Antonia Laurence Allen [ALA]

[MV]
Love Scotland, brought to you from the National Trust for Scotland; presented by Jackie Bird. 

[JB]
It was described as a hotbed of genius, a period in history when a collection of remarkable minds came together as the Scottish Enlightenment.

Well, I’m hoping that some of that intellectual brilliance lingers in my surroundings today, as it was in this very room, the grand library of Newhailes House near Edinburgh, that many of the stars of the Enlightenment came together to share and debate their ideas, and to borrow books from what was one of the largest private libraries in Europe.

Today, the oak shelves around me are bare, but the collection is well looked after as it was given to the National Library of Scotland in the 1970s in lieu of death duties. Oh, to have been a fly on the wall during those convivial evenings when great minds discussed great theories and probably uncorked some great claret.

Well, if you’re a scholar of the Enlightenment and you’d like to know about the philosopher David Hume’s Treatise of Human Nature, or if you crave details on Adam Smith’s belief in the natural dynamics of the market, you’ve come to the wrong podcast! Because today we’re taking a broad-brush approach and simply asking what was the Enlightenment? What was the spark in the environment that nurtured this great period of advancement and what did it achieve for Scotland? 

My guide in this quest is Dr Alasdair Raffe, Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Edinburgh. Welcome to the podcast, Alasdair.

[AR]
Hello, Jackie.

[JB]
Can we begin, if it can be done, by placing the Scottish Enlightenment in time? Is there a beginning and is there an end?

[AR]
I think a possible answer to the question of the beginning could be the Revolution of 1688–90, which settles the question of the Church that had been running in Scotland through the 17th century. Or it could be the Union of 1707, which settles the question of Scotland’s relationship with England. Or it could be the wider 18th-century debates that are coming from the Continent and influencing Scottish society from about the 1710s/1720s onwards.

As far as the end is concerned, it might be the career of Walter Scott in the early 19th century, or it could be said to have continued in various forms through into the middle of the 19th century or beyond. 

[JB]
And if you thought that was a difficult question, can you give us an overview for people who have never heard of it or have queried what it actually is? What was the Scottish Enlightenment?

[AR]
Well, one way of addressing that question is to think of it as a pan-European movement of ideas and practical reforms. So, on the one hand there’s people who are engaged in quite abstract philosophical questions about morals, about the nature of the human mind. On the other hand, there are people who are thinking about the improvement of the economy, thinking about agricultural betterment. And in Scotland, the two things are very closely connected. So, you have thinkers who are engaging in some writings, in moral questions, in philosophical questions; and in other writings, thinking about the improvement of their estates and trying to produce more agricultural yield from their farm.

[JB]
And it wasn’t just, as you say, the philosophy. There were more practical considerations, but it also involved literature, art, architecture, engineering.

[AR]
Sure. The philosophy is in some ways the starting point for a wider conversation about what Hume and others called the ‘science of man’. This was a movement of intellectual concern that focused on humanity, not the metaphysics of the past with its concern for religious questions and for spirits and these other more abstract debates.

And that concern for the nature of humanity leads into historical questions about social change, about the character of society – and then into some what we would call economic questions now. How do humans interact in the marketplace? And those more sociological or economic questions that are part of the intellectual discourse of the Enlightenment had very practical implications in terms of some of the reforms that were undertaken in the period and some of the concern for things like industrial development for agricultural improvement.

And at the same time, some of the architectural and artistic changes that we see – the flourishing of building of fine libraries like the one we’re in, the art of painters like Allan Ramsay – are all part of this movement of optimistic reform and hope for progress for the future.

[JB]
And was this movement known as the Enlightenment at the time, or was this a description that was coined later?

[AR]
There are in French and German, and other languages in the 18th century, equivalents of the modern English term Enlightenment. But funnily enough, it’s not really until 1900 that historians writing about this start to refer to it as an Enlightenment, as a Scottish version of that European movement. So, they think that they’re part of something, they know there is something going on in terms of publication, in terms of getting together to discuss ideas. They think that Edinburgh and other Scottish centres are part of a European movement, but they’re not yet, in English at least, referring to it as the Enlightenment. 

And it’s one of the curious things about the way historians have written about it, that it’s almost a modern label that’s been imposed on this movement in the 18th century, often by scholars who’ve tried to celebrate it. And we could see why they would want to celebrate it, but they sometimes perhaps have overlooked some of its downsides as well.

[JB]
Ah, perhaps we’ll come on to those later. So, what we have is we have this perfect storm of thinking and of personalities and advancements. And you’ve been kind enough to give me some notes, and you make it clear in those notes that this acceleration of learning, it didn’t happen for one reason. There were a few factors, so let’s deal with them. Firstly, the political situation. How did that play into what was to happen?

[AR]
Yes, I think that what was necessary for Scottish intellectuals to start focusing on these philosophical, historical, sociological and also practical questions was a degree of political stability. Political stability had not been present in Scotland in the 17th century. There had been many wars and arguments about religious questions, but especially about the relationship between Scotland and England. And it’s really with the Union of 1707, when it is finally decided that Scotland will not be an independent kingdom pursuing its own empire and economic advancement separate from England but would rather be integrated into a British kingdom with a British empire, that political uncertainties are brought almost to an end. We can go on to think a little bit about the continuing importance of Jacobitism in a minute.

[JB]
That’s precisely what I was going to say, because you use the word stability. I would have thought … I mean, we were still to have the 1745 rebellion. I would have thought that was destabilising? 

[AR]
Yes, there continue to be sections of Scottish society at the start of the 18th century, large sections of Scottish society, that would like to recall the Stuart claimants to the throne. By 1715 they are in Rome, but they’ve had an exiled court on the Continent since 1689. They would like to bring them back to the throne and would like to return Scotland to what they would consider to be the legitimate line.

