Features on Fiona Houston have now begun appearing in the press, and more features are due in various publications soon. Her new book, The Garden Cottage Diaries, is receiving plenty of favourable attention!

The Sunday Times 8th February has a full-page feature, 'My Costume Drama', in which Fiona describes her year of living in the cottage, as well as her motivations for undertaking the project and the lasting benefits it has resulted in. She said: "I emerged from my year in the past fit and lean... I had a new respect for those of our forebears who did more than subsist: those who educated themselves by candlelight, fashioned simple but lovely things by the fire or dreamt up inventions – from the steam engine to lighthouses – with no more than a pen and paper."

Samantha Booth, reporter for the Scottish Daily Record, wrote a feature on 4th February, in which she described Fiona's project: "Through her work for a museum as a freelance researcher and educator, she became involved in studying the diet of 18th century Scots, discovering to her surprise that they ate incredibly well, especially in the countryside... So, as the bells chimed on Hogmanay 2004, Fiona changed into her 18th century costume and began her life living as a teacher's wife would have more than 200 years ago."

The Glasgow Herald and The Scotsman featured Fiona's story in their magazine supplements on Saturday 28th February. The Scotsman article, Back to her Roots, by Louisa Pearson, focused on the gardening aspect of Fiona's year.

In Scots Magazine (February 2009) we learn how Fiona was intrigued by seeing an entry for her ancestor Anne Houston in a family bible, and set about learning more about her and her way of life as an 18th-century schoolmaster's wife.

The Borders newspaper The Southern Reporter, 28th Feb, carried an enthusiastic review by Peter Clarke, despite his having a very different political outlook from Fiona's!