Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} Canna by John Lorne Campbell Magda Sagarzazu obituary. My friend Magda Sagarzazu, who has died aged 70 of cancer, was a woman from the Basque region of Spain who moved to the Hebridean island of Canna and made it her mission to preserve and popularise the work of the married Gaelic scholars John Lorne Campbell and Margaret Fay Shaw. John, who bought Canna in 1939 and farmed it for 40 years before gifting it to the National Trust for Scotland in 1981, had known Magda’s father, Saturnino, since before the war. After Saturnino’s wife, Vicenta, died in 1958, John invited his friend and his two daughters to spend the summer on Canna – it was the beginning of an annual trip that lasted until Saturnino’s death in 1974. Saturnino did odd jobs, farm work or fishing with John and the girls played with the Canna children. Born in Hondarribia, Gipuzkoa, to Vicenta (nee Bueno), a pianist and teacher, and Saturnino Sagarzazu, a fisherman, Magda attended the local convent school. After they began to visit Canna, Magda and her sister, Maria Carmen, were given permission by the nuns to take extended holidays so that the family could stay on the island for three to four months at a time. There, Margaret taught them English, by reading them Beatrix Potter stories. After leaving school, Magda initially worked in administration and commerce in Spain, but decided to retrain as a teacher so that she would have long summer holidays and be able to pick up her visits to the island. John and Margaret were pioneers in recording Gaelic songs and folklore, and built up an extensive collection of Celtic books, journals, manuscripts and original sound recordings. During her visits Magda began to help John catalogue and organise the archive. After John died in 1996, Magda decided to move to Canna full-time to continue his work and be a companion to Margaret, who was then 93. Magda lived in Canna House until Margaret’s death in 2004. That year, the National Trust for Scotland created the post of archivist for Magda, and she continued to catalogue the Campbells’ extensive archive. She also documented the 1,500 sound recordings made by John in the first half of the 20 th century and Margaret’s collections of 9,000 early photographs and films, which are a unique historical record of a Hebridean lifestyle that has now largely disappeared. Magda’s work was recognised by the National Trust for Scotland in 2015 when she was presented with the George Waterston Memorial award. The following year she was honoured by the Saltire Society as one of Scotland’s Outstanding Women of the Year. At Doirlinn, her cottage on Canna, Magda cooked Spanish meals from Hebridean ingredients and welcomed visitors with a glass of wine. She taught French to the children in the island school and Flamenco dancing to anyone who was brave enough to try. After her retirement in 2015 Magda continued to live on the island until treatment for cancer took her back to San Sebastian. Even then she returned each summer to Canna. She is survived by her husband, Joaquin Gironza, a teacher, whom she married in 2016. Canna Local History Group. In his history of Canna, John Lorne Campbell provides little by way of explanation as to why he had been tempted to buy a remote Hebridean island at a time when Europe was on the verge of war. His thoughts are revealed more clearly in his correspondence with the Trust, when the case for acquisition was being made to the National Heritage Memorial Fund. Ray Perman has made the case for John Lorne Campbell having believed that Compton McKenzie would have shared the cost of acquisition, having collaborated with him while on Barra over a number of ventures, waging a joint war against the authorities for improvements to be made to island life. Whatever agreement John Lorne Campbell thought had been reached did not materialise, and financing the sale imposed a considerable personal burden; the combined costs of the sale of the island, and for the stock that was valued, amounted to around £15,500. Although this represented a considerable fall in the value of the investment made by Robert Thom, and reflects the economic problems faced by many landowners defeated by heavy taxation during the 1930s, it was well above the level that John Lorne Campbell could finance comfortably. For many of the improvements that were carried out in the coming years there were few grants available, and the costs had to be met largely by the proprietor. Ultimately, the high levels of investment and maintenance required to keep the island going would drain not just his coffers but his energy, and force the sale of the island to the Trust. John Lorne Campbell and Margaret Fay Shaw shared a number of common interests, not least a passionate interest in the Gaelic heritage of folk songs and traditions, of which they created an inventory of sound recordings. Margaret was also a distinguished photographer, and her record of a dying way of life in the Hebrides and on the west coast of Ireland in the 1930s provided an invaluable archive. She was also a gifted pianist. John could envisage Canna House as a depository of a growing archive of cultural research, and for his growing natural history collections. Using his education at Oxford, where he studied at the School of Rural Economy, he could