Alexander Bain was one of the most prolific inventors of the 19th century, and is one of the least remembered. His inventions are all the more remarkable given his background. Born in 1810 near Watten in Caithness, his father was a tenant crofter and Alexander was one of six sons and six daughters. He left [...]
One of the great voyages of history was made by Commander Frank Worsley, going with Shackleton to South Georgia in a small boat to seek help for their fellow crew members, stranded on Elephant Island. Frank Worsley knew Orkney well – and in addition, he learned some of his seamanship when sailing with an Orkney [...]
The Cod Hunters tells the story of the Shetlanders who fished for cod around the north Atlantic in their cod sailing smacks. Fishing at Greenland, Iceland, Faroe and Rockall, the cod smacks returned with cargoes of salt cod which were then dried on Shetland beaches before being exported to Spain. Salt cod is the main [...]
Prof. R. J. (Sam) Berry, born on 26th October 1934, died on 29th March 2018. He had a deep love of Orkney and its wildlife, environment and people, and this tribute was published in the Orkney Field Club Bulletin of 2019. He was christened Robert James, but everyone called him Sam. He’d grown up in [...]
Peggie Gibson was a much appreciated teacher in North Fara and Kirkwall and one of the now almost legendary group of Stromness Academy pupils whose end-of term trip on the tug Flying Kestrel in Scapa Flow on 21 June 1919 made them eyewitnesses to the scuttling of the German High Seas Fleet. She was the [...]
Whenever the poet George Mackay Brown reorganised his library, getting rid of some of the overspill, some books from younger years would always remain. There was the first Penguin book from 1935, a biography of Shelley by André Maurois; and Penguin number 3, Poet’s Pub by Eric Linklater. And there was also a book on [...]
With the second edition of The Biographical Dictionary of Scottish Women soon to be published, notable Orkney women were the subject of all six One O’Clock Toasts at the daily lunches of Orkney fare at the Peedie Kirk in this year’s Orkney International Science Festival. And as Jocelyn Rendall pointed out in her toast, the [...]
The lunches of Orkney fare at the Peedie Kirk are among the highlights of the Festival each year, with the One O’Clock Toast to a notable Orcadian. For this year Harvey Johnston went back two centuries to a lady in Stromness who was visited by Sir Walter Scott. She lived on Brinkies Brae and sold [...]
Archie Bevan’s tribute to Robert Shaw was broadcast on BBC Radio Orkney in August 1978 following the actor’s death. It was read by Archie’s son Graham as a One O’Clock Toast in the Peedie Kirk Hall in the 2016 Orkney International Science Festival, and by a very happy coincidence Robert Shaw’s brother and sister and [...]
Gunnie was born in Gothenburg, Sweden in 1941. Later Gunnie Moberg would say she would like to be remembered as a Swedish Orcadian. And it is that embedding of Orkney into the identity of Gunnie and the symbiotic nature of that relationship between artist and place that I would like to draw you to today. [...]
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