Alexander Linklater @ARLinklater Twitter profile

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Alexander Linklater

2 years

William Collins scoops biography of 'contentious and politically influential poet' MacDiarmid

William Collins scoops biography of poet MacDiarmid

William Collins has acquired the biography of the most contentious and politically influential poet of the 20th century.

www.thebookseller.com

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Alexander Linklater

@ARLinklater

2 years

The ‘27 Pod’ of Orcas off Eshaness, Shetland. More exciting than anything going on anywhere else in the UK. For an idea of what it’s like to see this up close and spontaneously, my 7 year old daughter started crying in terror at the awesome killer whales she was seeing

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Alexander Linklater

@ARLinklater

8 months

1/ Abram Lyle was my 3x great grandfather. He came from poverty in Greenock, built a factory in London and, 1883, saved it from ruin with the ⁦ @LylesGolden syrup⁩ idea, designing the tin himself. “Out of the strong came forth sweetness” was its motto

Tate & Lyle's Golden Syrup rebrand drops dead lion

Tate & Lyle's Sugars, which owns the product, claims a new logo will appeal to modern shoppers.

www.bbc.com

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Alexander Linklater

@ARLinklater

6 months

@KennyFarq @thetimes You may underestimate how Presbyterian Scottish culture is, regardless of the avowed beliefs of any leader. I’d put a paradoxical bet on Kate Forbes being more liberal and tolerant in practice than the Sturgeon-Green-Yousaf troika has been (in reality vs messaging)

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Alexander Linklater

@ARLinklater

8 months

2/ That year, Lyle ships survived the eruption of Krakatoa, the collapse of the sugar market, and a financial crash. Until today, it was the longest-surviving brand in British commercial history. …

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Alexander Linklater

@ARLinklater

8 months

9/ Nothing remains of the Lyle family business now (no connection to Tate & Lyle). WW2 took my grandfather’s brothers as well as his (broken hearted) father. And death duties took the liquid assets. But it’s a great story and I feel the loss of Abram’s tin

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Alexander Linklater

@ARLinklater

8 months

10/ Footnote: the Lyle business emerged after Abolition and had no historical connection with the slave trade. Abram, a Free Presbyterian descendent of the weavers of 1820, whose idea of a contract was his word and a handshake, would have abhorred slavery

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Alexander Linklater

@ARLinklater

8 months

3/ Abram was famous for his syrup while Henry Tate was known for his sugar cubes. The two men detested each other and the Tate & Lyle merger was only possible after Abram’s death.

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Alexander Linklater

@ARLinklater

8 months

6/ Judges 14 8, Samson goes to the betrothal feast for his Philistine bride, sees the dead lion on his way, and returns to find its cadaver filled with bees and honey. Hence “out of the strong came forth sweetness”.

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Alexander Linklater

@ARLinklater

8 months

4/ At his funeral in 1891 (from pneumonia caused by overwork), thousands lined the streets in Greenock, where he had been provost. Abram had been the grandson of a weaver and the son of an alcoholic cooper, who left his son in debt. How he built up his Clyde shipping company is

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Alexander Linklater

@ARLinklater

8 months

a classic business story. An archetype of the driven, West-of-Scotland Presbyterian, he was - because of his father - a lifelong teetotaller of frightening temper and fierce morality. The taking of the pre-Abrahamic name, Abram spoke of Covenanting history.

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Alexander Linklater

@ARLinklater

8 months

7/ Abram meant the strength of the dead lion. He had himself faced down his family’s horror of debt and alcoholism. As the Lyle factory was being built, the Bank of Scotland called in their loan due to an international financial crash. Cargoes of sugar cane had been destroyed by

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Alexander Linklater

@ARLinklater

8 months

8/ the eruption of Krakatoa. Abram’s son, Alexander, who ran the Clyde shipping side of the business, was sent to talk the bank down from its ruinous demands. And the family was saved by the see-through syrup, made from a waste product of the refining process.

