Archie was a shining light in 66 years of service

During her 30 years of marriage to Archie, Anne MacEachern gathered notes of her late husband’s recollections from his 66 years of service with the Northern Lighthouse Board to write this wonderful book. The chronological story takes readers through the lighthouse keeper’s personal journey and provides an important record of a career, once essential to…

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Celebrating of the life of a special woman

Miss Cranston follows the life of this remarkable Glasgow businesswoman, the success of her Victorian Glasgow tea rooms and her collaboration with renowned designer Charles Rennie Mackintosh. Perilla Kinchen reveals Miss Cranston’s ‘successful formula’ and eccentric characteristics in an engaging style which entices readers to continue. This revised edition of the 1999 publication includes over…

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Blood mystery at the heart of tense new thriller

The End of the Line comes from Gillian Galbraith, a former advocate at the Scottish Bar, specialising in medical negligence and author of the bestselling Alice Rice Mysteries comes a tense new thriller. When a 90-year-old man is found dead in his Edinburgh mansion, the bibliophile reviewing the old man’s documentation questions the circumstances surrounding…

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Fringe: No place to Hyde in a great one man show

Michael Tonkin-Jones is a busy performer – in this one man show,Hyde and Seek, he demonstrates considerable skill, playing all the characters, he sings, is a puppet master and dances too. The play is based on Stevenson’s Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and narrated by Albert, the stage door manager of a theatre who is…

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A gripping whodunnit – with laughs on the way

If you are looking to settle down with a gripping whodunnit – and a good measure of comedy – the latest crime novel from Angus McAllister, author of Close Quarters, is worth picking up. Set in Glasgow, Annette Somerville is a young single mother earning her living as an upmarket prostitute in a sauna parlour…

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A fascinating insight into a privileged socialist

The Burning Glass tells the fascinating story of Naomi Mitchison, a dedicated socialist and feminist who attacked life with an insatiable energy and a desire to speak out for the needs of others. Born into privilege in Edinburgh in 1897, she died aged 101 having given birth to seven children, travelled the world and campaigned…

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Fringe: Going coco-nuts for improvised fun and laughs

I’m not usually a fan of improvised comedy, it can so easily retreat into crudity or banality. Not from this cast of five, they are intelligent, fast, fun to watch and very funny. A word is thrown out from an audience member and they are off. How they manage to navigate from ‘somewhere in Europe’,…

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Fringe: An early show that’s worth getting up for

White Girls is one of the earlier shows of the day and well worth setting your alarm clock to make sure you go. The show tells the tale of naive voluntourism within the Calais Jungle refugee camp. This could have turned into a political rant at the incompetence and uselessness of global governments. It wasn’t,…

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This history of Lothian Buses is your ticket to ride

Lothian Buses – 100 years and Beyond demonstrates the long and interesting history behind Edinburgh and the Lothian’s most loved and favoured bus service. With unique, and never before published photos, Richard Walter shows us all the different phases the buses have been through in the past, and how that got them to where they…

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Fringe: True stories of an incredible life well lived

There are some people that can make their lives complicated, there are others for whom life is complicated, then there is Fiona Goodwin. The title of her monologue, A Very British Lesbian, gives it away: she is a lesbian. Everything conspired to keep her in the closet, her religion, her country and her mother’s desire…

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