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Peter Ross Profile
Peter Ross

@PeterAlanRoss

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Author of Steeple Chasing, a Sunday Times Bestseller & A Tomb With A View, a Radio 4 Book of the Week

Glasgow
Joined July 2009
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@PeterAlanRoss
Peter Ross
1 year
I walked up Whitby's 199 Steps and – when I got my breath back – filmed this short introduction to my new book, Steeple Chasing: Around Britain By Church.
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@PeterAlanRoss
Peter Ross
3 months
If I was a metal band this would be the name of my live album
@JWNairn
James Nairn
3 months
Bestial hinge at Compton, Berkshire
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@PeterAlanRoss
Peter Ross
2 years
Please indulge some parental pride. I love my eldest son’s self-portrait. He’s called James. The rabbit is Jenny.
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@PeterAlanRoss
Peter Ross
2 years
I am on the train to Edinburgh and someone in my carriage has just referred to Haymarket as Haymarché. Please let there be another strike right now.
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@PeterAlanRoss
Peter Ross
4 months
Thomas Hardy’s Cottage. He was born in the upstairs bedroom closest to the door, and wrote Far From The Madding Crowd in the room with the roses below the window.
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@PeterAlanRoss
Peter Ross
1 year
Sent a copy of my book to a friend in Spain. It cost me £11 to post and then he had to pay almost 10 Euros in custom charges at his end. Quite apart from what Brexit has done to business, it has tainted these little pleasantries and courtesies. It’s a poison.
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@PeterAlanRoss
Peter Ross
4 years
This is my favourite gravestone in Cathcart Cemetery. I'd like to tell you about it.
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@PeterAlanRoss
Peter Ross
4 months
Should I buy this Cerne Abbas Giant clock?
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@PeterAlanRoss
Peter Ross
6 years
"Dear Andy, Thank you ..." My open letter to @andy_murray . I put my heart into this one. @JudyMurray
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@PeterAlanRoss
Peter Ross
2 months
The Antonine Wall is a whole lot of nothing, but quite a cool nothing. I’d love to know how many people walk the whole thing. Very few, I suspect.
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@PeterAlanRoss
Peter Ross
2 years
First morning train into Glasgow from where I live on the southside now an hour later. Last train home 1935 rather than 2305. Everyone who relies on trains is dealing with something similar. Yes, it’s complicated, but can’t help feeling Scottish Govt is letting the country down.
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@PeterAlanRoss
Peter Ross
3 years
Just want to say that @PippaCrerar has done the public a huge service through her stories on Cummings/Barnard Castle and now the Number Ten party. Massive gratitude and respect to her.
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@PeterAlanRoss
Peter Ross
4 years
One of my favourite Glasgow buildings just catching the light. I wish some use could be found for this place.
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@PeterAlanRoss
Peter Ross
8 months
Don’t think I’ll ever get used to the light in Dundee. You pop into Tesco and when you come back out it’s basically William Blake.
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@PeterAlanRoss
Peter Ross
5 years
The Brighton grave of Phoebe Hessel. Disguised as a man to keep close to her lover, she joined the army and was bayoneted at the battle of Fontenoy. Not fatally. She passed away in 1821 aged 108. "Other people die," she said. "I cannot." Her life is a BBC drama waiting to happen.
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@PeterAlanRoss
Peter Ross
5 years
Early days, but this might be the headline of the year ...
@BBCScotlandNews
BBC Scotland News
5 years
Gorgie farm welcomes the Dalry llama
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@PeterAlanRoss
Peter Ross
7 years
I went to Applecross to write about the life & death of the fisherman Alasdair Macleod, an extraordinary ordinary man. Thanks to his family & friends for their time & trust.
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@PeterAlanRoss
Peter Ross
4 years
The Andy Murray sense of humour is a beautiful thing. Serve it with an olive, man, it's well dry.
@TennisTV
Tennis TV
4 years
If @andy_murray gets his way, Lionel Messi could soon be heading north... @HibernianFC #CInCyTENNIS
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@PeterAlanRoss
Peter Ross
6 years
I was in the west end for the first time in ages. I'm going soft, I know, but there's something moving about seeing Uni Avenue busy with new students. They look so young. Autumn is a beautiful time to move to Glasgow: all leaves and smoke, early darkness and lightness of heart.