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Alexander Linklater

@ARLinklater

8 months

11/ I should qualify by saying no “direct” connection to the slave trade - since the sugar business inevitably dates back to slavery. Also, while Abram was Presbyterian, the correct term was “Free Church” of Scotland. The “Free Presbyterians” came later

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Alexander Linklater

@ARLinklater

8 months

Thanks to @NeilBriogaisean for pointing out the slip. Forgiveness appreciated (by me, if not - strictly theologically speaking - by Free Presbyterians)

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Alexander Linklater

@ARLinklater

4 months

@RealKiefer When my aunt Kristin Linklater died during lockdown, your father wrote the most extraordinary and memorable letter of grief, which went to the grave with her. Of all the actors she worked with, she was proudest to have worked with him. She would have written the same to him now

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Alexander Linklater

@ARLinklater

8 months

@NeilBriogaisean NB Abram had 6 sons, 5 of whom moved to London to run the factory in Plaistow. One son, Alexander, stayed in Greenock to run the ships, because, he “felt too Scottish to leave”. That’s the side of the family I refer to. Abram returned to Greenock to become Provost

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Alexander Linklater

@ARLinklater

2 years

A wider perspective on the 27s Pod, circling, plotting, teaching their young to reconnoitre a site, terrorising the local seals and moving in…

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Alexander Linklater

@ARLinklater

2 years

My father’s piece is very nicely done: an old pro still doing a solid reporter’s job aged 80: nice intro, good quotes, all leading down a spiral narrative staircase into a history of Holyrood. The job of a few hours before coming back to pick up as my mother’s carer. Proud.

Kieran Andrews

@KieranPAndrews

2 years

Monday's @timesscotland inside wrap front page #TomorrowsPapersToday I would really recommend #buyapaper for Magnus Linklater's authoritative piece on the Queen's arrival at the Palace of Holyroodhouse alone

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Alexander Linklater

@ARLinklater

8 months

@Hallibee1 @LylesGolden Judges 14 8, Samson goes to the betrothal feast for his Philistine bride, sees the dead lion on his way, and returns to find its cadaver filled with bees and honey. Hence “out of the strong came forth sweetness”

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Alexander Linklater

@ARLinklater

2 years

@harikunzru Irony well served, though, technically, a Hindu is telling a Muslim they won’t be discussing partition

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Alexander Linklater

@ARLinklater

8 months

@Joez_253 @_KateForbes @LylesGolden I’m ashamed to say I grew up assuming some slavery connection, because of the sugar history. Almost the reverse of finding out about dark family secrets. It was only when I read up on the Lyle-Greenock story that I realised they were better than I had imagined!

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Alexander Linklater

@ARLinklater

4 months

@jilltalbot Virginia Woolf, "The Modern Essay"

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Alexander Linklater

@ARLinklater

6 years

@BenGoldsmith 2. If you wish seriously to contribute to a debate about biodiversity in Scotland, then you need to learn something about the country and its natural heritage first

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Alexander Linklater

@ARLinklater

1 year

Blinder from @TheRestHistory . Total mastery of the revolutionary year from Clark, thrillingly teed up by @holland_tom & @dcsandbrook . But the real revelation was the newness of the nationalist moment. Fluency, brio and Burns sung in German. History that lights up the present.🙏

Tom Holland

@holland_tom

1 year

Today on @TheRestHistory we are talking revolution, as Christopher Clark joins us to explore the astonishing year of 1848, when thrones were shaken, barricades manned, & new possibilities snatched after across Europe. Features properly beautiful singing.

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Alexander Linklater

@ARLinklater

2 years

Bert Jansch wrote this for my mother, Veronica, who died today. She was a social worker, prison reform advocate and folk singer with a voice like Joan Baez. I've never been able to sing "Ca' the Yowes", which she taught me, without crying. Now I never will

Veronica (Live)

Provided to YouTube by The Orchard EnterprisesVeronica (Live) · Bert Jansch · B JanschYoung Man Blues: Live in Glasgow Pt. 1℗ 2008 Ace RecordsReleased on: 19...

www.youtube.com

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Alexander Linklater

@ARLinklater

6 years

@theuniversalben @jerrysaltz Ben, I have a feeling you’d include those, like me, who voted remain (and aren’t brexiteer believers), but don’t see the outcome in the same way. I’m sorry for the loss of ordinary disagreement.

