Duncan Harley

During the scorching hot summer of 1930, T.E. Lawrence - of Arabia fame - rented a harbour-side cottage over at Collieston . Seemingly, well after his Arabian adventures and his RAF sojourn he had become friendly with a fellow soldier, Jock Bruce from Aberdeen, whom he had met during a brief but relatively unknown period of service with the Royal Tank Regiment. Jock was from local farming stock and the adventurous pair apparently shared a healthy interest in sadomasochistic floggings.  A 1984 article in Leopard Magazine co-written by Diane Morgan and David Ross reveals the pairs craving for sexual gratification via punishment. “Jock Bruce himself seems to have no qualms about giving Lawrence his scuds” writes Diane. “Young and impressionable when they met, he saw himself as Lawrence’s bodyguard and valued what he regarded as their friendship – and by no means only for the extra cash it produced.” In her book ‘Six Buchan Villages’ local author Margaret Aitken relates that th...

Reviewed by Duncan Harley Layla is a splendidly timeless song penned by Eric Clapton and co-songwriter Jim Gordon of Derek and the Dominos fame. Inspired by an Arabian love story – Layla and Majnun – Clapton’s song made 27 in Rolling Stone’s list of the 500 greatest songs of all time and won a Grammy in 1993. Clapton was of course in love with Patti Boyd – the wife of his friend George Harrison. Clapton and Boyd would eventually marry for a few years and Layla – the song not the lady – would become ranked amongst the greatest rock songs of all time. They all remained friends. In fact - and stick with this - Harrison attended the Clapton and Boyd wedding and gave his blessing to the unlikely pair. Lyrics include the immortal lines: ‘Let's make the best of the situation Before I finally go insane.’ And now, some decades after the release of Clapton’s Layla, North-east author Judy Mackie, inspired perhaps by the lyrics, has penned   a novel deeply rooted in those far-o...

I've ranted on about this man's music many a time and in the course of ploughing through some glossy copies of Leopard Magazine dating from early 2015 I came across this review of his quite splendid album Thran.  As I recall, we met up in Kintore to have tea and scones before heading off to the local graveyard to do a photo-shoot alongside the Pictish stones in the churchyard.  As for the bill - I think he paid it, but I cant quite recall to be honest. The review went along the following lines: "With the release of his third album Thran , NE singer/songwriter/musician Gordon Duthie reflects on the 74 year old event in which his great grandfather’s fishing vessel, Fraserburgh registered Steam Drifter SS Duthies was sunk in Montrose Harbour by the young men of the Luftwaffe. Alongside titles such as Whisky Disco and Feel Loon did a Wildpoepen , Gordon’s tribute to Sandhaven built FR106 Duthies is just one of ten provocative numbers in this new offering. ...

The sudden demise of Leopard Magazine a year or so ago left a literary void in and around the North-east. My contributions to the monthly magazine are well known but pale into insignificance when compared to the vast reservoir of writing featured within the publications forty-plus year history as a stand-alone monthly stalwart. Nowadays confined to the back pages of The Scottish Field and arguably long forgotten by a solid band of traditional readers, the magazine’s archive forms a hotbed of surprising articles. Over the years since first publication in August 1974, hundreds of writers, mainly local, contributed to Leopard. Early content ranged from farming stories by Eddie Gillanders to Anne Tweedie’s series on the, then emerging, oil industry. North-east writer David Toulmin’s ‘Tillycorthy Story’ and Ian Bryce’s ‘Castle of the Month’ also featured. Interviewed in 2014 by Leopard editor Judy Mackie, founding Editor Diane Morgan recalled the early days. “Our material came fro...

We had a wee stroll round Cove harbour today. The village at one time was home to Isae Caie and her residence in the place is celebrated in the coastal village in the form of a splendid marble monument sculpted by Brazilian artist Albertino Costa with support from local residents. I penned an article about the woman – The Last Fishwife – in some forgotten Leopard or other and Albertino and I tracked down her grave on a wet and stormy February day for that long-lost feature article. Subject of litigation, I have no real idea why, Cove Harbour is now largely bereft of fishing boats. There are a few small boats left-over on the stony beach and it looks tidier now and that’s a fact. A private plastic-surgeon has won his case but has perhaps lost his reputation in a strange but true tale of the taking over of land beside the sea by invasive land-owners. It somehow reminds me of a childhood haunt along Loch Fyne. Some rich mogul had bought a plot by the shore. Having erected a house an...

I was over in Huntly earlier today and picked up a copy of the Northern Scot. It’s a splendid paper and winner of more awards than I care to remember. Full of local news, it carries a good spread of feature articles. In last week’s edition, which was the one I bought, there are tales of fiddlers from Fochabers, firefighters from Buckie and, of course a leader describing how Elgin High Street is about to take on the mantle of ‘Best High Street in Britain’ . There is a new editor in post now and the broadsheet has shrunk to a tabloid. But, in the big scheme of things – and I am biased since a previous editor gave me my first start in print – the paper sure beats the hell out of most weekly rags. On page 34 there is a poignant piece by Jill Stewart – a local historian – detailing the endgame of those folk from Moray unlucky enough to have died as a result of enemy action during the first war. A lad from Findochty – died of wounds in a French hospital. A Lossie man killed at...