And Jacobitism is in some ways a source of instability, but I think it’s an episodic source of instability. So, there was a major rebellion against the new Hanoverian regime in 1715. Lots of Scots participate in that, but it’s pretty quickly defeated. And for a long period from 1716 and the defeat of that Rising through to the 1740s, when, as you mentioned, the 1745 Rising that’s defeated at Culloden takes place, there is a sort of gradual decline in the instability caused by Jacobitism. Not necessarily because the elite Scots who would support a rising change their minds, but because they become comfortable with the society. They make agreements with their neighbours. They accept that the Hanoverians are on the throne and look like they’re going to be on the throne for good.

And in some ways, when the 1745 Rising takes place, it’s a bit of a surprise. And yes, lots of people become swept up in it and Charles Edward Stuart occupies Edinburgh and marches as far south as Derby. But it doesn’t have a long-term impact in disrupting a gradually stabilising political regime under the Hanoverian monarchs, with economic growth coming, with a Scottish integration into the British empire.

[JB]
That’s very interesting. You mentioned the Union of 1707. Now, this is contested. Some say that the Scottish Enlightenment wouldn’t have happened without that union of parliaments. Do you have a view?

[AR]
I think it would have happened in some form. It might have taken a different type; it might have led to some different debates, some different emphasis. It has been argued in the past that the Enlightenment rested on a Scottish society that was focused on questions other than day-to-day politics. Day-to-day politics was taken away from Scotland, was decided in Westminster, leaving Scottish professional classes and the landowners who weren’t involved in the Westminster parliament to think about these questions of philosophy, history and economic improvement.

And to a certain extent, that is the culture that’s created by the 1707 Union. It is one where Scots are, within Scotland, almost left to their own devices and allowed to pursue the economic development of their society. So, the Union helps to determine the character of the Scottish Enlightenment, which is not very much engaged with political questions, and very much concerned with the practical improvement of Scottish society.

[JB]
OK, so we’ve got that settled – the political situation; we’ve laid the groundwork for that. How was Scotland’s economy faring and how did that play a part in what was to come?

[AR]
Sure. The economic situation of Scotland at the start of the 18th century is, you would have thought, very ill-suited to a period of intellectual flourishing. It’s a time of very serious economic depression that’s resulted from a major famine in the second half of the 1690s, a series of harvest failures, a population decline of up to 15% due to deaths and emigration from Scotland in those famines.

At the same time, Scotland attempted to develop a colony at Darien in the Isthmus of Panama, and that had failed and quite a lot of capital had been invested in this colonial effort. So, through a combination of the economic shock of the famine, this failure to develop a colony independent of the British empire and other European empires, and then the disruption that came from the War of the Spanish Succession in the first decade and half of the 18th century, these things had plunged Scottish economic progress, set it back – created a depression that took quite a long time to come back from. 

The Union of 1707 promised an economic improvement through free trade with England and its colonies. But it’s not really until the 1730s and 40s that you start to see that economic improvement in Scottish society having a real impact. And on the one hand, the wealth that’s coming into Scotland by the 1740s helps to encourage this culture of Enlightenment because it creates the wealth on which that sits.

On the other hand, the experience of very rapid economic change raises some of the questions that are debated by Enlightenment thinkers, particularly thinkers like Smith who are beginning to study the economy and how humans interacted in the marketplace. So, the economic situation of Scotland is crucial for understanding the culture of the Scottish Enlightenment, both as an inhibiting force before the 18th century and then as a stimulating force from the 1740s onwards.

[JB]
And finally, what I think is the third part of this, in terms of circumstances: religion. The French Enlightenment, which I believe just predated the Scottish, it was hostile to organised religion. Was that the situation here?

[AR]
Very largely, Scots were not hostile to organised religion. But what happened in Scotland, very differently to France, was that the Scottish Enlightenment developed within the institutions of society, including the Church of Scotland. And indeed, many of the leading Enlightenment thinkers in Scotland were clergymen or had begun as clergymen. Figures such as Francis Hutcheson, the moral philosopher, or Adam Ferguson, another moral philosopher, professor at Edinburgh University, and people like William Robertson the historian – these were men who started their careers or continued their careers indeed, in the case of Robertson, as clergymen.

And what they were doing was revising Christian Protestant doctrine. They weren’t attacking it, and they weren’t hostile to the institution of a Church. In fact, people thought that the Church of Scotland helped to create stability in Scottish society, and they weren’t for overturning that or they weren’t hostile to its continuing presence.

[JB]
So it wasn’t – and this is very simplistic – faith v. reason?

[AR]
Definitely not, no. In fact, the Church of Scotland and organised Protestant Christianity in Scotland had always been reasonable. Faith had always been integrated with reason. What the Enlightenment thinkers were doing, in so far as they were engaging with Christian ideas, was to increase the optimism of Christianity. They thought that humans were essentially benevolent. Thinkers like Francis Hutcheson thought that humans were essentially good and that they had the capacity to be virtuous; in that sense they disagreed with conventional Calvinist beliefs that humans were inherently sinful. 

[JB]
So, we set the scene for what was to come, and we’ve mentioned some of the people who made it happen. We must talk about where we are today, in this extraordinary room in Newhailes House. Its owner was David Dalrymple of Hailes. Now, why was he significant within the Scottish Enlightenment?

[AR]
David Dalrymple of Hailes is on the one hand not one of the leading lights of the Scottish Enlightenment. If one was to draw up a league table of the stars, he wouldn’t be in the top ten, I don’t think! However, he is, in some ways, quite characteristic of the broader movement. He is, on the one hand, a landowner. He has this fine Palladian house built in the 18th century, but at the same time he’s a lawyer, he’s a professional, he’s an advocate, and then he’s a judge. 

Dalrymple of Hailes is also characteristic for his engagement in Enlightenment sociability. We have in front of us some copies of letters that he exchanged with figures like Hume, who visited the house, came to the library and borrowed books from Dalrymple of Hailes and discussed intellectual questions with him. He’s also a member in the 1750s of the Select Society, which is one of the important intellectual clubs of the Scottish Enlightenment. 

[JB]
Now, can I just interrupt you there because you mentioned the clubs, and this was very important because I think this was the first time this sort of intellectual thinking came out of academia and resulted in the formation of quite a number of clubs of great men – men getting together and sharing their ideas.

