The Jaggy Thistle

Kenny Farquharson provides insights on Scotland through his commentary, cultural observations, essays, and photography.

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Notebook #13: Photo North, The Hepworth, Scotland Forever

4 days ago | thejaggythistle.substack.com | Kenny Farquharson

To Yorkshire, for a couple of days of cultural wandering in a part of England of which I know very little. I intend to go exploring far and wide with my Jaggy Thistle notebook in hand over the coming months and years. The Jaggy Thistle on the road. First stop on my Yorkshire tour was Photo North, a photography festival in Leeds now in its sixth year. Held over three days with 15 exhibitions and a dozen events, it puts Scotland’s arts world to shame. Where is our version of Photo North?
Willie McRae: A conspiracy laid to rest

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

Last month I was driving from Edinburgh to the Isle of Skye for a family holiday. As the road snaked around a bend on a particularly bleak stretch of the A87 I pointed out to my travelling companions a memorial cairn set back from the road. A small saltire on a stick fluttered above it. The cairn commemorates the death in 1985 of a Scottish National Party politician called Willie McRae. A chiselled plaque spells his name wrong.
Jaggy Thistle shortlisted in 46th annual Scottish Press Awards

3 weeks 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.
Covid: An overdue reckoning

1 month 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.
I bought a self-help book, and it helped

1 month 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.
Death to Strathclyde Regional Council!

1 month 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.
The Alasdair Gray Archive

1 month ago | 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.
I was a teenage Nat

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

-o0o-NOTE FROM KENNY: This is the first in a three-part series in which I chart my political education: first as a child, then as a young man and finally as a journalist. “Perhaps what one wants to say is formed in childhood and the rest of one’s life is spent trying to say it.” Barbara Hepworth -o0o-Every now and then I try to put a dent in the mountain of clutter I have accumulated over the past 62 years. I take a couple of bags of books to the Oxfam shop.
Scottish nationalism's forgotten leaders

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

Lately I have been doing some research into Picture Post, the ground-breaking news magazine that was published in the UK from 1938 to 1957. The reason should become clear later this year in a Jaggy Thistle post on one of my personal heroes. In the meantime, I wanted to share with you a Picture Post feature I chanced upon about Scottish nationalism from the magazine’s earliest days. For this I have to thank Connie Leroux, who runs the photobook library at Stills, a gallery in Edinburgh.
Lockerbie's mystery man

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

I tuned in to Lockerbie, the new TV drama series on Sky Atlantic, because I remain fascinated by the 1988 bombing of Pan Am flight 103 in the skies over Scotland, claiming 270 lives. I had an additional reason too. Late in 2022 the Scottish playwright David Harrower got in touch with me and asked if I’d be willing to have a chat over Zoom. He was writing a TV drama about Lockerbie and was interested in my experience of reporting on the bombing and its aftermath. Why me?