run Canna as a model farm to provide a baseline income, while establishing a wildlife sanctuary run on nature conservancy principles. Margaret, in From the Alleghenies to the Hebrides tells us ‘his ambition was to find a farm he could bring back – to make it bloom, so to speak’. At one level, the acquisition could be regarded as a self-sustaining social and economic experiment, and in this John Lorne Campbell can be regarded as a pioneer, many years ahead of his time. On taking possession of Canna House, the mouldy Victorian possessions of the Thoms were jettisoned unceremoniously. The fruits of the ‘shoot on sight’ policy towards the birdlife of the islands - in the form of glass cases containing stuffed and mounted specimens - were destroyed, leaving only a few remaining. The Campbells also attacked the ivy which had been allowed to grow on the house walls which Margaret considered gave the house a melancholy appearance. Their own furniture was introduced, a distinctive mix of Pennsylvanian pieces and antiques from the Inverneill ancestors, giving the property a unique flavour. Over time the house became a repository for learned books, research papers, sound and photograph archives, and the natural history collections; it also became a repository and a haven for the many distinguished guests from the couple’s international connections in academia. Increasingly the house would be cluttered with some highly personalised trivia, which would be displayed and interspersed among the more important possessions. Hugh Cheape said once of the house, with great perception, that John and Margaret had recreated the typical Highland tacksman’s house of the eighteenth century, a model which had long disappeared elsewhere. Study of the regular correspondence between Margaret and various seedsmen in rural England reveals that she had a considerable interest in the garden of the mansion house, and bought plants and fruit trees for it regularly. The extent to which the reliance on the gardener to look after the garden as it had been in the past is shown in a photograph taken during the hardship of the Second World War. John extended the planting schemes begun by the Thoms to the east of the house, and he planted stands of trees at regular intervals from the late 1940s onwards, with the intention that the larch plantations would make a financial contribution to the islands’ needs. Rental records from when Canna was sold in 1938, and shortly thereafter, provide an interesting insight into the roles and occupations of the greatly diminished island population. Some were listed as tenants without landholdings. Crofters would often have other ‘official’ occupations, such as wreck receiver, relief lighthouse keeper (a lighthouse was erected on Heiskir in 1904), postmaster and piermaster. Other listed occupations might include schoolmistress (although this appointment was outwith the control of the proprietor, and would not appear on the rent records) and the gardener at Canna House; other occupations were associated with farming and fishing, such as farm grieve, horseman, cattleman, and a lobster fisherman for which other crofters would crew the boat. A croft on Canna, let with the house at Doirlinn, was improved with a grant and operated as a guest house. Without similar levels of personal wealth as Robert Thom, John Lorne Campbell could never have invested in the houses on the islands in anything like the same way: if improvements were needed, or a new replacement house was required, grants would normally be available and were applied for under the relevant Agricultural and Crofting Acts. While improvements were carried out, and new houses had been built by the former proprietor on Sanday, it is apparent that the state of the older properties on the island had deteriorated considerably from when Robert Thom had invested in the improved cottages at the time when the island was passed to the Trust. Some of the shells of the old crofthouses were reduced to being roofless, derelict, and in some cases the external walls were in a collapsed state. In part this reflected a further reduction in the population of the island when numbers had dwindled to levels that were dangerously low for Canna to be sustainable. As the more elderly inhabitants died, some of the crofthouses were abandoned and used as stores, and crofts would often be amalgamated or left uncultivated. The refusal by the Government to enact legislation similar to that of 1919, regarding the resettlement of those who had returned from serving in a world war had caused disappointment after 1945. John had seen this as an opportunity to revitalise the life of the islands from the creation of new crofts. 