[AR]
Yes, that’s certainly true. One way of thinking about the Scottish Enlightenment is that there is a very significant improvement in the universities of Scotland in the 18th century. They get better staff; they teach a wider range of subjects; they improve their position as far as attracting international students and other things. On the other hand, a lot of Scottish Enlightenment discourse isn’t taking place in the universities, and so there is a broadening out of the range of people who are involved in intellectual discussion, and the clubs and societies are crucial there.

[JB]
Well, let’s take a quick break on that note, and when we return, we’ll discuss some of the superstars – and they were indeed the superstars of the Scottish Enlightenment – and why their ideas are still revered today. Back in a moment.

[MV2]
Impressive. For a moment I thought she was talking about me. I meant Falkland Palace, she said with a smile. Course you did. The art, the architecture … Scotland’s history can really turn your head. So, we signed up to take care of it. Keep it looking dapper.

Since 1931, the National Trust for Scotland, a charity supported by you, has been looking after Scotland’s treasured places so we can all share in them. Support us at nts.org.uk

[JB]
Welcome back to the Love Scotland podcast from the impressive surroundings of the Library of Newhailes House. I’m with Doctor Alasdair Raffe from the University of Edinburgh. I said, just before the break, that we were going to discuss some of the big names of the Enlightenment, some of whom espoused their theories in this very room. Now Alasdair, one of the names that’s come up time and time again is David Hume, born in 1711 until 1776, still globally famous. Why was his thinking different and why have his achievements endured?

[AR]
One thing that’s very interesting about Hume, I think, is that he makes a transition from trying to be a writer of systematic philosophy in his Treatise of Human Nature in 1739–40, to writing for a much more general audience. And he feels that his attempt to engage with all the big questions of late 17th- and early 18th-century European philosophy in the Treatise has been unsuccessful. He hasn’t received the acclaim he wants for the book, and he very quickly moves into writing essays. They’re much shorter, much easier to engage with for a more general readership. 

[JB]
So, he had a big brain, but he was also canny enough to know that he had to change tack. If he wanted to get to a bigger, more popular audience, then that was really the way to do it. Do we know anything about the character of someone so revered as David Hume?

[AR]
David Hume was by all accounts a very humane, sociable, friendly character. He was sometimes quite rebarbative and aggressive on the page, but then very friendly to the people that he’d be maligning. He, despite his religious scepticism and his hostility to the clergy, has a large circle of young clergymen who crowd around him, partly because they enjoy the cut and thrust of disagreeing with a major thinker like Hume.

[JB]
Did these people have followings? Were they revered? If he’d walked into a library, if he walked into one of the clubs in Edinburgh, would people have nudged each other and thought, that’s David Hume?

[AR]
I think so. And I think that’s what we see in a group like the Select Society, which is this club of intellectuals in Edinburgh in the 1750s, that they want to have figures like Hume amongst them. Even if many of the other members of the Select Society never published anything and were there more because of their social cachet than because of their intellectual achievements. And so, Hume and his writings helped to cast light on the surroundings in terms of the clubs and societies they were part of.

[JB]
Another global figure of the Enlightenment was the economist Adam Smith, and he also would borrow books from this library. Give me a pen portrait, if you can, of Smith.

[AR]
Smith has a slightly more conventional career, I think we could say, in that he does become an academic. He is a professor of moral philosophy at the University of Glasgow in the 1750s and 60s. 

[JB]
Let me give you his dates: 1723–90. So, he was a friend of David Hume, but he was about 10 years younger. 

[AR]
Yes. Smith, having spent a period in a fairly conventional position as a university professor in the middle of the century, publishes in that time what is his major work of moral philosophy, The Theory of Moral Sentiments.

He then has an opportunity to travel to France as a tutor to a young nobleman, and in that time he engages with some of the leading French economic thinkers of the time, and he comes back to Scotland. He no longer has an academic career, and he spends quite a long time thinking about the economy and eventually publishes in 1776 his Wealth of Nations, which is the most famous book that he writes. It is the study of economic relations and principles.

But I think we should emphasise The Theory of Moral Sentiments, his moral theory, as being really where Smith starts. This is the centrepoint of Smith’s thoughts. A really important thing to consider in Smith’s thought is how we can be virtuous, how we can judge our conduct, whether it’s good or bad.

And Smith has this idea that we have what he calls an impartial spectator – a person almost on our shoulder, who’s looking over our shoulder and judging our conduct. According to Smith, we know whether we are behaving well or badly because we think about what an impartial spectator would say about our conduct. And that ability to imagine what someone else would say about us gives us the capacity to behave well and to improve our conduct. 

[JB]
So, we’ve got a couple of huge hitters in Hume and Smith. Who else would be at your fantasy Enlightenment dinner party?

[AR]
I would also include Francis Hutcheson, who’s of a slightly earlier generation to Hume, one of the influential moral thinkers who gets the Scottish Enlightenment discussion going. And Hutcheson’s interesting because he is not in fact from Scotland but from Ulster. He’s of a Scottish background, but he develops a moral theory that’s based on the idea of the moral sense, a little bit like what I mentioned with Smith’s impartial spectator. But for Hutcheson, we have in us a faculty a little bit like sight or hearing, that works automatically to detect whether we are being virtuous or vicious.

And that idea, combined with his optimism about human nature, that we are capable of being virtuous, helps to set a whole generation of Scots on a course of thinking more positively about human nature, more optimistically about reform of humanity and society.

[JB]
And the news of what was happening at this time, Scotland’s reputation was clearly spreading. I found a quote from Voltaire, who knew how to flatter. He said: ‘Today it is from Scotland that we get rules of taste in all the arts, from epic poetry to gardening.’

[AR]
One of the ways that we can think about the Scottish Enlightenment actually, and this is a slightly iconoclastic view, is that it’s something of a publishing boom. There are a lot of young Scots professionals on the make who are making their names by publishing books. They’re reaching France, they’re being translated into other European languages and they’re reaching London. A lot of them are being published in London for the very much larger market in England. 

The Scots in this period become very good at promoting themselves. And that’s not to say their ideas aren’t good and that these books aren’t worth reading, but …

[JB]
Wha’s like us, is this it? Is this the sort of concept? 

[AR]
There is something of that! It’s not just Voltaire; it’s Hume and others who are celebrating the achievement and seeing that there is a hotbed of genius in Edinburgh and other Scottish centres in the middle of the 18th century and thereafter.

[JB]
Oh well, let’s burst that bubble then, because we talked about this initially. You said maybe it wasn’t all good; we’re running out of time. Can you give me some examples?

[AR]
Yeah, it’s not all good. These Enlightenment thinkers are quite complacent about some of the bad developments in 18th-century society. They are enabling imperial conquest. Some of them are becoming critical of slavery, but it’s by no means a radical movement seeking to improve what Britain is doing around the world.

We have some rather unfortunate developments in the thoughts, such as David Hume does begin to develop racist ideas and sees black people as inferior to white Europeans and unable to develop the sort of culture that was being created in 18th-century Scotland. And possibly with the emphasis on the achievements of the Scottish Enlightenment, we struggle to recognise the downsides and that this is not wholly a positive movement.

[JB]
What we do know is that the ideas spread, as I said, across Europe, and that they even influenced the founding fathers of America and the Declaration of Independence. Now, is that overblown or is that feasible? Is that part of the ‘wha’s like us’, and look at what we’ve achieved?

[AR]
No, I think it’s undoubtedly the case that the founding fathers, those involved in the American Revolution, are reading Scottish texts. 

[JB]
Jefferson specifically had a Scottish teacher.

[AR]
Yes, one of the ‘wha’s like us’ aspects of the American Revolution is that John Witherspoon, the clergyman who is in fact quite hostile to some of the Scottish Enlightenment developments when he is in Scotland, goes to colonial America and becomes the principal of what becomes Princeton University. He is a signatory to the American Declaration of Independence. 

And he, in his American phase at least, begins to incorporate some of the moral and reformist ideas of the Scottish Enlightenment into his academic teaching. And I think it’s undoubtedly the case that there’s a general impact of Scottish Enlightenment thinking in the American Revolution, and indeed in many other contexts around the world.

[JB]
OK, we’ll take that one too then. So, in summation, what do you think that the lasting legacy of the Scottish Enlightenment is, and what specific aspects of it are still relevant today?

[AR]
In some ways, the Scottish Enlightenment gives rise to some of our modern academic disciplines and our modern ways of thinking about the world. Scots in the 18th century became very interested in social change, and some of their models of social change pointed towards the subject of sociology as we know it today.

Adam Smith and other thinkers about the economy helped to develop the discipline of economics and therefore ways of thinking about the relationship between government and society. 

And the Scottish Enlightenment creates the legacy that we can enjoy in Scotland of the literary production, of fine libraries like the one where we’re sitting in today, of the art of Allan Ramsay and Henry Raeburn later on.

It does point towards an intellectualised conception of Scotland that, even if it became more tenuous in subsequent periods, I think is still with us today – that we were the Athens of the North, that we provided some of the intellectual heft to the United Kingdom and its impact on the world.

[JB]
That’s a lovely optimistic note on which to end. Alasdair, thank you for guiding us through a very complex subject so expertly.

[AR]
Thank you, Jackie.

[JB]
And that’s it from this edition of Love Scotland, which I hope has enlightened us about the Scottish Enlightenment. Thank you to my guest, Dr Alasdair Raffe from Edinburgh University. And you can read Alasdair’s book on the revolution of 1688 in Scotland in Revolution: 1685 to 1690, and that’s published by Edinburgh University Press.

If you’d like to absorb the intellectual energy here at Newhailes House or simply enjoy its stunning estate, you’ll find details and opening times on the National Trust for Scotland website. It’s looked after by your membership and donations, so thank you.

Until next time on Love Scotland, goodbye! 

And look out for another podcast on the life and work of another Scottish Enlightenment figure, the artist Allan Ramsay.

[ALA]
It was really, really normal for a drapery painter and a portrait painter to work together. And in this case, we know that he used Joseph Van Aken. So, I think what’s interesting though is that there aren’t two signatures on the portrait, right? There’s just Allan Ramsay. So, you’re buying a portrait from Allan Ramsay and you’re getting two artists for your money, so to speak.

[MV]
Love Scotland is brought to you by Think and Demus Productions on behalf of the National Trust for Scotland; presented by Jackie Bird.

For show notes and more information, go to nts.org.uk and don’t forget to like, subscribe, review and share.

Transcript

Four voices: male voiceover [MV]; Jackie Bird [JB]; Gordon Buchanan [GB]; second male voiceover [MV2]

[MV]
Love Scotland, brought to you from the National Trust for Scotland; presented by Jackie Bird.

[JB]
My guest today is a man whose childhood love of nature led him to a career as a TV wildlife cameraman and then in front of the lens as a presenter. Gordon Buchanan’s role now is to observe while being observed, and that takes a special skill set. Not only do you need to win the trust of the unpredictable creatures you’re focusing on, but at the same time engage and win over a discerning armchair audience.

Well, if you’ve seen Gordon on the telly, you’ll know he manages both with a calm authenticity – whether he’s riding a camel through the Gobi Desert, being encircled by menacing wolves, or getting up close and dangerously personal with a hungry and determined polar bear. But although he travels the world, Gordon’s roots are still very much in Scotland, where he is a passionate advocate for our wildlife and their environment.

He’s now brought his experiences of the far-flung and the closer-to-home together for a book called In the Hide: How the Natural World Saved My Life, and it’s my pleasure to welcome him to the podcast. Hello, Gordon.

[GB]
Hello. Thank you very much for having me on.

[JB]
You’re in a studio and we’ll talk about the life saving later, but as far as the hide goes, I didn’t know whether to get some tarpaulin in today or some bushes or whatever just to make you feel at home! 

[GB]
There’s a window, and that is where my eyes are always drawn. I’m not feeling uncomfortable if I just start looking out the window – I just can’t help it. And that’s kind of how this all started. I spent all my school days staring out of the window daydreaming and not wanting to be where I was but wanting to be on the other side of the glass.