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Alexander Linklater

@ARLinklater

6 months

Eek… it’s Orkney, or the islands of Orkney, not “the Orkneys”.

We must never lose the treasured Orkneys

When, last summer, a group of Orcadians declared they’d like to leave the UK and join Norway, it became clear just how little most of us in the south understand Orkney. Friends who know I go there...

www.spectator.co.uk

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Alexander Linklater

@ARLinklater

2 years

@northwalesone She’ll have the memory forever. Already subject matter for bedtime stories. But her fear was an authentic response which made the experience all the more powerful

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Alexander Linklater

@ARLinklater

6 months

@KennyFarq @thetimes But would she, in practice, be that kind of political wing? After all, you don’t get much more ideologically puritanical than the Sturgeon-Green line, (albeit the self-righteousness came without much follow through). Btw when did it last happen?

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Alexander Linklater

@ARLinklater

1 year

@Ayaan Ayaan! This wasn’t social media, it was *traditional* media… an old school job of investigative journalism. The question is: was it a thorough, credible and justified one?

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Alexander Linklater

@ARLinklater

6 years

@BenGoldsmith 1. I’ve just walked down a hill through a 48-strong black grouse lek below high larches, by a loch where a blackthroated diver feeds, seen Merlin, Osprey, goldeneye, lapwing, red squirrel

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Alexander Linklater

@ARLinklater

1 year

@LewisCapaldi This Norwegian performer knows as much about managing Tourette's Syndrome as anyone: he's a lovely, wise, quickwitted man, book entitled "Mr Tourette and I"

Alexander Linklater: The boy who felt like the joker in the pack

Pelle Sandstrak, a grandson of whale-hunters, grew up dreaming that he would one day own a Chrysler and get a girl.

www.theguardian.com

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Alexander Linklater

@ARLinklater

2 years

@fotoole Tell us the one about how you were on a five day bender with Richard Harris and lost a bet with Oliver Reid that he couldn’t amputate your left arm with a Swiss Army knife

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Alexander Linklater

@ARLinklater

3 years

Just as brilliant from the outside. @fotoole strips away illusions, Irish and international. A wake up for any Scots daydreaming parallels, a reminder that we don’t know ourselves either. Unillusioned, yet still a fabulous story… multitude of stories. How to write a country

Darin Millar

@defencelawyer

3 years

Quite simply the most important book I’ve ever read. ⁦ @fotoole ⁩ pulls no punches. A brutal, brilliant & balanced history of Ireland. Corruption and repression on the difficult road to modernity.

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Alexander Linklater

@ARLinklater

5 months

@theiaincameron Isn’t that adventure communism? (We capitalists prefer individual enterprise.)

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Alexander Linklater

@ARLinklater

2 years

"Even the novel’s title has been termed blasphemous; but the phrase comes from al-Tabari, one of the canonic Islamic sources." via @nybooks

The Book Burning | Salman Rushdie

Salman Rushdie wrote the following in January after a public burning of copies of The Satanic Verses took place in Bradford, West Yorkshire, which has a

www.nybooks.com

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Alexander Linklater

@ARLinklater

6 months

@MikeTilburn Where Are You Tonight? is one of the great divorce songs

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Alexander Linklater

@ARLinklater

8 months

@kingrickydarlin @LylesGolden @thetimes Superb!✊

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Alexander Linklater

@ARLinklater

8 months

@titanspiritsltd @LylesGolden Great to hear that about the Glebe... and that Abram is remembered by new companies. I must try your rum! Strength to your ventures! ✊

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Alexander Linklater

@ARLinklater

8 months

@saddlerliterary @LylesGolden Apparently it's just the squeezy bottles that are changing. The tin will survive as a boutique item, I guess. But bad call in the depressing tradition of unnecessary redesigns...

