We all know Captain Robert Falcon Scott as one of the tragic heroes of the heroic age of polar exploration: in 1912 he reached the South Pole, only to discover that the Norwegian Amundsen had beaten him to it. Scott and his companions did not survive the return trip. Scott’s polar career had already started in 1901, when he set off on a scientific expedition in the legendary ship the Discovery.
The V&A Museum in London is opening a new museum next year specially for Scottish design, in the coastal city Dundee, the fourth largest city of Scotland. The huge building on the river Tay is the outcome of an international competition won by the Japanese architect Kengo Kuma, who is also designing Tokyo’s Olympic stadium for 2020. The V&A is also one of the founding institutions of a new design museum, Design Society, which is to open this October in the Chinese city of Shenzen.
From Isle of Skye through the Highlands and on to Glasgow. The city has it all: Charles Rennie Mackintosh, the most impressive street art mural I have ever seen, a piano bar in a horse trailer and lots of tipsy women with too short skirts and too high heels. Then back home to the wedding of my dear stepson Bouke and his wife Daniëlle and the craziness of the Gay Parade!
In the Scottish countryside, the good old red phone booth now houses a library, or a defibrillator, or a town’s oral history – and sometimes even a phone. And on the far reaches of the Isle of Skye we meet Donald Murdie, who tells us about his life as a ‘crofter’ and his fears of Brexit.
In the Scottish countryside, the good old red phone booth now houses a library, or a defibrillator, or a town’s oral history – and sometimes even a phone. And on the far reaches of the Isle of Skye we meet Donald Murdie, who tells us about his life as a ‘crofter’ and his fears of Brexit.