[JB]
Well, you mentioned your school days because that sums up the book. It’s about your career, but also about your life. It’s honest – you deal with some fairly traumatic stuff. Is that the book that you set out to write or did it evolve?

[GB]
I think it probably was – not knowing what the final destination was. I think I didn’t want to write a book that was just a jolly romp around the world’s wild places. That’s not what interests me. People fascinate me. And I think, what’s interesting about my story? It’s quite easy to answer that question because people ask me: How did you get into this? What sort of impact does it have on you, your family? So, all of those questions, I was really trying to answer a whole heap of the usual questions that people might ask me.

[JB]
Well, let me just precis the early stages. You were born in the early 70s in a housing estate near Glasgow. But after your parents’ marriage broke up, it was a move to the Isle of Mull on the west coast of Scotland that was really pivotal. What I got from it, and through your telling of it, was that it was almost a Wizard of Oz thing – the original movie. The initial part of it is in black and white, and then suddenly it goes into glorious technicolour.

[GB]
Spot on! It was really like that. Bellsmyre estate back then, I never remember it being an unpleasant place to stay or it being rough, but it was working class. Just at a time, I suppose, on Clydeside when social problems were building, and unemployment was going through the roof. And my mum obviously realised that she could offer us a better future somewhere else. And that’s such a good comparison because Tobermory and the sea front, the colours – that is a place that bursts to life when you arrive there.

We used to go there on holiday, and it was when we moved from Dumbarton to Tobermory, it was like we’re going to live on holiday. It was a place that I loved, that had so many happy memories. So yeah, there was nothing – I say this in the book – there’s nothing negative about moving there.

[JB]
But your life there, certainly your early years and your teenage years were colourful, certainly, but they weren’t without the troubles because your mum and your three siblings, you lived in a caravan for some of the year. At one stage, your mum’s new partner was violent to her and not very nice to you. But there’s no sense of self-pity in this. This is not a misery memoir.

[GB]
Within our family, the more what you may think would be traumatic experiences, we’ve just made light of some of the most horrendous things. It was almost this sort of coping mechanism that we just try and see the funny side. There’s no funny side to domestic violence, but if you witness that as children, there is something that needs to break the tension of it. So, at the time it obviously wasn’t funny, but looking back on it, we kind of just moved on from it and we’ve never really dwelled.

[JB]
You haven’t let it define you.

[GB]
Yeah. And the things, maybe the aspects of it that did define me, I’m glad of. I think that hyper-vigilance and watching people and maybe my interest in people and keeping an eye, trying to figure people out, it may have roots in those events where I had to read the room and get the vibe of people’s moods.

At no point do I want anyone to go: Oh gosh, he had such a tough upbringing. Because I didn’t. There were tough elements, there were challenges, but everyone has that to different degrees. I was always aware that people had far worse than I did. So yeah, it’s just context; that’s my life experience. And it was those early experiences that I think took me on this path in life. And my love with outdoors was tied into those challenges at home, the challenges at school. I had to find my place, and that was the outdoors.

[JB]
And you were out and about having what some might call scrapes and others might call near-death experiences. You weren’t a fearty. 

[GB]
No, you make your own fun. And the stuff, I remember adults coming along and cutting down swings. I was like: adults are horrible, why on earth would they just come down and cut that swing that we’d just put the rope up? The fact that there was a 100ft cliff over the other side … those people were trying to keep us safe! We just thought adults are out to get us, but they’re out to try and keep us safe.

[JB]
And the fact that you went on little boat trips across dangerous waters to other islands, and no one knew you were there.

[GB]
Yeah, well, it was just thrill-seeking and making your own fun. And it was always the more dangerous it was, the bigger the thrill, sadly. In some ways, I’d love my children to have the same kind of upbringing. But then there’s worries enough knowing that they actually don’t get up to those kind of things.

[JB]
Let’s go to when you were 17. You were in the Scottish Highlands, and you got your first job in Sierra Leone. Now, I think what I also got from your writing is how important – you can work hard, you can be talented, you can do this, you can do that – but how important luck is in all our lives. How did you make that leap?

[GB]
You know that thing that you make your own luck? Yeah, that is true. But to actually get your first life-changing piece of luck, that is just serendipity and pure good fortune. I was looking for a job. All my mates had jobs in restaurants and were making the princely sum of £1.75 an hour. I’d spent maybe four or five years working with horses at a trekking centre, which I absolutely loved, but it didn’t pay me anything. When I got to about 15, I thought I really need to try and make some money. There were three main restaurants in Tobermory at the time, and I thought I’ll go round – one of them will need someone to wash the pots and pans.

I went out and I was quite backwards at coming forwards, and I was like, I don’t really want to go knock on someone’s door and ask for a job. It just made me feel quite shy at that age. But I thought: OK, just go down, knock on Ann Gordon’s door because she’s the closest, and then walk up to Jillian King’s, and then walk up to whoever the other person was and knock on the door.

Ann came to the door. I was like: I was wondering if you needed anyone in the kitchen? She says: perfect, actually in a couple of weeks, if you come down to the restaurant, we need someone to wash the pots and pans. So, I just turned around and went home. The fact that she needed someone, the fact that she was in that night – because easily she could have been out, and I could have knocked another person’s door and been working somewhere else.

It was through working in Ann’s restaurant that I learnt more about her husband at the time, Nick Gordon, who was a wildlife filmmaker. That was a real lightning strike moment because I thought: that is the job for me. He was travelling the world, he was having these adventures that I’d been having all my childhood, but he was doing it on an international level.

And I thought: right, OK, I don’t know how you get into this, but Nick’s the best person to ask. When he came back from Guyana, I think he was working, I thought I’ll go and have a chat and see what advice he can offer me. 

[JB]
He eventually took you under his wing, but that is because you were absolutely determined, and he saw something in you. You obviously had an aptitude for that, and you had your love of the outdoors. And then, as I say, you ended up in Sierra Leone. Now, how long were you there? For your first job, you were 17. You’d never really been anywhere. In all, how long were you there?

[GB]
It was a year and a half. I came home for a couple of months halfway through. 