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Alexander Linklater

@ARLinklater

2 years

@hopefulharpy @DickKingSmith She’s loving it in retrospect, now it’s a story. Her reaction made it more real, she’d never seen anything like it, natural instinct kicking in

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Alexander Linklater

@ARLinklater

6 months

Well, @TheRestHistory , that was among the most wonderful essays in literary biography - of any medium - I have had the pleasure of ravenously consuming. @holland_tom on narrative fire and @dcsandbrook the perfect foil, at once aghast, disapproving and thrilled

The Rest Is History

@TheRestHistory

6 months

🚨🕯️LORD BYRON🕯️🚨 📜 Not only one of the greatest and most intriguing literary celebrities of all time, Byron was also the original vampire, and a charismatic martyr for liberty. 💣 His extraordinary life provides an enthralling, salacious window into the epic dramas of the

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Alexander Linklater

@ARLinklater

4 years

My aunt Kristin Linklater died this morning, aged 84. She was arguably America’s most influential voice teacher. She was also the model for Dorinda in The Wind on the Moon - by her father, Eric - the best Scottish children’s novel of the C20th via @YouTube

Vowel Resonance Ladder

Kristin Linklater demonstrates the Vowel Resonance Ladder from her studio at the Kristin Linklater Voice Centre.If you have enjoyed watching this video pleas...

www.youtube.com

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Alexander Linklater

@ARLinklater

7 years

‘Fanning of the flames of an unhinged, foul-tempered, paranoid, self-pitying and raw, Anglophobic chauvinism amounts to a cultural strategy of disaster.’

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Alexander Linklater

@ARLinklater

1 year

@VanessaAtalanta @afneil @Channel4 @thetimes Sunday Times in the 1960s and 70s went after sex scandals (Profumo most obviously) like any other kind. “We name the guilty men,” was one half of Murray Sayle’s dictum for investigative journalism. (“Arrow points to faulty part” was the other.) They’d have approved of this one.

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Alexander Linklater

@ARLinklater

1 year

@Sathnam Does she (or you) mean multiculturalism in the sense of group rights over individual rights, or does she (or you) mean it in the sense of a multi-ethnic society? Most people confuse the former with the latter

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Alexander Linklater

@ARLinklater

11 months

The foundation of Dundedin/Otago is one of the great Scottish stories, and Liam is one of its great tellers. Lovely answer to the question about the 1843 disruption of the Church of Scotland and its remarkable consequences. Superb lecture

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Alexander Linklater

@ARLinklater

2 years

@ATRightMovies The Prestige Brilliant in its own right, not too flashy like others, but contains the essence of all Nolan's narrative ideas: the pledge, the turn, the prestige... and the suffering required for the magic

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Alexander Linklater

@ARLinklater

10 months

The story in the middle of this, about a palliative care doctor describing in careful detail to a patient what will happen to her as she dies, is the loveliest, most comforting thing I have ever heard about death

Kathryn Mannix

@drkathrynmannix

10 months

I'm very pleased & proud to say that the team at @TEDTalks has chosen to feature my @TEDxNewcastle talk on the main TED website. This is such an honour, & a great boost in the campaign to promote public understanding of dying. Thank you, @TEDTalks .

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Alexander Linklater

@ARLinklater

3 months

@giles_fraser @j_amesmarriott I think it misses the point that Vance is not coming to Christianity from a "post-religious environment", he is converting to catholicism from an evangelical one (Mamaw reveres Billy Graham). Worth reading Vance's intense explanation in his own words

The Lamp Magazine | How I Joined the Resistance

I often wonder what my grandmother—Mamaw, as I called her—would have thought about her grandson becoming Catholic. “All they want is money.” But she…

thelampmagazine.com

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Alexander Linklater

@ARLinklater

6 years

@BenGoldsmith 4. Also insulting our native places with crude inaccurate generalisations will win you few policy friends beyond the super-rich who have the luxury of playing at fantasy ecology

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Alexander Linklater

@ARLinklater

7 months

@MrEwanMorrison @suzanne_moore Don’t forget the Satanic Verses, stirring up hatred among people who hadn’t read it, had no idea what it was about and didn’t know what the satanic verses actually were

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Alexander Linklater

@ARLinklater

6 years

@BenGoldsmith 6. The key word is diversity. Biological, economic, ecological. If you actually want to achieve that, you need to have some respect for the Scottish landscape, understand the reality of rural life and live in the real political world.

