10 ways Scotland influenced the USA!

10 ways Scotland influenced the United States of America – An infographic with some great facts about how Scotland and her people helped to shape the United States…

Read More

Drumnacoub – A Bloody Battle in the Far North

Battle of Drumnacoub (between 1427 and 1433) This battle was an internal feud among the men of Clan MacKay but also involved some Sutherland men. A disastrous battle, it led to the loss of many senior members of the clan and most of the belligerents on both sides. The origins of the battle begin with […]

Read More

Watching Scotland: A peek at the Scottish Green Party

In the last Watching Scotland blog we took a look at the Scottish Conservative Party, or (from an American point of view) the somewhat unfortunately nicknamed “Tories”. From a right of centre perspective we now swing over and investigate what is going on over on the left with Scotland’s fourth largest political party (out of […]

Read More

EdinburghTwestival

Scotclans was at the Edinburgh Twitter Festival (Twestival)last night.  We saw quite a few nice kilts, met some intersting people and raised lots of money for the charity ‘Water’.  We failed however, to win the raffle!  We have our own twitter page where we’ve been trying to make some Clan connections – feel free to […]

You ‘Garter’ get it from us!

We had a phone call from a stressed bride-to-be today (not an unusual occurrence) Shed been in a kiltmakers on Edinburgh’s Royal mile and had asked about having a tartan garter made up in her own tartan. When she asked where she might be able to obtain such an item the rather dour shop assistant […]

Darwin in Scotland

This year is the bicentennial of Charles Darwin’s birth and 150 years since the publication of his masterpiece, The Origin of Species. The inspiration he found in visiting the Galapagos Islands is very well known, but in the Editorial, ‘Darwin in Scotland’ by Dominic J. McCafferty (The Glasgow Naturalist-2009), we find that the time Darwin […]

I don’t!

Scottish lawyers are noticing a significant rise in the number of men seeking divorce in Scotland.  Apparently they stand to benefit significantly from Scottish laws in which a “clean break” dividing of assets is the norm, as opposed to English divorce laws in which the non-earner is generally granted a lump sum plus a share […]

Presidential Plaid?

The Scottish Conservative Party has invited Barack Obama to mark his inauguration as US president by creating his own tartan. Apparently the new president’s roots can be traced back to William the Lion, who ruled from 1165 to 1214, through Mr Obama’s maternal ancestor, Edward FitzRandolph, who is said to have emigrated to America during […]

Scottish Photo Archive

There is a fantastic new site: scotlandsimages.com which is an archive of Scotland’s national collections: The National Archives; The National Library; the National Museums; the National Trust for Scotland; and the Royal Commission on Ancient and Historical Monuments. I have personally been very interested in the St Kilda images. Here are my pictures from when […]