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@PeterAlanRoss
Peter Ross
3 years
Passed a recovery vehicle - “Sir Winchalot” - near Knutsford Services. I thought Scottish Twitter ought to know.
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@PeterAlanRoss
Peter Ross
4 months
The Dorset Ooser bringing in the May, Giant Hill, Cerne Abbas
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@PeterAlanRoss
Peter Ross
4 years
Bit of excitement in today's post: a proof manuscript of my book. It's strange reading about travelling around, meeting people and visiting places. I feel weirdly envious of myself of a year ago.
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@PeterAlanRoss
Peter Ross
4 years
I'm writing about #Edinburgh . Those of you who live there, and who have been kept close to the city of late, what are the little things you love about the place? A smell? A sound? A sight? A quality of light? The way a certain shadow falls at a certain time of day and year?
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@PeterAlanRoss
Peter Ross
4 years
Went to a new barber today. We listened to Gregorian chant and talked about Dostoevsky. I think he might be *the one*.
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@PeterAlanRoss
Peter Ross
4 years
Can you imagine what the first gig back at Barrowlands is going to be like? Can you imagine the *roar* when the lights go down? I’ve kept that sound in mind through all of this. I can hear it in the distance, like the sea.
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@PeterAlanRoss
Peter Ross
4 years
Had to go to the vet in the rain. This excellent use of “chap” is my reward.
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@PeterAlanRoss
Peter Ross
7 months
The bestseller list from today’s Times. WTF is going on?
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@PeterAlanRoss
Peter Ross
4 years
The inadvertent poetry of organ stops.
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@PeterAlanRoss
Peter Ross
2 years
Good morning from this wee guy who has made a home in a crack between wall and pavement. Untroubled by dog piss and fag ends, he greets the day. #Monthepansies
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@PeterAlanRoss
Peter Ross
5 years
I'm voting for @kirstenoswald in East Ren. Not out of allegiance to the SNP, but because a heavily Remain-voting constituency ought not to be represented by a Conservative MP. I hope she wins, but mostly I hope that Paul Masterton – and his dreadful master, Boris Johnson – lose.
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@PeterAlanRoss
Peter Ross
3 years
I’m very pleased and grateful that A Tomb With A View has won Non-Fiction Book of the Year at Scotland’s National Book Awards. Thank you to @Saltire_Society , the judges and fellow nominees …
@Saltire_Society
SALTIRE SOCIETY
3 years
The Scottish Non-Fiction Book Award 2021 is A Tomb With a View by @PeterAlanRoss pub. Headline Publishing Never morbid or mawkish; but a celebration of the frequently strange & often beautiful world of the graveyard. #SNBA21
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@PeterAlanRoss
Peter Ross
5 years
The grave of Hannah Twynnoy who, in 1703, became the first person in Britain to be killed by a tiger. Malmesbury Abbey churchyard.
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@PeterAlanRoss
Peter Ross
7 months
I’m in London to sign books and am honestly stunned and moved to see the window of Europe’s biggest bookshop @WaterstonesPicc . Thanks so much to all booksellers talking with their customers about Steeple Chasing. It means a lot.
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@PeterAlanRoss
Peter Ross
6 years
I feel very sorry for Andy Murray in this moment, but, more than that, admire and respect him as a player and a person. He's a hero of mine. So fortunate that my family and I have been around to see him rising and then winning slams. I hope he knows how much he means to Scotland.
@BBCSport
BBC Sport
6 years
A heart breaking end to an incredible career. Andy Murray fears this week's Australian Open could be his last tournament. More:
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@PeterAlanRoss
Peter Ross
4 years
Glasgow fog is pure John Carpenter.
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@PeterAlanRoss
Peter Ross
4 years
What a beautiful morning.
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@PeterAlanRoss
Peter Ross
3 years
If we’re talking radical reform of Scottish education, one target I’d like to see is for every pupil to have the opportunity to finish 5th year fluent in a foreign language. Not just able to get an A at Higher, but actually able to speak & write properly. And not only French.
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@PeterAlanRoss
Peter Ross
4 years
And finally, one of his buildings: the Pollokshields West United Free Church. Thanks for listening. Hope you enjoyed it.