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Alexander Linklater

@ARLinklater

11 months

John was one of the most inventive and versatile of all Scotland’s modern artists. As well as being a technically masterful painter, he was a designer of theatre sets and album covers and one of the most notable playwrights of his generation. The Slab Boys (1978) and Tutti Frutti

Alexander Linklater

@ARLinklater

11 months

RIP John Byrne

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Alexander Linklater

@ARLinklater

1 year

@eliistender10 I write emails

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Alexander Linklater

@ARLinklater

1 year

@PCOwen_a @Sathnam Sure. How many people notice that integration and multiculturalism are opposing ideas?

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Alexander Linklater

@ARLinklater

8 months

@oliviamcneilis @LylesGolden Yes, but a different Colonel Lyle (my grandfather, Colonel AM Lyle was a cousin - once removed - to that Colonel). 5 of Abram’s sons moved to London in 1883. I come from the one who stayed in Greenock. I didn’t know about the Barrington Court connection till now. Thank you!

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Alexander Linklater

@ARLinklater

6 months

@KennyFarq @thetimes Apologies, btw, I didn’t mean to imply you wouldn’t know about sectarian pressure. I meant the way in which certain theologies pervade people who don’t explicitly hold them

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Alexander Linklater

@ARLinklater

6 years

@Bob41Dylan Great answers: especially Every Grain of Sand, Desolation Row and Tambourine Man Live at the Albert Hall in 1966

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Alexander Linklater

@ARLinklater

4 years

Loveliness itself

Duncan Chisholm

@DuncanWChisholm

4 years

The great poet Sorley MacLean said of Gaelic song that it was "one of the great artistic glories, with melodies that rise like exhalations from the rhythms and resonances of the words” Here is ‘I Horó ’S Na Hug Òro Eile' recorded in yesterday’s sunshine Stay safe❤️ #COVIDCeilidh

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Alexander Linklater

@ARLinklater

4 years

@billykayscot @Historic_Ally I thought it might plough the subjugation furrow, but was much more vibrant and affectionate than that. Well balanced, produced, shot and presented. Winning over doubters like me and making the case through love of language and people.

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Alexander Linklater

@ARLinklater

2 years

Best footnote ever. Reminds me of best dedication ever... Joseph J Rotman: "To my wife Marganit and my children Ella Rose and Daniel Adam without whom this book would have been completed two years earlier."

Chezami

@chezami

2 years

. @holland_tom As a Top Historian, I thought you would appreciate this:

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Alexander Linklater

@ARLinklater

5 years

@chrisdeerin @DAaronovitch @ForChange_Now Um, you may just have imagined Rory Stewart as a social democrat

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Alexander Linklater

@ARLinklater

6 years

@BenGoldsmith 3. Daft utopian rewilding fantasies are not going to solve the very real problems we have, with rural economy, policy, population and wildlife

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Alexander Linklater

@ARLinklater

7 months

He’s my father, but also a class act. This is how a veteran newspaperman picks up a cue, finds an angle, captures the context, assesses the sources, orchestrates the moving parts, tells a story and revises some mis-told Scottish history, all in 900 words

The Times & The Sunday Times

News and opinion from The Times & The Sunday Times

www.thetimes.com

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Alexander Linklater

@ARLinklater

1 year

“The worse, the better” Brilliant, wise and funny leftist parable from ⁦ @MrEwanMorrison ⁩, perhaps the finest Scottish explainer of the disfiguring infiltration of old revolutionary Marxism into the new identity politics.

