Duncan Harley

On 12 June 1878 a ponderously titled farming journal, The North British Agriculturist, published an article honouring Scotland’s ‘Cattle King’ - Mr William McCombie, of Tillyfourie. McCombie had, the previous Sunday, carried-off top honours for livestock at the Paris Exposition Universelle - better known perhaps as the Third Paris World Fair. “This is indeed a proud week for Tillyfour and for the polled Angus or Aberdeen breed of cattle … Mr McCombie having been adjudged the £100 prize for the best group of cattle, bred by exhibitor and reared out of France,” ran the article. “McCombie’s successful group numbered six animals…every black polled animal has a ticket of some kind!” Preparations for the Paris Exhibition had involved major upgrading of the French railway network, and it is fair to assume that McCombie’s cows had travelled in some comfort from Alford to Paris by train, before alighting at the delightfully named Gare du Champ de Mars, alongside the Eiffel Tower. The ...

The timber-built railway station at Ballater was frequented by the Royal Family in the days when the journey north to Balmoral involved rail travel. When the Deeside line closed to passengers in 1966 the building found new use as shop units and even incorporated a Tourist Information Centre and a restaurant. Prior to the disastrous 2015 fire, a part of the building was turned into a museum and visitors could, if they were lucky, meet up with a mannequin dressed as Queen Victoria’s loyal ghillie John Brown on the station platform. A second mannequin representing an ageing Victoria, complete with mourning dress, could be seen taking tea in the private Royal Apartments of the station building. Those Royal Apartments naturally featured a Royal Loo. Thunder-box in form and with an ornately decorated porcelain pan, replete with Acanthus leaves and brightly painted woodland flowers, the loo was off limits to ordinary travellers during Victoria’s time. In more recent times however, s...

Author John Buchan once described Walter Scott’s 1814 novel Waverley as a "riot of fun and eccentricity", a view not shared by a great many other commentators. Some critics have even been known to view Scott’s tales of wild tartan clad Highlanders, romanticised castles and heroic Jacobite insurrection as somewhat dour, inaccurate and humourless. Notwithstanding this, Sir Walter was charged with organising festivities for the 1822 visit of King George IV to Scotland in which "the garb of old Gaul", the kilt and the tartan, featured prominently. The Royal romance with the Highlands had been kindled and decades later, in 1852, following some three years of careful negotiation, Queen Victoria and the Royal Consort Prince Albert purchased the, by then run down, Balmoral Estate - the previous owner having died after choking on a fishbone. By 1856 the new Balmoral Castle was complete. The original building was completely demolished and Victoria’s “dear paradise in...

The news that Police Scotland are to divert some 5k officers and around £5m in public money to enhance the northern portion of the visit of the 45 th President of the United States is reverberating around Scotland-shire at the minute. It’s almost as though the presidential threat to ‘take tee with the Queen’ at Balmoral’s private golf course has led the, possibly hubristic, golf-magnate to imagine that the land of his mother will welcome what some unkind folk describe as a bullying entrepreneur to the northern outposts of the Roman empire. The Donald, of course, has choices. He can hide behind the Antonine Wall and play at Turnberry. Or, in a fit of pants, he can head north to the coastal links at Balmeddie. Either way, Scotland’s pseudo-Mexicans plan to give him a Mexican wave or two. Mind you, it’s not all cringeworthy. Golf of course is a great leveller.  The golf course at Cruden Bay is situated twenty-three miles north of Aberdeen, ten miles South of Peterhead and ar...