Kenny Farquharson

1 week ago | thejaggythistle.substack.com | Kenny Farquharson

A few weeks ago I was passing a gallery on Edinburgh’s Dundas Street that had recently been vacated by a commercial art dealer. I noticed there were paintings on the walls again. Sitting at a small desk, busy on a laptop, was a distinguished looking man of Middle Eastern appearance with grey hair and a luxuriant grey moustache.

2 weeks ago | thejaggythistle.substack.com | Kenny Farquharson

Well, that was a good night. On Thursday evening at the Doubletree Hilton in Glasgow, The Jaggy Thistle won a landmark victory at the 46th annual Scottish Press Awards. I was named Arts & Entertainment Journalist of the Year for my work on The Jaggy Thistle, against shortlisted writers from a range of mainstream media outlets including The Sun, The Scotsman and The Herald. To the best of my knowledge this is the first time a Substack publication has won in a mainstream UK media awards ceremony.

2 weeks ago | thetimes.com | Kenny Farquharson

1 month ago | thetimes.com | Kenny Farquharson

Perhaps this is the reason for my rising disgust as I watch the Open become the latest sacrificial offering to Donald Trump from a supplicant British nation. Trump is determined to bring the , the South Ayrshire links course he bought for £39.5 million in 2014. The championship last came to Turnberry in 2009. The US president is famously transactional.

1 month ago | thejaggythistle.substack.com | Kenny Farquharson

Belfast in April 1985 felt tense. A few weeks earlier nine officers in the Royal Ulster Constabulary had been killed in an Irish Republican Army mortar attack on a police station in Newry. It was RUC’s highest loss of life in a single day in the whole of the Troubles. Anger was brewing in Portadown that would soon erupt into a summer of rioting by loyalists.