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Alexander Linklater

@ARLinklater

4 years

A thread of delight in Scottish placenames from Findo Gast to Greedy Dodie's Hole via Pittendriech and Gowkthrapple, past Maggieknockater and Twatt leading, eventually, to Lost

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Alexander Linklater

@ARLinklater

3 years

@fotoole @IrishTimesCultr Worth mentioning the Sunday Times Insight report, conducted by Peter Pringle and Philip Jacobson, published in April 1972, that comprehensively demolished the findings of Widgery enquiry and which led to it being widely dismissed as an establishment whitewash

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Alexander Linklater

@ARLinklater

8 months

A magic day in Otago with the prof!

Liam McIlvanney

@LiamMcIlvanney

8 months

What a joy to catch up with the polymathic @ARLinklater (currently in NZ working on his MacDiarmid biography) in Dunners today for an extended blether about all things Scottish. Safe home, fella…

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Alexander Linklater

@ARLinklater

5 years

@alexmassie "He appeals to people like me and that’s enough to make me doubt Stewart’s prospects." Lovely

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Alexander Linklater

@ARLinklater

4 months

Ewan is the only Scottish writer I know of who is heading down - full frontal - the biggest issue for literature of our times. I don’t know if he’s right, but AI rides pillion with his other key fascination - Utopianism in politics - and it’s the right battleground

Ewan Morrison

@MrEwanMorrison

4 months

AI-pushers envy creative people in the arts & depict them as an elite & privileged class. They say they are justified in stealing from artists, because with AI 'everyone will be creative now'. Envy masked as egalitarianism. Robber Barons, who depict themselves as Robin Hood.

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Alexander Linklater

@ARLinklater

8 months

@scrumpyh3 @LylesGolden Yes, great letter! (Lou Klein was clearly a dude!)

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Alexander Linklater

@ARLinklater

2 years

Thanks to all who shared, liked and commented. You expanded an extraordinary encounter into a fascinating conversation. The Facebook groups and Orca experts out there taught us more in one Twitter burst than I had known in a lifetime before this. Shetland in its glory!

Alexander Linklater

@ARLinklater

2 years

The ‘27 Pod’ of Orcas off Eshaness, Shetland. More exciting than anything going on anywhere else in the UK. For an idea of what it’s like to see this up close and spontaneously, my 7 year old daughter started crying in terror at the awesome killer whales she was seeing

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Alexander Linklater

@ARLinklater

6 years

@theuniversalben @jerrysaltz If by family history you mean what I think you mean, I don’t believe ending Lisbon Treaty free movement meaningfully compares. I’ve still got the badge they gave me from the 2014 referendum: ‘Quisling Bastard’. The culture wars make us all feel unwelcome over the hedgerows

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Alexander Linklater

@ARLinklater

1 year

@DalrympleWill @MartinKoenigsb2 @Sathnam @JLFLitfest @britishlibrary Belgium?

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Alexander Linklater

@ARLinklater

11 months

RIP John Byrne

The Fine Art Society Ltd

Established in 1876, The Fine Art Society’s elegant gallery space in Edinburgh handles exceptional works of British art and design. We are leading specialists in Scottish art from the 1700s onwards...

www.thefineartsociety.com

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Alexander Linklater

@ARLinklater

7 months

@mrmarksteel The wonderful novelist @david_mitchell grew up there and wrote a fictionalised account of it in Black Swan Green

Black Swan Green - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

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Alexander Linklater

@ARLinklater

2 years

@scotlit @LiamMcIlvanney “I like hourglasses, maps, eighteenth-century typography, etymologies, the taste of coffee and the prose of Stevenson." Jorge Luis Borges

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Alexander Linklater

@ARLinklater

8 months

@AnnRowson1 @LylesGolden Sorry to disappoint!

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Alexander Linklater

@ARLinklater

4 months

@dcsandbrook @TheRestHistory @holland_tom Is it because it’s a Scottish invention?

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Alexander Linklater

@ARLinklater

6 months

Interesting the antagonisms Kate Forbes brings to the surface in Scotland that would be there anyway, but unspoken - or otherwise translated. She’s a Gaelic speaking member of the Free Church, representing a significant strand of Scottish identity

Doug Gay 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

@DougGay

6 months

Public service reminder to folk commenting on Kate Forbes - Free Church positions on moral questions are almost always identical to official Roman Catholic positions (on contraception/divorce more liberal) so think before writing something about FC you wouldn’t write about RC?