3.6.7 Improvements to the infrastructure of the islands consisted of potable water supplies being laid in 1953 to each of the dwellings on the islands, which eased the burden of having to rely on drawing water from the standpipes at the wells, shown on historic Ordnance Survey maps. Electric generators had been installed a couple of years previously, to provide electricity and replace the old gas mantles, and were later replaced by noisy diesel engines. Sanitation within the houses was also introduced. Field drainage systems were installed, and additional fencing erected. John Lorne Campbell, as John MacLean and Robert Thom before him, was acutely aware of the importance of the communications and transport links to the islands. He campaigned tirelessly for improved facilities, occasionally to good effect. In 1964 the ferry links with the West Coast ports of the Scottish mainland were reduced and confined to Mallaig, while the extension of the service to the Outer Isles was scrapped, much to the loud protestation of those on Canna. When Caledonian MacBrayne was considering introducing a bigger ferry boat to serve the Small Isles to ease the transportation of cattle and sheep, John felt obliged to make by far the greatest capital investment on the island of his tenure when he expanded the pier in 1971, in fear of losing this vital link altogether. The work was undertaken without financial assistance from the public purse, and was executed in concrete at a cost of £35,000. The improvement had the further advantage of permitting a prefabricated kit-house to be delivered and erected on Canna in the same year, of which more is mentioned below. Telephone links between Canna and the mainland had been primitive in the extreme for decades, and only improved in 1966 with the installation of the radio link system. The small building erected at Coroghon to house the operating gear appears as a standard GPO structure of the time with little regard for its island location; on the approach to the dangerous track leading to the head of the rock stack where the remains of the castle are perched, it sits ill in a location which is otherwise largely unspoilt. It is curious that, for someone who nurtured Canna and cherished it in the way that he did, John Lorne Campbell should have exhibited a pronounced lack of visual awareness when it came to erecting the prefabricated kit-houses on the islands, the first of which appeared in 1971. This house was named Caslum after the field in which it stood, and was erected for a newly appointed shepherd. It is clear from the thinking at the time that the intention had been that the house could offer a modern retirement home to John and Margaret at some stage in the future. As there were several redundant houses on the islands capable of being refurbished, the decision to build a new house may well have been prompted by this consideration. The new house was sited prominently on the raised beach to the west of the mains farm at the Square, and while it had the potential for outstanding views over the harbour, and to the open sea to the west, the layout of the house failed to exploit them. In every possible respect it appears an alien feature within the soft island landscape – it was far too prominent, and displayed no regard to the building traditions of the island. The form and appearance of the house suggest that cost had been a factor in determining the procurement of the dwelling, as it had been built for the sum of £12,000. By 1980 the occupant for whom it had been provided left Canna, a recurring problem of short term occupation among those who arrive to supplement the numbers of the community from outside the island, and a problem which has persisted up to the present time. Two new houses were built on Sanday. While suffering from some of the problems identified above, they at least have the virtue of being significantly less prominent from careful siting, nestling down within hollows within the landscape where they are protected from the prevailing winds. Burnside, the house built by Angus Mackinnon in 1973-4 as his crofthouse improvement, although a long house is less bulky, benefiting from significantly narrower gables and a slightly steeper roof pitch. Less well known perhaps than many of the structures on Canna is the small summerhouse which John procured as a surprise gift for Margaret. With good views over the harbour, it sits within a secluded woodland site on the northern boundary of the field on the higher ground to the east of Tighard, a short walk up the path cut into the bank from Canna House, where a stone bench inserted in the face of the rock by Robert Thom provides a place for the weary to rest at the halfway point of the climb. Exposed to the extremes of the Atlantic weather systems, the gaunt structure of St Edward’s became too expensive a monument for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Argyll and the Isles to maintain. It was de-consecrated in the early 1960s, and ceased thereafter as a place of worship. To keep the tradition of worship alive on the Canna, the former Post Office building was converted into a chapel, which John Lorne Campbell had to describe as a ‘semi-private oratory’ to overcome the objections of the diocese. At the southern end of the bridge leading to Sanday, an enigmatic shrine to the Blessed Virgin Mary catches the eye with its simple and direct form, and bright white paint. Housing an inspired piece of modern stained glass which comes to life in the strong light from the sea horizon to the west, to the unwary visitor it is a timely reminder of the historical significance of religion to these islands. High levels of expenditure on the infrastructure of the island after the building of the extension to the pier, and from the erection of the new house for the shepherd, caused John to reconsider the overtures to the National Trust for Scotland over the acquisition of the islands which had been mooted first back in the 1950s. In 