Alongside the Art Deco buildings - one an open air pool, the second a splendidly new curry house aptly named 'Carron to Mumbai' - Stonehaven has quite a lot going for it. With Dunnottar just around the headland and two of Scotland’s most famous chippers – one wins accolades for best battered fish in Scotland-shire, while another deep fries chocolate bars to order ... what’s not to like about the place. I gave the seaside town a good few mentions in my Our Town Leopard Magazine articles. Robert Burns, the Raedykes Mons Graupius connection and that Highland Boundary Fault made it onto the pages of the now sadly defunct periodical. Hitler’s Bunker, fresh seafood, fine dining and New-Year arson inhabited the pages. And, inevitably some war history made it into print in my A-Z of Curious Aberdeenshire book as well. We, Janice and I, had been checking out the Cowie Stop Line. In case you’ve never heard of it, it’s a largely forgotten part of the Stonehaven history. ...

A search for Papers of David Toulmin reveals a sad ‘Sorry, your search did not match any Descriptions on the Archives Hub’ response on the University of Aberdeen Archives Hub. Until quite recently Toulmin, despite dying in far off 1998, was a favourite of the Aberdeen academia. But not now . Despite awarding the man a degree. And despite the various Toulmin £500 prize competitions, the land of academia has largely forgotten the man. He had a difficult death by all accounts. Something about a stroke as I recall. And had moved from the Buchan fields to Westhill and then Pittodrie Place. He did of course leave a legacy of fine writing. Subject to a deeper search, the University records some bare records in blandly academic terms. ‘ GB 231 MS2823  David Toulmin,  Hard Shining Corn  (Aberdeen: Impulse, 1972);  Straw into Gold: a Scots Miscellany  (Aberdeen: Impulse, 1973);  Blown Seed  (Edinburgh: Harris, 1978);  Harvest Home  (Edinburgh...

As the new book nears completion I have had time to reflect on some still-to-be completed writing projects. Few of us live to be much beyond a hundred and there are quite a few unpublished tales stuck within my bulging filing cabinet. An armoured train, manned by a Polish Dad’s Army regiment which once patrolled the Buchan permanent way plus a piece about the last of the Covesea millwrights lead the pack and the strange tale of sculptor Alexander Brodie’s lonely suicide are just examples of the buried genre. Then there is the story of a long-lost number 10 Bluebird buried at Rothienorman, a Victorian Music Hall sandal scandal and that quite splendid tale of the last voyage of the Girl Pat. I could go on … But where to begin. The lack of a regional magazine, now that Leopard has been abandoned by the university and then swallowed by a bigger fish, has led to a dearth of publication places and in the big scheme of things even David Toulmin has been cast aside by the powers...

Mark Jackson’s take on the beautiful game, of rugby, is a welcome distraction from that stereotypical play on sweating giants in short shorts which generally populates the sporting-fiction bookshelf. Set against a backdrop of rarefied privilege in the lead up to the 1924 Paris Olympiad the story follows American student Jack Morgan as, on the trail of burning ambition, he vows to secure selection for the US Olympic team. Along the way he must pick up a Rugby Blue, bag the girl of his dreams and, of course, win that Gold. Following a meeting at Stamford University, during which he accepts the challenge “Climb that Everest and perchance other mountains may be scaled”, he secures a scholarship at Oxford and sets off on his quest. Morgan is young, wealthy and gifted. When he arrives at Oxford in 1923, he is paired, by the sniffy College porter, with new room-mate Saul Warburg. “What are you here for?” asked Morgan “Isn’t it obvious? Law. It’s the Inns of Court for Saul W...

I first encountered Gordon Duthie a few years back when an editor flagged his music and I interviewed the man in the course of some black coffee in a backstreet café in darkest Kintore. We added cake as I recall and split the bill. When Gordon first came to my attention he had just released his third album A Thran Backwoods Poet . The Westhill singer/composer/musician had re-visited a family event in which the young men of the Luftwaffe had bombed and sunk his grandad’s fishing boat in Montrose harbour.      A year in the making, Thran represented a significant shift from the themes of sadness and isolation expressed in Gordon’s previous albums and, alongside titles such as Whisky Disco and Feel Loon did a Wildpoepen , Indeed, Gordon’s tribute to his grandad’s Sandhaven built FR106 Duthies featured ten quite provocative numbers. Then came Dunt, Dunt, Dunt - his fourth album and again a full year in the making. Dunt looked deeply into the soulless existe...