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Alexander Linklater

@ARLinklater

8 years

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Alexander Linklater

@ARLinklater

1 year

@ewangibbs It’s a good interview, which captures an entire political and constitutional story in a minute

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Alexander Linklater

@ARLinklater

5 months

@ATRightMovies

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Alexander Linklater

@ARLinklater

2 years

@JeanBartrum This pod has a following on Shetland, as it patrols the coastline, but so close up into the Hoop bay was a rarity

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Alexander Linklater

@ARLinklater

1 year

Important misunderstanding by @bbcnickrobinson . Care is a highly skilled and economically valuable profession, requiring both natural talent and training. Needs to be understood and respected where it is delivered with grace and held to account where it is not

Alison Hardie

@AlisonIHardie

1 year

Why does Nick Robinson think "it can't be difficult to train people" to work in care? The man from India on @BBCr4today spoke more eloquently and intelligently than the "care staff" who would shout at my dad and forget his name while he endured care. Why wouldn't we want him here

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Alexander Linklater

@ARLinklater

3 years

@KennyFarq Criterion

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Alexander Linklater

@ARLinklater

7 months

What a phenomenal achievement of Scottish Literary Scholarship. But why did ancient laws of Scottish patrimony insist on calling sons the same as fathers, so that there will forever be confusion between Allan and Allan? As remarkable in their respective fields as each other.

MP

@P14Murray

8 months

And it’s a wrap!The Ramsay edition is complete- 800+ pages of Volume VI, The Ever Green. 4000 pages of annotated textual edition in 6 years- special thx to lead research associates ⁦ @craigscrolls ⁩ ⁦ @BreeRob_Kirk ⁩- now moved on to bigger things @scotlit ⁦ @BSECS ⁩

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Alexander Linklater

@ARLinklater

3 months

Kudos to @TheRestHistory for citing Tom Nairn in the context of constitutional crises. @holland_tom - with his astonishingly instant recall of old quotes - remembers that it was John Osborne (not Nairn) who described the monarchy as “a gold filling in a mouthful of decay”.

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Alexander Linklater

@ARLinklater

4 years

@holyroodmandy Is he explaining why the Crown took no action earlier, against the Spectator?

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Alexander Linklater

@ARLinklater

1 year

@adrianmckinty @washingtonpost Your Duffy novels are peculiarly good on audiobooks. Gerard Doyle is indeed excellent, but your style – taut even when lyrical or discursive – really works in the ear. The NI Troubles milieu fills out in the imagination. I've read or listened to them all now. Superb. Chapeau

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Alexander Linklater

@ARLinklater

4 months

Stars of English historical narrative though you are, @TheRestHistory , your Scottish black hole was too glaring to ignore today. You discuss the "neglected C18th" @dcsandbrook and @holland_tom and fail to mention 1707, the beginning of the British state. That's neglect, surely?

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Alexander Linklater

@ARLinklater

1 year

@DavieGreig @afneil He’s talking about next year’s general election

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Alexander Linklater

@ARLinklater

5 years

Across the palette, Achiltibuie

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Alexander Linklater

@ARLinklater

1 year

@axrenton A punt on the theological question of atonement: you may have to live with the sins of the father but you can only atone for your own

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Alexander Linklater

@ARLinklater

6 months

@Andr6wMale I don't know how anyone could beat either the Big Sleep or the Long Goodbye as sinister, noir metaphors for death and life

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Alexander Linklater

@ARLinklater

8 years

@RuthDavidsonMSP the tragedy of Scottish journalism is what has happened to the Scotsman and Herald.

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Alexander Linklater

@ARLinklater

6 years

Joy

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Alexander Linklater

@ARLinklater

5 months

Sad to learn @holland_tom is postponing Jacobite series on @TheRestHistory but glad to learn that 7 yrs war is in the offing. Will you make the connection?Wolfe mentioned, but isn’t military development out of Culloden crucial to British strategy? Trevor Royle’s book good on that

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