Love Scotland podcast – 2025 season

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.