[JB]
And you were living in … there were no hotels or anything like that. It was a pretty hard existence.

[GB]
It was an incredible time in my life. I think if I could go back in time and just give the 17-year-old me a swift boot up the backside, I would just take this in and appreciate it. I think I was just quite young and I was quite complacent. I knew that I’d been given this massive opportunity, but it was a truly extraordinary place. I think I just didn’t realise that at the time.

[JB]
I don’t know – reading of those experiences, I don’t think it was a boot up the backside; I think it was a pat on the back, to come from where you had been and to endure that and learn about life and spend so long away from home. But there’s so much to cram in, Gordon. We’re going to have to leap onto your grand old age of 22, when after spending a long time with Nick and having a great experience and learning a bit, you decided that you were going to go it alone.

I think one of your first major bits of work was in Scotland. So, you got a chance to experience the wildlife and the wildernesses that Scotland has to offer. Did you enjoy that?

[GB]
By this point, I’d spent 3–4 years in West Africa in the rainforest, in Venezuela, 2  years in Brazil. In fact, when it came to rainforest species of Africa, rainforest species of the Amazon, I was, well, Nick and I were your men. When it comes to Scottish wildlife, I knew really nothing. I hadn’t seen so many of the species that we have in Scotland.

I went straight from school. Ok, in the west on Mull, everything that was there I saw. But when it comes to the animals that you find in the Highlands, things like even grouse and capercaillie and mountain hare, I’d never seen them. Roe deer – they don’t have them on Mull. Foxes, badgers …

So, this was new and exotic to me, having this year and a half to film up in the Cairngorms. I really loved it.

[JB]
You describe vividly one incident where you’re almost run over by a rampaging herd of red deer. What’s interesting within that is you don’t have a camera at that point, I don’t think. But you say that that is the aim of a wildlife cameraman: to try somehow, through your lens, to allow the viewer to almost experience what it’s like to be there in the flesh.

[GB]
Yeah, I think that is a primary role. I did have a camera that day; it was in a backpack on my back. It’s just I knew that there was no way I was going to be able to get this off my back without spooking the deer. So, I just hunkered down amongst the heather, and there were beautiful juniper bushes and lovely big tall pines and big old granny pines.

And this herd of deer galloped through the snow in slow motion, in my mind; that’s how it was. It remains one of the most amazing things I’ve seen. And it was here in Scotland. But if you can go even 2% of the way to capturing that, you’re doing a good job.

I always think when I’m sitting and having these encounters or looking through a lens: How do you best translate that? I think often with a camera, it’s not enough. Being in front of the camera, that’s a bit of a crutch … well, not a crutch, but it’s an aid because you can describe what it feels like. There’s another element. It’s not just about what you can show visually. 

That’s why stills photography is really hard because you’ve got one frame to make an impression on people. Whereas me, I can film, and I can say some stuff, and you can see my face and how I’m reacting to whatever is happening in front around me.

[JB]
Well, before we get on to your career in front of the camera, before we leave Scotland, just as an aside, I noticed that you’d filmed in the Treshnish Isles. Now, the Treshnish Isles have recently come under the care of the National Trust for Scotland, and they are just an amazing archipelago.

[GB]
I have been there many, many times and it really is one of my favourite places on Earth. The first time, my first full immersion of first witnessing a wildlife spectacle was on the Treshnish Isles. I was probably 11. Me and my best mate, his mum and dad took us out in this boat, and we went up to on top of the cliffs to look at the puffins.

I knew of puffins. I’d never been close to them. I didn’t realise you could get so close to such a charismatic bird in Scotland. 

[JB]
They’re such characters. Yes! Charismatic. Great word.

[GB]
I thought you had to go to the Galapagos Islands to have this sort of immersive wildlife experience. But here, on the Isle of Lunga, I could be surrounded by nature. So, that was definitely a light bulb moment. That was like: gosh! And I continue to go back. When I go back, I always go to our campsite, the campsite that we stayed, and we used to go in the summertime. We’d get a fisherman to drop us off with a crate of beer, tins of beans, and we’d stay there for a few days. We always stayed up by some of the old ruins. 

But whenever I go back now, I go up and there’s always someone else camping there. And they look at me like, why are you wandering around our campsite? And I was like, this was ours way before! It was a time when nobody went; nobody went there. It was like being marooned. Tourists occasionally would stop off, but it wasn’t the hotspot that it is now.

[JB]
Well, before we move on to further-flung places, you touched on the fact that obviously you’ve moved from behind the lens and you’re now in front of the lens, sometimes with a camera. Why that move? Was it the fame? Was it the glam? What was it? Was it the money? Come on!

[GB]
I wanted the attention. No! It was none of those things, but it was reluctant. I was making a wildlife documentary about leopards in Sri Lanka, and this leopard film that I was trying to make in Sri Lanka was a big deal. It was one of those next big step up. A whole hour-long documentary. No other camera people on it, just me shooting and producing it. And the leopards were unbelievably difficult to find. They are a very elusive species. I realised that we were going to have a big gap in this documentary. I contacted the producer back in the UK and I said: Look, there’s loads of sloth bears here; there’s loads of elephants, there’s crocodiles; it’s an amazing National Park. What about making a film about all of the wildlife here? Because the leopards are just not … we’re going to have a massive hole in this documentary. 

And he said: No, the BBC want a leopard film. He said: But hang on, there’s a big drive at the moment for regional voices. That was a kind of diversity push of the late 90s. And he said: Look, they want anyone with a Scottish, Irish, Geordie, Liverpudlian, any regional accent. So, let me see if they’re interested in you being in this. And I was like: I don’t want to be in this! Why don’t we just film the elephants? And he said: no, leave it with me.

Anyway, he said: No, that’s what they want. They’re quite keen for you to just make a video diary. No pressure. If it works, it works. If not, we’ll cross that bridge. So, there wasn’t any pressure. And I just filmed myself in a half-hearted way, not really putting that much effort into it.

That seemed to work! The commissioning editor in Bristol saw it, and the producer said he’s not really putting any effort into it. And the commissioning editor said, I quite like that; he’s quite laid back. And so that was it. But then I got offered, for about 10 years on and off, more in-front-of-camera jobs. Sometimes I did it and sometimes I didn’t.

