Writings & Interviews
Podcasts
In Our Time (BBC) – 6 June 2024
The Orkneyinga Saga
Melvyn Bragg discuss with Alex Woolf and other guests the Saga of the Earls of Orkney, as told in the 13th Century by an unknown Icelander. This was the story of arguably the most important, strategically, of all the islands in the British Viking world, when the Earls controlled Shetland, Orkney and Caithness from which they could raid the Irish and British coasts, from Dublin round to Lindisfarne. The Saga combines myth with history, bringing to life the places on those islands where Vikings met, drank, made treaties, told stories, became saints, plotted and fought.
In Our Time (BBC) – 5 May 2022
The Davidian Revolution
Melvyn Bragg discuss with Alex Woolf and other guests the impact of David I of Scotland (c1084-1153) on his kingdom and on neighbouring lands. The youngest son of Malcolm III, he was raised in exile in the Anglo-Norman court and became Earl of Huntingdon and Prince of Cumbria before claiming the throne in 1124. He introduced elements of what he had learned in England and, in the next decades, his kingdom saw new burghs, new monasteries, new ways of governing and the arrival of some very influential families, earning him the reputation of The Perfect King.
The Curiosity Conversation – February 2022
Cult, Church, City: Medieval St Andrews
Professor Michael Brown and Dr Bess Rhodes discuss the differences between the St Andrews of the medieval period and today, the influences and characteristics of the burgh’s residents, and how we can picture the burgh of the past over 500 years later. Michael and Bess are the curators of the exhibition ‘Cult, Church, City: Medieval St Andrews’ at the Wardlaw Museum, running from 20th February – 3rd July 2022. Find out more here.
Time Travels (BBC) – 10 Jan 2021
Port Riots and Dogs’ Lives
Was it a dog’s life in 17th century Scotland? Find out what you were supposed to do if you were bitten by a mad dog back in the day (clue – it involves the worst smoothie in the world), and why James VI shouldn’t have let his wife Anne of Denmark out with his dogs. If dogs had it bad in the 17th century, people had it worse in the 1540s, during the harrowing wars of the ‘Rough Wooing’. Dr Amy Blakeway is back to tell us about women in the ‘Rough Wooing’ and sisters doing it for themselves – those nunneries needed defending.
Time Travels (BBC) – 27 December 2020
Burning Questions
Burning questions of the day – racism, heresy and witchcraft. Dr Amy Blakeway of St Andrews University looks at the darker side of James’s brilliant Renaissance reign. James grandson, James VI, presided over burning people too – for witchcraft.
Time Travels (BBC) – 22 November 2020
Contraception Clinics and Statue Smashers
Statue smashing – a favourite intervention of the 16th century Scottish Reformers who also liked to burn artworks and chop them up – but what did people feel about that at the time, and what did the authorities mean to do about it? Dr Bess Rhodes of ISHR talks about a pivotal moment for the Scottish Reformation.
In Our Time (BBC) – 9 November 2017
The Picts
Melvyn Bragg discuss The Picts with Alex Woolf and other guests in front of a student audience at the University of Glasgow, many of them studying this topic. According to Bede writing c731AD, the Picts, with the English, Britons, Scots and Latins, formed one of the five nations of Britain, ‘an island in the ocean formerly called Albion’. The Picts is now a label given to the people who lived in Scotland north of the Forth-Clyde line from about 300 AD to 900 AD, from the time of the Romans to the time of the Vikings. They left intricately carved stones, such as the one above with a bull motif, from Burghead, Moray, Scotland, but there are relatively few other traces. Who were they, and what happened to them? And what has been learned in the last twenty years, through archaeology?
In the Press
The Maitland Quarto and Poem 49
Check out ISHR alum Ashley Douglas’s essay on a sixteenth-century lesbian poem composed in Scots. It is one of the earliest examples in Europe of this type in any language. Her essay
is featured on the NLS Wee Windaes website and is written in Scots!