1973 he reopened negotiations, citing the difficulties encountered by a private landowner in running a remote Hebridean island he complained about the high cost of engaging mainland contractors for the essential repairs that were needed constantly. Negotiations dragged on over a number of years, until in 1980 the intention of the National Trust for Scotland to purchase Canna was announced, subject to raising the necessary funds. In 1945 John had acquired the entire Gaelic library of a distinguished Oxford scholar, and made it a condition of his gift of the island to the nation that this should not be removed from Canna. The same condition was attached to the grant of an endowment fund by the NHMF in 1981. This bequest evolved into the vision of establishing a Centre of Advanced Studies for the island which John developed in conjunction with the NTS in his twilight years. His wishes fullfilled John Lorne Campbell, "Fear Chanaidh" left an Island held inalienably in the care of the National Trust for Scotland for the benefit of the Nation to enjoy. The Canna Local History Group would like to thank ANDREW PK WRIGHT; OBE, BArch, RIBA, PPRIAS, FRSA, FSAScot. Chartered Architect & Heritage Consultant. Canna by John Lorne Campbell. The SS Politician, 8000-ton cargo ship, left Liverpool on 3 February 1941, bound for Kingston, Jamaica and New Orleans. Its cargo included 28,000 cases of malt whisky and nearly three million pounds of Jamaican banknotes. The Politician never reached its destination, but sank near the island of Eriskay in the Outer Hebrides in February 1941. Much of the cargo was salvaged by island's inhabitants, before the customs & excise officials arrived. The sinking of the ship and the removal of its cargo were the basis of Compton Mackenzie’s book and the film Whisky Galore. Compton Mackenzie was a close friend of J.L. Campbell the previous owner of Canna, and as well as the whisky and Ten Shilling Note, the Canna House collection also contains a typewriter that belonged to the author. 2 Steinway Piano. Margaret Fay Shaw Campbell was an accomplished pianist and her Steinway Grand piano still stands in Canna House. She learnt to play the piano by ear while a child in America, but then went on to learn to play to professional level. When she married John Lorne Campbell she took her Steinway with her to their first home; a tin corrugated cottage on the Isle of Barra. It was later moved to Canna House where she played it regularly up until her death, aged 101, in 2004. Margaret Fay Shaw was also well known for her photography. As well as a vast collection of around 9,000 negatives, prints and colour slides, the Canna House Archive contains her original equipment, including her Graflex camera. Margaret embraced the advent of cine film, and the archive has a collection of 16mm films, which have been digitised in video form. 3 John Lorne Campbell’s desk. John Lorne Campbell worked at his desk in the conservatory of Canna House; researching his book (Canna, the Story of a Hebridean Island), managing the island’s farm and writing many letters and articles, copies of which have all been kept and form an incredible archive of his life and times. 4 John Lorne Campbell’s Ediphone Recorder. Over a period of about 30 years John Lorne Campbell made recordings of the speech, song and stories from the Gaelic tradition both in the West Highlands and beyond, amassing a unique archive of some 1,500 Gaelic songs and 350 folktales. His first machine, this “Ediphone”, was used to make 274 recordings on the nearby island of Barra and in Cape Breton in the 1930s where he captured the Gaelic songs sung by the descendants of Scots cleared to Nova Scotia. Later he used electrical disc, wire, tape or cassette to make his recordings, many of which have been digitised and accessed through the Tobar an Dualchair website at www.tobarandualchais.co.uk. 5 Picture frame containing 16 butterflies of Canna. A framed picture with Canna’s 16 butterflies identified John Lorne Campbell hangs pride of place in Canna House’s drawing room. As well as recording the island’s butterfly population, he also identified no fewer than 132 species of moth. 6 Croquet Lawn. The croquet lawn was much used by John Lorne Campbell and Margaret Fay Shaw and is still used today by islanders and visiting friends. You can see the original croquet set in the potting sheds at the back of Canna House garden. 7 Drift Seeds. Tropical seeds and seed pods from the West Indies and South America, carried across the Atlantic on the Gulf Stream into the western seaboard of Ireland, Scotland and Scandinavia, given the name of Phaseoli moluccani by Sir Robert Sibbald and known colloquially as ‘Molucca Beans’. They can still be found on the beaches of Canna today…. but you’ll need to keep a very sharp eye out. In the Old Dairy you can see two coconuts, which have been washed up on Canna shores. 8 Bridge between Sanday and Canna. Before this bridge, the islands of Canna and Sanday were connected by a small footbridge, built in 1905, to allow pupils from Canna to reach the school on Sanday instead of having to wait until low tide. The footbridge was destroyed by a storm in 2005 and replaced by this road bridge in 2006. 