It wasn’t my ambition at all. But then when our kids came along, I thought: Actually, this could mean that I could spend more time at home …

[JB]
Rather than sitting in a hide for 6 months. Well, you clearly are very, very good at it. There is that, as I said in my introduction, calmness; there is that authenticity. And my goodness, it’s just as well, because we’re going to take a quick break and when we come back, we’ll talk about some of your closest and scariest encounters in our natural world. And I’m going to find out whether you were indeed sometimes perhaps scared out of your wits or just a very good actor! We’ll be back in a moment.

[MV2]
You need to smell the flowers, said my bro. Turns out wild heather works just as well. We were up Ben Lomond like mountain goats. Couldn’t believe it was so close to home. At the top though, life was a million miles away. So, we signed up to help look after it. We all need looking after.

[MV]
Since 1931, the National Trust for Scotland, a charity supported by you, has been looking after Scotland’s treasured places so we can all share in them. Support us at nts.org.uk

[JB]
Welcome back to Love Scotland, and my guest today is the wildlife cameraman and presenter Gordon Buchanan. Gordon, it says so much about human nature that often the best bits of wildlife programmes are when the people who are hunting for great footage become the hunted. And this has happened to you on a few occasions.

[GB]
I think because I’ve been doing this since I was 17, I have been hanging out with what people view as big scary animals for all of my adult life, in fact. People always ask the same questions. What are your scariest moments? I think back, it’s always human-related. Genuinely, the scariest times have always been human-related: people making bad decisions or people driving like a maniac, or me making the bad decisions or not doing that mental risk assessment that you need to. 

But invariably, there are times when you are in close proximity to a potentially dangerous animal. I don’t like to describe any animal as dangerous – they’re just potentially dangerous. It’s our behaviour around them that leads to things going wrong or someone getting hurt. A polar bear is just a polar bear doing what it does. It’s people making the wrong decisions that turn that into a dangerous animal.

[JB]
Well, the polar bear incident is one of the most famous. Can you set the scene? Can I just say to anyone, if it’s difficult imagining this, you just need to go on YouTube or anywhere and you can see footage.

[GB]
There was a desire to have this sense of proximity to polar bears. We’d filmed black bears in Minnesota the year before, and these were bears that you could literally sit beside. The next series was polar bears in the Arctic. We always thought: Well, we can’t have that same proximity because polar bears, we’re on the menu. Not every polar bear, but a lot of polar bears. We’re on as a light snack or maybe a more substantial mid-afternoon snack.

So, we had this idea: what about getting a transparent hide I could be safe in? We could get this so we wouldn’t have to run away from polar bears. That’s what happens if a polar bear comes close, comes up within maybe 20 metres, you get on your Skidoo and move out, or you get back in the boat and pull out. With this reinforced, hopefully polar-bear-proof hide, we could get this idea that I’m out there on my own with the polar bears on the ice. You can see the bear and you can see me, and I’m not having to panic and run away. 

We really didn’t expect any of the bears to show as much interest as this one particular one did. She just saw this thing, saw me inside it. 

[JB]
It’s a metal frame with Perspex walls; you’re inside it on your own. As a television presenter myself, isn’t it funny how producers always come up with these fabulous ideas that never involve them?!

[GB]
Yeah, well, I was partially responsible for this because I was like: Well, that would be good. I said we could do a bit with long lenses – you’ll get this sense of me and the polar bears being together. But then I thought, actually I contributed to this … it was like a mobile Popemobile type of thing, designed for polar bears. And yeah, I wouldn’t do that again. 

[JB]
She liked the look of it. She liked the look of you. And she tried her best to get in. She was up close. Her nose was sticking through the gaps. You were calm under pressure. You kept talking to your camera. How did you really feel? Come on.

[GB]
I think when terror is an option, you can choose that. And when cat serenity is an option, you can go down. I think inwardly I was terrified because it wasn’t safe. There was certain things that could have gone wrong that we hadn’t anticipated until I was in that situation. If it was now, at the age of 52, I’d realise what the real danger could be, and I’d put a stop to it. I’d radio the rest of the team that were about 150 metres away and they would come and …

[JB]
Did they ever think, during this, of making a move to try to get you out of there? Did it come close to that?

[GB]
No, I said … I had a radio. I said I’ll let you know if things get too hairy or – pardon the pun! – and the whole thing was too hairy. It was terrifying. But I think there’s this distraction technique: if you outwardly appear calm, if you talk calmly and try and communicate, I thought I’ll just do my job, which is try and communicate this experience. And that I found settled me down. It turned me away from the actual terror of it.

And there’s something a bit like, it’s unlikely that a TV presenter that’s nice and calm and presenting this experience is going to get eaten. They’re filming it on a long lens. I had three or four cameras inside. It’s unlikely that something’s going to go wrong because generally someone’s demise isn’t captured so comprehensively!

[JB]
If you thought that the clip, as it was, went viral. Goodness gracious, Gordon Buchanan being eaten by the polar bear!

But I think that sums up what you were saying earlier about how human involvement can sometimes enhance wildlife filming. You are a conduit for the viewer’s emotions. You are experiencing what they would experience and perhaps how they would react or not react if they were in the same situation. Have you ever walked away from a job or something that’s maybe gone a bit awry and thought, shouldn’t have done that?

[GB]
Looking back, definitely. All of the scrapes that I’ve been in, or close encounters with wild animals. I mean, scrapes with human beings continue to this day. Last year, I was in a car in Botswana. The driver was drunk; he was driving like a maniac. And I was like, this is the most danger! I’ve been hanging out with lions for months and months in a vehicle with no doors on it. Yeah, this is the most dangerous thing that I’ve done this year.

But when I look back, all of those things involving animals that were dangerous, the things that I’d done were dangerous, I was young and not thinking ahead. I was sleeping out in hides where there were elephants, where there were sloth bears, which is arguably the most dangerous bear in the world, rambling about through the forests and being surprised when I bump into a wild elephant and when it chases me.

