Kirkcudbright, (or 'Kirkubree') is a very picturesque, small fishing town on the South Coast of Galloway in Scotland. Daniel Defoe, when visiting this area in 1778, described it as: ... a pleasant situation, and yet nothing pleasant to be seen. Here is a harbour without ships, a port without trade, a fishery without nets, a [...]
Dumfries, the 'Queen of the South': important trading town on the river Nith, the administrative centre and foremost town in Dumfries and Galloway. It has, over the years, been home to many people of note, including JM Barrie, who schooled at Dumfries Academy, and John Laurie, who played Private Frasier in Dad's Army ("we're all [...]
It is late July and I am sitting in the lounge bar of George and Abbotsford Hotel, in Melrose. We had ended up here after traveling across country from Alnwick, stopping for a very pleasant afternoon at Abbotsford. I was having a pint and taking in the scenery: it's obviously a pub that loves its [...]
Abbotsford is a rather grand, gothic baronial house, just outside of Melrose in the Scottish Borders. It was built by Sir Walter Scott, the famed novelist, friend of Wordsworth and favourite of Queen Victoria. It's often said that Scott invented the idea of 'Scottishness', with his Romantic nostalgia for the Jacobite rebellion, with tartan clad [...]
Literary Britain 