The Jaggy Thistle

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

Today the shortlists were announced for the 46th annual Scottish Press Awards, our nation’s pre-eminent celebration of great journalism. And what do you know, The Jaggy Thistle was one of the nominees. Well, you could have knocked me down with a feather. My journalism for The Jaggy Thistle was shortlisted in the Arts & Entertainment Writer of the Year category. The full list of nominees is here.

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

Five years ago today the United Kingdom entered its first Covid lockdown. Five years? It feels like a lifetime ago. Yesterday, as I wandered down George Street in the heart of Edinburgh it seemed surreal to imagine the roads empty of cars and people, the shops shuttered, as they were that fateful spring. To remind myself what it felt like, I revisited my columns in The Times and checked an old diary. That month I was due to chair a big event in the ballroom of a luxury hotel.

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

I used to be sniffy about self-help books. My view was simple: all you needed to know about life was already available in fiction, poetry, memoir and biography. The wisdom of the ages was already at your fingertips. What challenged this was two books. The first was a recommendation a few years ago from the elder of my two sons.

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

Regular readers of The Jaggy Thistle will be aware of my soft spot for Ian Hamilton Finlay, the poet, sculptor, gardener and iconoclast. In 2023 I wrote about Little Sparta, his artwork-spotted garden on a lonely Scottish hillside. That piece, which you can treat as a concise introduction to the man and his work, can be read here. A visit to Little Sparta should be on any art lover’s bucket list. But you no longer have to travel to the wilds of rural Lanarkshire to see Finlay’s best work.

Mar 2, 2025 | thejaggythistle.substack.com | Kenny Farquharson

A tumbleweed wasteland lies just north of Glasgow city centre, beyond the M8 near the canal, scattered with anonymous warehouses and lock-ups. You might not want to wander this corner of the city late at night. Not unless your nerves can deal with a poorly-lit motorway underpass. A nearby resident tells me there was a particularly horrible attack at the bottom of one of the concrete stairways the other day.