I’d never do that now. Or if I did, I would just be hyper-vigilant. I’d have somebody with me, rather than just wandering off and thinking, oh, everything will be fine. I think that I’m just better at recognising the things that will get me into trouble. And, touch wood, what people perceive as a dangerous situation, it’s just that for them, they would be scared; but for me, it’s not a scary situation. 

OK, we’re sitting, what, 2 metres apart from each other? I’ve had male lions walk and stop closer than you are to me. And there’s nothing between us but air. And look at me. I know that I’m safe because I’m inside the vehicle. I know the lions well enough that they don’t disassociate the human being from the vehicle itself. So, there’s this weird thing that I’m like, yeah, I can stay calm; I can pick my nails. Whereas if that was someone else and they have a lion standing a metre and a half, like a huge male lion standing a metre half away, quite rightly you’d be terrified because that is way out of most people’s comfort zone. But for me, my comfort zone is a strange place.

[JB]
Away from the external factors that can eat you, something you also talk about in the book, and this surprised me, it’s your personal demons – and the fact that you talk honestly about the fact that you suffer from depression. Why was it important within your life story to talk about that?

[GB]
I think my episodes of depression over the years … I mean, when I say an episode, when it is all-consuming, it is really like a shadow creeping up on you, a massive dark cloud of suffocating. The first time that happened was back in 2011, and that was just before that happened. I realised that I was depressed and I’d probably been a depressive all my life. Looking back, as a kid, anxious and worried and concerned and always a little bit gloomy. Not glass half full. 

No one would probably ever have seen that, but I just think, oh God, this makes sense. I’ve always felt this way. And the first time that I opened up to anyone really was we’re in a long car journey and was with some of my colleagues. This is before I had this sort of breakdown. I said, I’ve just realised I’m depressed. Three friends, they’re like: nah, you’re not, you’re not; you’re always laughing and joking. No, you’re not a depressive person.

No, I think that I am. I’m depressed. I’ve been depressed for a long … No, no. And it wasn’t they didn’t want to talk about it; it was just that this mask that I had worn for everyone else, for myself, was so convincing that you just believe that. You turn your mind away from feeling that way. And then when everything comes crashing down and you really do crumple in a heap on the floor, that’s when I realised I needed help.

So, I went to the doctor straight away when I felt that I could. I just think it’s important to talk about these things because I’m late to the party because people talking about mental health, I think we need to do it – definitely, definitely, definitely need to do more of it. But it’s great that people do feel able to talk about their mental health battles or their depression because, not that long ago, maybe three or four years ago, I was like, do I say anything publicly about this? Because I just didn’t want my prospective employers to think, actually he’s a bit on the edge. And of course, that’s a ridiculous notion because I have spoken to so many people in the last year and talked about my mental health issues and depression, and so many people are in the same boat.

[JB]
You talk about the anxiousness and the feeling of threat – I’m paraphrasing here – that followed you around in terms of always trying to be the best, always trying to get the best shot. I wonder if that’s somehow part of it, that drive for perfection that sometimes tortured you? But it’s made you the success you are. It’s made you the great cameraman that you are. It’s made you work at presentation. It’s made you engaging; people like you.

[GB]
If I could choose to live a life with ‘black dog free’ or without any of this career, I would go for a life of not feeling this way because it is … Yeah, you’re striving for perfection. You want to excel. So, you’re always looking over your shoulder at a shadow, not at anyone else. I think that’s what has driven me. I have such a great life in so many ways, an amazing family, I have so much fun in life, and the majority of the time I don’t feel that way.

I’ve got a lot better at actually recognising it and trying to fend it off. But when you’re unable to get out of bed, all you want to do is just sleep and not exist. It’s such a horrible place. And I wish for the book, it was really difficult not to talk about it and not address that, but to describe what that all-encompassing sense of gloom was, because never in the depths of it, the last thing you want to do is write it down. It’s just a feeling like it’s in Harry Potter. I think I might even say this in the book when the Dementors suck all the joy out of life, these kind of demonic creatures … yeah, that’s kind of what it’s like. But it has been the storm that has pushed me along on my journey.

[JB]
Well, you’re certainly not complacent. You described yourself as a teenager as complacent, and in your professional life you’re clearly not that. And a good thing too, because at the moment we seem to not be able to get enough wildlife programmes or look at the great wild world out there. Why do you think this is? Why do you think the zeitgeist is that now?

[GB]
Wildlife documentaries have got much, much better as far as the cinematography part of it, but also the storytelling as well has come on in leaps and bounds. And there is just this fascination that human beings have with the natural world, and children are born into this world with that built into their make-up – this interest and fascination for things that hop and splash and scurry and are covered in dirt and are under stones.

And we lose that connection with nature – generally, people lose that connection with nature as they get older. And my own kids are. My son, who was into everything when he was a little boy. He will come back. He will come back to nature. But the biggest mistake that we made was giving our kids iPads and devices and opening up that world to them.

But people love nature. It’s within us. I think we realise that there is this disconnect and a disharmony. And as much as we have more things, in the global north, we have more things than we ever have had. We have a better life generally than we ever have had, where houses are full of more stuff. But people’s discontent and mental health problems continue to rise.

And I think, for me at least, the natural world has always been a distraction, a place that you can celebrate, a place that you can try and make more sense of the world, and your place within it.

[JB]
Gordon Buchanan, thank you very much for joining us on Love Scotland. 

[GB]
Thank you, Jackie.

[JB]
Gordon’s book In the Hide: How the Natural World Saved My Life is published by Witness Books, and if that mention of the Treshnish Isles has whetted your appetite, they are well worth a visit and you can find out more details on the Trust website.

And that’s all from this edition of Love Scotland. If you are interested in Scotland’s wildlife – and who isn’t! – and its history, then just tick the subscribe box on your podcast feed and you will never miss an episode. Until next time, goodbye.

[MV]
Love Scotland is brought to you by Think and Demus Productions, on behalf of the National Trust for Scotland; presented by Jackie Bird.

For show notes and more information, go to nts.org.uk and don’t forget to like, review, subscribe and share.