Thanksgiving
On the morning of Thursday 28 November 1918, the Imperial War Cabinet met at 10 Downing Street in London. Outside the weather was wet and…
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‘We Have Survived’—Roadrunner 1980
To view and download issues, click on thumbnails below Roadrunner’s ‘End of the ’70s’ double issue in December 1979 made a few people sit up and take notice. One of them was Paul Gardiner, publisher of Rolling Stone. Gardiner used to play the occasional game of squash with Stuart Coupe in Sydney and asked him if I might be willing to sell the magazine. He had just started a
‘The Nips Are Getting Bigger’—Roadrunner 1979
To view and download issues, click on thumbnails below Roadrunner’s first national issue hit the newsstands in February 1979. The cover story on the riots and run-ins of Elvis Costello’s summer tour was by the hard-hitting Ross Stapleton, whose fascination with the behind-the-scenes machinations of the music industry was to yield a series of lengthy features over the following twelve months. As well as being engrossing exposes in their
‘One More Boring Night in Adelaide’—Roadrunner 1978
To view and download issues, click on thumbnails below When I returned to Adelaide in late 1977 after two-and-a-half years in the UK, I came back with 25 singles—Sex Pistols, The Clash, The Damned, Elvis Costello, Wreckless Eric, Tom Robinson Band, X-Ray Spex, The Rezillos, Slaughter & the Dogs etc. I moved into a small cottage at 14 Donegal Street, Norwood, owned by my old Adelaide Uni friends Larry
Seven books that had an impact
It was one of those Facebook memes. My good friend Greg Taylor invited me to nominate ‘seven books that had an impact’. Seven books in seven days. I accepted and after some thought, (and somewhat predictably) decided to go in chronological order. I enjoyed the exercise and thought it was worth collecting the results here. 1. The Children’s Encyclopedia. My parents bought me The Children’s Encyclopedia when I was
My Scotland
My ideal Scotland is an independent state. My Scotland is a republic, free of the monarchy and the aristocracy it supports. My Scotland is a parliamentary democracy with a constitution that hardwires ideals of equality and social justice into the way the country operates. My Scotland is a country where the bastions of privilege and inequality—the private schools, the large country estates, the obscene salaries and bonuses of corporate bosses—have
Whisky: ‘Whether or not it is Scotland’s oil, it is mostly not Scotland’s whisky’.
No account of the Highland county of Moray would be complete without a mention of whisky. There are 49 operating malt whisky distilleries in the Speyside region, the greatest concentration in Scotland. The clean air, the plentiful and pristine water of the Spey coming off the Cairngorm mountains to the south (plus natural springs) and proximity to the main barley growing areas of the country provide ideal conditions for
Scotland 2017: A kangaroo cousin looks at the Saltire
In June 2017 Di and I left Sydney and spent two weeks in Amsterdam and then ten days touring around the Scottish Highlands. As much for myself as anything else, I decided to set out my impressions and thoughts of Scotland in this period of great uncertainty about the future of the place I was born. In the canal house flat where Di and I spent most of our time
Still The Boss
As I stood in the foyer waiting for Calum a fragment of a lyric came into my mind—‘… thinking that maybe we’re not that young any more …’ There was a lot of grey hair, some walking sticks, and some big bellies—but, to be fair, some youngsters too. All in all a pretty representative cross section of Sydney. The tickets had been a last minute Christmas present for Calum. The
John Maclean’s Glasgow
A couple of weeks before I was due to head off to Glasgow in search of the ghost of John Maclean, I stumbled across a couple of articles online, both of which resonated strongly with me. The first was a feature about the Glasgow-based writer Ian R. Mitchell, ‘Following in the footsteps of Maclean and Maxwell’ by Russell Leadbetter, published in the Glasgow Herald magazine on 11 July 2015. An extract: