Duncan Harley

James Graham 1st Marquis of Montrose was born in 1612, probably on the High Street site now occupied by the local Job Centre Plus in the Angus town of Montrose.  He was one of the first to to sign  the National Covenant at Edinburgh on 28 February 1638. Outlining radical demands for change in Scotland’s governance, the Covenant led to a bloody civil war and would ultimately lead James Graham to the gallows. Following his sacking of Aberdeen in 1644, a portion of his army, led by Alexander Irvine of Drum, entered Montrose’s hometown with the intention of seizing the town’s two brass cannon.   Meeting local opposition, the Marquis’s troops destroyed the artillery pieces and plundered the town, before withdrawing north for fear of a counter-attack. In 1645, the Aberdeenshire town of Alford played host to what was perhaps the Marquis of Montrose’s easiest victory. After his defeat of Sir John Hurry’s forces, at Auldearn, in early May 1645, Montrose had confronted a ...

In the August of 2014 Edinburgh Auctioneers Lyon & Turnbull offered for sale a small decorative wooden box believed to be the work of Alexander J. Brook of Edinburgh silversmiths Brook & Sons. Brook was known for his meticulously researched reproductions of antiquarian items and the small (W 112mm x D 51mm x H 89mm) highly decorated, silver plated wooden casket would have presented few challenges for him. Brook’s 19th century replica was of an item known as the Monymusk Reliquary. The unsigned piece had been valued at between £5000-10,000 however, perhaps due to interest in all things Scottish generated during the run up to the Scottish Referendum and the approaching 700th anniversary of the Battle of Bannockburn, the tiny silver panelled yew wood container fetched a staggering £20,000 on sale-day. A strange prequel to the sale had of course been played out some 79 years before, in 1933, when the original Monymusk Reliquary had been advertised for sale by auction in a Lo...

A special train left the Joint Station at Aberdeen on Friday 24 July 1914 and headed north to the old railway station at Inverurie where it stopped to pick up a number of very important passengers before proceeding to a point midway between Inverurie and Inveramsay. Wooden ladders were lowered onto the track and, on that damp and blustery pre-first-war summer’s day, some 300 passengers disembarked then trudged up through the muddy fields to join crowds of locals who had gathered to witness the inaugural ceremony of the monument to the July 1411 Battle of Harlaw. The battle is of course often portrayed as a simple bloodthirsty clash between Highland and Lowland cultures and popular belief holds that the outcome saved the city of Aberdeen from rape and pillage at the hands of the highland hordes. The Lord of the Isles was indeed a troublesome noble. He looked upon himself as legitimate heir to the Earldom of Ross and when the Duke of Albany, who had become Regent following t...

In this, the third part of his Strathspey Pentalogy musical journey, composer Hamish Napier celebrates the ancient forests of the Scottish Highlands. I’ve ranted on about the man’s music on a few occasions. Once or twice in the, now defunct Leopard Magazine. A couple of times in Aberdeen Voice. And in the blogosphere.  The first album dwelt on vivid sonic images of the River Spey – The River, and part two of the five-part journey - The Railway, was dedicated to railwaymen all around the north-east. In this new collection there are 21 new tracks which according to Hamish incorporate 28 new tunes and pieces in a folk-tune cycle. Legends, folklore and a heady mix of jigs, reels, marches and slow airs inhabit the album. Themed around the medieval Ogham alphabet, there is says Hamish ‘A track for every letter of the Scottish Gaelic tree alphabet.’ Venus of the Woods, an upbeat polka, reflects the cheerful mood of the ash while the elm, a coffin tree, is celebrated in a mel...

The unfaithful Margot – a splendid Sally Bretton, kills the hit-man hired by tennis-pro-husband Tony and heads to death row. There are sharp scissors involved. Enter Inspector Hubbard who, assisted by Margot’s lover Max, solves the crime and cheats the hangman. Well, truth is Hubbard got it wrong first time around but he eventually gets his bearings. Case solved, end of story, all live happily ever after. Well not quite. Dial M is one of those classic thrillers where we, the audience, are in on the perfect-murder plot from the very beginning. But, and all power to them, it takes ages for the police to catch on. If only they had asked us at the start. But that’s not how these things work. This is a four-hander which means you won’t ever see hit-man Captain Lesgate and DCI Hubbard on stage at the same time since both are ably played by Christopher Harper. Of the two, Hubbard is the most believable and has the unenviable task of sorting out who did what to whom and how. Le...

Mad Max meets Star Wars in this hilariously camp re-run of the Queen back catalogue. We Will Rock You (WWRU) is of course a juke-box musical and the Ben Elton inspired story is at best weak at the knees. But it doesn’t really matter. Few come to this show to dwell on the plot. It’s all about the Queen numbers. And the show features a shed load of them. Set 300 years into the future, WWRU inhabits a world dominated by Globalsoft, an outrageously oppressive corporate giant run by the Killer Queen, which dominates society to the point where free thought and creativity have been all but obliterated. Enter hero Galileo Figaro – a splendidly cast Ian McIntosh. A bohemian and a dreamer by nature, Galileo – following various adventures including an Arthurian guitar hunt ending in Wembley Stadium - re-invents rock, defeats the Killer Queen and gets the girl. So that’s all right then. But, as I said, the plot is simply a modest vehicle for the music and the entertainment value is where...

The task of re-animating dead flesh is not for the faint hearted but, at some two hundred years distance from publication of the original novel, Mary Shelley’s tale of a latter-day Prometheus continues to fascinate. During the summer of 1816, Mary Shelley along with Lord Byron and Mary’s future husband – the poet Percy Shelley holidayed near Geneva. Freakish weather curtailed their plans and a ghost story competition ensued. Mary famously triumphed and in 1818 – aged twenty, she published the Gothic horror novel we now know as Frankenstein. She was later to record, ‘How I, then a young girl, came to think of, and to dilate upon, so very hideous an idea?’ Multiple takes on the story have emerged during the subsequent years and the nightmarish tale of science versus god has spawned a plethora of sensationally bonkers Hollywood films and theatre adaptations. Thankfully, this new but ambitious theatrical take by Rona Munro steers clear of the bolt-necked cadaver approach. The...