By Alison Morgan ‘A New National Anthem’ by Percy Bysshe Shelley is probably one of his least known poems. Written in 1820, in the aftermath of the Peterloo Massacre, Shelley’s poem is a paean to the female queen Liberty rather…
Division of UK assets and liabilities between an independent Scotland and the rest of the UK (“rUK”) following a YES vote in the September 18th referendum continues to provoke heated discussion with just months to the big event. Rod MacLeod…
Four months ahead of the Scottish independence referendum, Stephen Tierney (University of Edinburgh) in an Analysis piece in the Edinburgh Law Review (Volume 18.2), summarises some of the main points concerning the Referendum process and event. He highlights the importance…
Celebrity, publicity and authorship are common place in the 21st century and increasingly, authors are energetic in conveying their own celebrity rather than it simply being thrust upon them; it could be said there is an intimacy between authors and…
By Gordon Graham The Scottish philosophical tradition found its richest and most influential expression in the investigations Scottish philosophers of the 18th century conducted in their project of a ‘science of human nature’. This project, uniquely, tackled traditional philosophical problems…
An April article in Archives of natural history gives a fascinating insight into the life of Charles Francis Adams, a young American who prepared, stuffed and mounted the skins of birds and mammals for display. It also details the early…
“Dancers are experts in mental processes such as memory, timing and motor cognition, and the study of dance can provide insight into these basic processes…. At the same time, several changes in psychology and neuroscience, make dance a more attractive…
An Italian Renaissance polymath, most known for his notebooks and paintings, Leonardo Da Vinci is still widely considered an enigma. His birthday was today, April 15th. A recent article in Journal of Beckett Studies (Volume 22.2) wonders how much Beckett’s…
Neil Brand is a well-known composer, prolific British dramatist, writer and pianist, who designed and presented a three part-series for BBC Four, Sound of Cinema: The Music that Made the Movies, which was aired in September 2013. The editors of The New…
By Robert Crawford For the first time since 1707 (more than half a century before Burns was born), the population of Scotland is being given the chance to vote in a referendum that asks the question, ‘Should Scotland be an…