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@PeterAlanRoss
Peter Ross
4 years
One thing about wearing masks in shops: it requires an extraordinary amount of “eye acting”. A trip to Morrison’s and I’m basically Mark Rylance in Wolf Hall.
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@PeterAlanRoss
Peter Ross
5 years
I'm very happy to say that my new book, A Tomb With A View, will be published by @headlinepg in September. I have travelled across the UK and to mainland Europe, uncovering the stories and glories of graveyards. I hope you will enjoy what I have found.
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@PeterAlanRoss
Peter Ross
3 years
@PippaCrerar Amazing that it takes a reporter’s question to get him to be clear on that point.
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@PeterAlanRoss
Peter Ross
5 years
If anyone would like to learn more about Rory Stewart, this New Yorker profile from 2010 (by the great Ian Parker) is so interesting that I cut it out at the time and have kept it ever since.
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@PeterAlanRoss
Peter Ross
8 months
Delighted/unsettled by the prospect of visiting the Ballachulish Goddess this week. Of all the objects in the National Museum of Scotland, this is the only one I find viscerally troubling.
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@PeterAlanRoss
Peter Ross
2 years
I'm very pleased to announce that my new book is called Steeple Chasing: Around Britain By Church. It will be published by @headlinepg in May 2023. I hope that you will enjoy it. A short 🧵...
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@PeterAlanRoss
Peter Ross
4 years
It means a huge amount to me that Hilary Mantel read my book, A Tomb With A View, and wrote this about it. #ATombWithAView
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@PeterAlanRoss
Peter Ross
4 years
An exciting moment – the hardbacks of A Tomb With A View have arrived and are beautiful. My book will be published on September 3. I'm grateful to the authors quoted on the jacket: @RobGMacfarlane , @DameDeniseMina , @Beathhigh and Andrew O'Hagan. And to the team at @headlinepg .
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@PeterAlanRoss
Peter Ross
3 years
Just looking at travel to Bristol from Glasgow at the end of this month. Two hundred quid on the train. Fifty quid to fly. This is a very boring tweet, I realise, but it's shocking how dear it is to go anywhere by rail, which is one reason why I make all these massive road trips.
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@PeterAlanRoss
Peter Ross
2 years
A view from Dundee.
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@PeterAlanRoss
Peter Ross
2 years
I love Glasgow beyond reason. My heart is a shrine to St Mungo. My soul wears a traffic cone. But, oh boy, this weather is testing my devotion.
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@PeterAlanRoss
Peter Ross
2 years
I'm delighted that A Tomb With A View is going to be Book Of The Week on @BBCRadio4 from Monday Feb 27 at 9.45am. All five episodes will then be available as a box-set on @BBCSounds . The book is being read by @blairgadgie . Please do listen, if you can.
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@PeterAlanRoss
Peter Ross
4 months
I see the Avebury stones have lambed.
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@PeterAlanRoss
Peter Ross
2 years
Glasgow needs to have a whip round and get the Barrowland “d” fixed.
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@PeterAlanRoss
Peter Ross
4 years
I have no idea what this is called, but I enjoy and admire the way it comes blazing across the garden every August with almost no effort or input from me. Weeks of pishing rain and a couple of taps-aff days seems to be the secret.
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@PeterAlanRoss
Peter Ross
2 years
One of life’s small pleasures: a train driver sounding the horn for a child waving down from a bridge.
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@PeterAlanRoss
Peter Ross
3 years
Whitby is always trending in my mind.
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@PeterAlanRoss
Peter Ross
5 years
I asked him, "What is your idea of heaven?" This was his reply.
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@PeterAlanRoss
Peter Ross
4 years
Magical light in Glasgow this morning. The steak pie queue looks like the Annunciation.
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@PeterAlanRoss
Peter Ross
8 months
After pissing down all day, the sky in Glasgow has decided to go mad and beautiful in a “Here’s what you could have won” way.
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@PeterAlanRoss
Peter Ross
4 years
The best graveyard in Scotland?
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@PeterAlanRoss
Peter Ross
2 years
This house has been lying empty for as long as I’ve stayed in the area. I’m so pleased that it looks to be finally coming back to life, even if by rights I should live there and it should be known to fearful children as The Old Ross Place.
