Mary Brennan will be giving a slideshow and talk us through forty years of Scotland's world-class ballet company to launch her book Scottish Ballet: Forty Years at the Edinburgh International Book Festival (31st August, 6pm). A few tickets are still available.
Meet Mary and a special guest at Blackwell, South Bridge, Edinburgh on Thursday 3rd September at 6.30pm. Tickets (FREE) can be reserved on
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
or call 0131 622 8222 to reserve.
Come to the Glasgow launch at Waterstones, Sauchiehall Street on Thursday 10th September at 6.30pm - meet Mary and a special guest from Scottish Ballet. Watch out for details of an exclusive competition at Waterstones!
Further events to be announced in other cities during Scottish Ballet's anniversary tour.
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!
We are delighted to see a review of The Wright Experience in the journal of the Twentieth Century Society for Winter 2008/2009 by Trevor Dannatt, President of the society, Royal Academician, architect, writer and art collector. Excerpts from the review are below.
"A new production which provides a good introduction to the life, thoughts and works of ‘The Master’ and should have great appeal to the interested layperson as well as to the architect. I sought the right adjective … sumptuous … it is well done and the original photography by Balthazar Korab carries all before it. It provides a wide coverage and an appopriate overview of the man and the life with a stronger emphasis on the domestic work. … Most useful is the seven-page timeline, which reveals the prodigious Wright output over some 68 years, while the 154 picture-packed pages reveal the man’s versatility and architectural imagination.… … The profound spatial understanding, three-dimensional beyond measure is brought to light in many of the superb illustrations… The Wright Experience in its photography offers an almost authentic hapticity. Some of the full-page spreads, for instance, are ravishing… It is lush, a generous book of serious intent and a fitting celebration, well produced and well worth the cost of a modest meal for one in a good restaurant."
Clare Gibson's letter in The Times, January 7, 2009, gives a tantalising glimpse of some of the treasures in store in our forthcoming release The Hidden Life of Ancient Egypt (October 2009 - details coming soon) - the latest in the popular Hidden Life series, which decodes the symbols in great works of art, revealing the hidden meanings.
Sir, Further to Robert Wolton’s letter (“Reiss on Charles Darwin and faith”, Jan 5), it is clear from their art that the Ancient Egyptians believed that baboons (Papio hamadryas) worshipped God (or a god), in his manifestation as the rising sun, and that they paid homage to Re, or Re-Horakhty, each morning at dawn.
This belief was derived from baboons’ tendency to unleash a raucous dawn chorus at daybreak, which was interpreted as jubilance, relief, wonder and awe at the Sun’s daily reappearance, and from their habit of extending their paws towards the Sun, the better to allow its rays to warm a night-chilled undercarriage. The baboons’ upraised arms posture is, moreover, thought to have been the basis of the pose that, according to Ancient Egyptian artistic convention, was used to convey such related concepts as adoring, praising and worshipping a divine or superior being, which was not limited to depictions of baboons. Clare Gibson Author, The Hidden Life of Egyptian Art, London W4
‘ "SOME photographers take reality as the sculptors take wood or stone and upon it impose the domination of their own thought and spirit," said Adams. He himself was more a Michelangelo, looking to liberate a spirit he saw already inherent in the western range. Nevertheless in a sense he created the American West, as Jennings's fascinating introduction makes clear. It's evident from the stunning pictures here that his was ultimately a spiritual quest – and it's not too hard to understand the way he felt.’ The Scotsman, Books in Brief, 15th November 2008
In the Books Round-up for 1st November, our lead new title for this autumn season, The Wright Experience.
' "THERE is more beauty in a fine ground plan than in almost any of its ultimate consequences." Frank Lloyd Wright believed in following through from first principles, and we're only now, perhaps, realising how far he was ahead of his time; just starting to apprehend his ideas of the "organic" and of "integrity" in architecture. Wright would have appreciated the flair with which the landmarks of his career are presented here, and still more the seriousness with which they are considered. A stunningly illustrated, utterly absorbing book about a fascinating figure who transcends his age and the field of architecture.' —The Scotsman, 1 November 2008
The London Times ran an article on 22 October on decoding symbolic meanings in works of art.
User feedback on the article featured an enthusiastic reader of Clare Gibson's 'The Hidden Life of Art' and recommended our video podcast. Another reader pleaded for more articles along the same lines.
This subject continues to fascinate - and for good reason. There is often so much more to a painting than is obvious. If you haven't already seen it, take a look at the video now. You won't be disappointed!
AVAILABLE NOW! See more on the book here For a full year, Fiona Houston recreated the lifestyle of her ancestor, living in a basic one-roomed cottage on her own resources, as a challenge to compare it with today’s diet and lifestyle. Find out in this fascinating, funny and honest account how she donned historic dress and lived on a shoestring; how she chopped wood, ate from her garden, fashioned her own soap, quills and candles, and waged heroic battles with mice, mould and fleas.
Fi is known to readers of the Glasgow Herald as The History Woman.
Here she is, back in the present day, looking over her visitors' book and reflecting on life in the cottage:
