Travelling up Glen Muick on the Balmoral estate in the Highlands is to follow in Queen Victoria’s footsteps. In my time as a royal historian I’ve worked on exhibitions, television programmes and, most recently, a new biography of Victoria. I know how much she cherished this bleak landscape, but even I was shocked to find … Read more
On the quayside in the picturesque Norwegian village of Andenes, the crew have been preparing their ship for the start of the new season in three days’ time. The engines have been serviced, the wooden meat-cooling pallets have been lifted on to the deck and the deadly exploding harpoons have been loaded. This weekend the … Read more
The writer Lawrence Durrell called it ‘islomania’, a condition he described as ‘an affliction of the spirit’ that led sufferers to find islands ‘irresistible’. He caught the bug on Corfu, but I defy you not to turn into an islomaniac after a visit to one of the many beautiful islands off the coast of Scotland. … Read more