The Speculative Society of Edinburgh Part 2

“The Spec” Harmless oddball students or sinister, quasi-masonic networkers? Oddball students?: Is the case made by several members who have stuck their heads above the parapet, but is perhaps most eloquently put by extraordinary member Humphrey Errington, producer of Lanark Blue Cheese, who laughed off the claims of an old boy network, Errington said it…

Magic Circle Man

Magic Circle Man In “My First Lawyer” I told of how my first experience of the legal profession had been less than positive. Around about the same time that I was becoming disenchanted with the Bruce law firm the engineering business I had formed started to take off and as it became bigger and more…

Comparing 4 editions of Elgin’s Memorandum

THE FOUR EDITIONS OF THE ‘MEMORANDUM ON THE EARL OF ELGIN’S PURSUITS IN GREECE’ In 2002, my dormant and somewhat uninformed interest in the so called ‘Elgin Marbles’ was awakened by the writings of Professor Epaminondas Vranopoulos, who in turn was interested and angered by an anonymous Memorandum used to support Elgin’s bid to sell…

ANDREW CARNEGIE MASS MURDERER?

Published on: May 7, 2024 at 07:52 Andrew Carnegie Mass Murderer? The above headline poses a question that might seem far-fetched, but it is plausible based on recorded facts, which is more than can be said of the rose-tinted, dewy-eyed, self-aggrandising rubbish accepted as fact in Carnegie’s autobiography. Perhaps what’s more revealing is something that…

This Camphorwood Chest

This NOTE is pinned inside a Camphorwood Chest at my home in Dunfermline.   For some years now I had been meaning to write a note about the purchase of this camphorwood linen chest and pin it inside, but it was only when Russell Darnley, an Australian author, sent me an audio book of his…