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@PeterAlanRoss
Peter Ross
4 years
Good morning from the Necropolis, which affords the best views of Glasgow Cathedral.
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@PeterAlanRoss
Peter Ross
5 years
Tory election leaflet for East Ren features more pictures of Sturgeon than it does of the candidate, & none at all of Boris Johnson. Mentions of the PM? 0. Mentions of the FM? 15. Mentions of indyref? 19. Mentions of Brexit? 0. Please stop treating us as idiots, Paul Masterton.
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@PeterAlanRoss
Peter Ross
5 years
Frustrating to see people giving money to Big Issue vendors and saying they don't want the magazine. It's done with good intentions, I know, but these folks aren't begging, they're working. Plus, the mag's excellent and you miss out if you don't take one.
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@PeterAlanRoss
Peter Ross
2 years
The melancholy afterlife of the poor wee Little Chef on the A9.
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@PeterAlanRoss
Peter Ross
3 years
There’s something special about the light in Dundee. Just the casual magic of what it does to stone. I’d love to write about it some day.
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@PeterAlanRoss
Peter Ross
4 years
I feel oddly proud of Mogwai: a Scottish band with international reach who have spent 25 years making and performing beautiful and uncompromising art without, so far as I can see, any sort of arseholery. Happy new album day to them.
@mogwaiband
Mogwai
4 years
As The Love Continues The New Album Out Now Listen/Order at
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@PeterAlanRoss
Peter Ross
6 years
The Sunday Herald was a blast at times. It felt like you could just do stuff. I commissioned Donna Tartt to write about Robert Louis Stevenson, and John Byrne to paint Billy Connolly. I went to LA and New York & Warsaw on stories. That feels so unreal now. I'm sorry to see it go.
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@PeterAlanRoss
Peter Ross
9 months
What a sweet kid. Total natural on the telly, too.
@BBCScotlandNews
BBC Scotland News
9 months
Kirkcaldy teenager Callum Grubb loves the 1940s and has been saving for a classic car since he was 11 or 12. The 19-year-old has recently bought an Austin 10 Cambridge from 1938 as his first car. Read more ➡️
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@PeterAlanRoss
Peter Ross
2 years
Robbie Coltrane was a great actor. He had a brilliant mix of menace and humour, but also -deep down- a wounded quality that surfaced as vulnerability & compassion. The engine driving all that was his powerful intelligence. What a beautiful mind. What energy & spirit. What a loss.
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@PeterAlanRoss
Peter Ross
7 months
I’m very pleased & grateful to be able to say that Steeple Chasing is a Sunday Times Bestseller. Books are a team effort, so huge thanks to all at Headline, to the booksellers who have been talking to their customers about SC, and to everyone who has bought it. This means a lot.
@headlinenf
Headline Non-Fiction
7 months
Thrilled to announce that the paperback of STEEPLE CHASING is a Sunday Times bestseller 🏆📚 Celebrating the weird and wonderful churches of Britain, @PeterAlanRoss takes readers on a journey filled with cats and bats, monks and druids, angels of oak and steel.
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@PeterAlanRoss
Peter Ross
6 years
Hugh McIlvanney was some writer. I don't know much about football or boxing, but I keep his books on those subjects handy because his sentences gleam and because he wrote brilliantly about people under pressure. Those McIlvanney brothers: man, they were good.
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@PeterAlanRoss
Peter Ross
4 years
Nice to see that someone has put a wee sign at the grave of Margaret Jefferson, Stan Laurel's mother, in Cathcart Cemetery. I wonder whether it will ever be marked with a proper stone?
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@PeterAlanRoss
Peter Ross
1 year
Every now and then, when I feel like falling off my chair in shock, I look at the price of a Caledonian Sleeper ticket to London.
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@PeterAlanRoss
Peter Ross
2 years
Met my brother’s puppy. I’m not much of a judge of dogs, but feel confident in saying that Dusty is a good boy.
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@PeterAlanRoss
Peter Ross
3 years
In a charity shop in Glasgow. A Half Man Half Biscuit fan thinks better of their Christmas gift.
