WITH a huge variety of rock types, mountain forms and dramatic coastal features, Scotland is a rock climber’s paradise. It is also a wonderful training ground for the hazards of snow and ice climbing ...
OWEY Island is off the north-west coast of County Donegal. Back in 1947 we were staying with the Bonners nearby in a house surrounded by corncrakes hiding in the little patches of oats between the rocks. There was no sleeping at night with their constant “creck-creck”, worse even than the cuckoo.
MY friendship with the sculptor and etcher Charles Wells – I called him Wells, never Charles – began in Italy. I first met him and his beautiful wife Diana in Pietrasanta at an exhibition of his work ...
IOWE it to Alan Riach and Hirini (Sidney) Melbourne. Alan introduced me to Hirini when I protested during my first visit to New Zealand that I had not met a single Maori.
ELIZABETH Stewart was a woman never to be forgotten. Outside formal interview – well, nothing was ever that formal with Elizabeth – she could be hilarious. When a group of us were sharing a hotel for a gig at Celtic Connections promoting a CD, we spent the entire time in stitches ...
A “FIELD” recording doesn’t have to be in a field. Often it is in somebody’s home, and so it was with that wonderful traditional singer Duncan Williamson.
MOST of my experience of field recording was with a remarkable young radio producer, Susan MacKay ...
MARGARET Fay Shaw is best known for her research into Hebridean music and folklore, accompanied by her superb photography and filming.
I ONCE visited a supertanker, courtesy of my brother-in-law, David Paterson, who was taking over that day as chief engineer.
WALTER MacIntyre was a retired merchant seaman who lived in a caravan in preference to the house he had built on his croft in Kilbride on the Isle of Skye. A caravan is more like a cabin, and it rocks in the wind.