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@PeterAlanRoss
Peter Ross
5 years
Not to be a total buzzkill, but I'm on the train to London, it hasn't left Glasgow yet, and already two separate groups of guys are getting wired into the Bucky and beers and vodka. There'll be tears by Preston ... most likely mine.
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@PeterAlanRoss
Peter Ross
4 years
Ailsa Craig. This country is maddening at times, but it doesn’t half know how to put on a show.
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@PeterAlanRoss
Peter Ross
3 months
The Govan Sarcophagus is likely ninth century and may have held the body of Constantine, King of the Picts. It’s an extraordinary object in an extraordinary place - @GovanStones - that everyone should visit if they get the chance.
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@PeterAlanRoss
Peter Ross
4 years
Out now, A Tomb With A View: The Stories & Glories Of Graveyards. A book about death, a book about life, and most of all a book about love. Here's a little clip about the grave where it all began ... #ATombWithAView @HeadlineNonfic @headlinepg @CathcartCem
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@PeterAlanRoss
Peter Ross
4 years
I realise this makes me sound a hundred years old, but I wish kids had Actual Textbooks to work from.
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@PeterAlanRoss
Peter Ross
5 months
I love this building. Pure Glasgow romance.
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@PeterAlanRoss
Peter Ross
4 years
This panel says: "I am the way the truth and the life. I am the resurrection and the life." Big Stone Roses fan.
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@PeterAlanRoss
Peter Ross
4 years
Huge thanks to everyone who bought and/or read A Tomb With A View this year, and to the many who have been in touch since Christmas to say how much they're enjoying it. It means a lot to me that my book is bringing you pleasure, interest and even comfort. May we read in peace.
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@PeterAlanRoss
Peter Ross
3 years
The sky over Glasgow is beyond language tonight.
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@PeterAlanRoss
Peter Ross
5 years
I finished writing my book. Others will judge, but I think that it's my best work. I'm really looking forward to September when people get a chance to read about the stories and glories of graveyards. #tombwithaview
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@PeterAlanRoss
Peter Ross
3 years
Londoners, what are the great intangibles of your city? I'm writing about the sound of Bow bells & am trying to think of other things. The smell of the Thames, the view from Parliament Hill, warm air rushing along the platform as the Tube is about to arrive. What else? Thanks.
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@PeterAlanRoss
Peter Ross
7 months
Off on my travels soon. This was the map taken by my grandparents when they visited Shetland in, I think, 1949/50-ish. I wonder if it can still be used to get around?
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@PeterAlanRoss
Peter Ross
3 years
I'm writing about the modernist churches of Gillespie, Kidd & Coia. They really are among the great treasures of Scotland. I would love to visit them all.
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@PeterAlanRoss
Peter Ross
4 years
This feels more like an exorcism than than election. Good luck, America. Time to win back your soul. #2020Elections
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@PeterAlanRoss
Peter Ross
6 years
That first paragraph: you could run it on the front page tomorrow and it would be beautiful.
@louisjnelson
Louis Nelson
6 years
Obamas' statement on passing of Aretha Franklin
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@PeterAlanRoss
Peter Ross
5 years
"Hooded crows, hunched on fenceposts, are monkish figures in feathery cowls. Peat stacks, drying out by the road, resemble beehive cells. The gorse shines bright as any illuminated gospel." I went to the island of Lewis and wrote about it for The Guardian.
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@PeterAlanRoss
Peter Ross
7 months
Steeple Chasing is a number one bestseller in the paperback non-fiction chart in @thetimes . This is based on sales @Waterstones -who have been hugely supportive of the book, for which I’m very grateful. Thanks also to the people who have been buying SC. I hope you’re enjoying it.
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@PeterAlanRoss
Peter Ross
7 months
Back in that psychedelic wonderland, that stately pleasuredome, the Mitchell Library.
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@PeterAlanRoss
Peter Ross
3 years
The window of Tam Shepherd’s Trick Shop is not getting any less mad.
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@PeterAlanRoss
Peter Ross
3 years
Fair play to the old guy sitting outside The Park Bar sipping a pint and doing the Daily Record crossword in the rain.
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@PeterAlanRoss
Peter Ross
11 months
One of my favourite Glasgow things is walking along University Gardens at this time of year. All those young folk in the autumn sunshine, looking cool and smoking fags like they just invented it. Gives the heart a lift.
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