9 Cats in Canna House. John Lorne Campbell and Margaret Fay Shaw Campbell loved cats; both living cats and cat ornaments, pictures, decoration and more. Children visiting Canna House are often challenged to see how many cats they can count in the Drawing Room alone! 10 Canna Mouse. A tiny sub-species of the wood mouse, the Canna mouse is, as its name suggests, a native of the Isle of Canna. There’s an information panel telling you all about them in the Square if you don’t manage to spot one yourself. 11 Painted names on the cliffs at the pier. The cliffs at the entrance of Canna Harbour are covered with painted names of fishing boats which have passed through over the decades. When Canna was a busy fishing station, fishermen would paint the name of their fishing boats on the cliffs to let people know they had been there. 12 Cannon Ball. The cannon ball displayed in Canna House was found on Canna and is believed to have come from the cannons of the ships of the British Fisheries Society raid in 1787 illustrated in the painting on the dining room wall of Canna House. 13 Tiffany Clock. The Tiffany Clock in the Hall of Canna House was a wedding present to John Lorne Campbell and Margaret Fay Shaw when they got married in 1935. 14 Shrine. The shrine was built in the early 1950's by a Benedictine monk called Father Routledge from Fort Augustus. The stained glass was made by a Polish artist, Father Ninian, from Pluscarden Abbey who came to Canna for a retreat. 15 Ship's Chair. The seaman’s chair was washed ashore on Canna. It came from the steamship Labrador. The SS Labrador was built in 1891 and was wrecked on Mackenzie’s Rock, near the Skerryvore Lighthouse, Tiree, whilst en-route from St John, New Brunswick to Liverpool in March 1899. 16 Canna Stamp. A single local stamp was issued for Canna in 1958 by the then laird, John Lorne Campbell. The stamp shows Compass Hill and two Manx Shearwaters, a seabird found in profusion on the island. Shearwaters is also the name of the currency of the stamp. Its use is optional and all proceeds from the sale – at the island farm and post office — go to the Shipwrecked Mariners Society. 17 Rat Trap. In 2006, a two-year programme to eradicate the Isle of Canna of its rat population saw 4,200 traps laid across the island by a team of specialist trappers from New Zealand. The estimated 10,000 rats threatened to extinguish the island's precious sea bird colonies. Ground-nesting birds like shags and razorbills were being taken in large numbers and although 3,000 Manx Shearwaters birds had been counted in 1972, by 2004, the bird was virtually extinct. The half a million pound eradication programme was successful, with the last rat being seen in 2006. 18 John Lorne Campbell's gravestone. John Lorne Campbell died in April 1996 at the age of 89 in Italy. In a codicil to his will he said he was prepared to be buried where he fell, and so he was buried in Italy. Ten years later, with the permission of his late wife Margaret Fay Shaw, his friend Hugh Cheape decided to bring his body back to Canna. He laid it to rest beneath a simple gravestone in a small woodland of native conifer and deciduous trees he created near at A’ Chill. 19 Cursing Stone. The bullaun stone, or ‘cursing stone’ is 25cm in diameter, dates back to AD 800 and is engraved with a cross. It is the first example ever to have been found in Scotland, with Ireland a much more common location for the stones. Cursing stones are linked to early Christian standing crosses, one of which stands on Canna. There is a worn hole at its base, into which the new find perfectly fits. Bowl-shaped lower stones have previously been found elsewhere in Scotland, including on Canna, but this is the first discovery of a top stone. 20 Puffin. Canna has a large puffin colony at Dùn Mòr on the sea cliffs at the back of Sanday. This unmistakable black and white bird with its brightly- coloured bill, red and black eye-markings and bright orange legs is a real joy to watch. Adults arrive back at the breeding colony in March and April and leave again in mid-August. Some remain in the North Sea at winter, other move further south to the Bay of Biscay. 21 Eagle. Golden Eagles and very occasionally White-tailed Eagles can be spotted regularly on the Isle of Canna, mostly on the cliffs and ridges towards the west end. The Golden Eagle is the UK’s second largest bird of prey and has a wing span of around 2 metres. Adult golden eagles are predominantly dark brown with paler feathers around the back of the head giving the species its name. Juvenile golden eagles are a richer chocolate brown with conspicuous white wing and tail patches. The white-tailed eagle - also known as the sea eagle or white-tailed sea eagle - is a huge bird with broad wings up to 245 cm (over 8 feet) wide. The adult white-tailed eagle large pale buff coloured head, huge bill and short, wedge-shaped and pure white tail are very distinctive. White-tailed eagle are quite vocal and call far more often than golden eagles. 22 Cetaceans & Basking Sharks. Cetaceans is the collective name for whales, dolphins, and porpoises – all of which are seen in the waters around Canna. 24 species have been recorded in the waters off the west coast of Scotland in recent years including Harbour Porpoise; Bottlenose, Common and Risso's Dolphin; Killer (Orca), Minke, Humpback and Sperm Whales. Basking sharks - second largest fish in the world - are also a common visitor. When fully grown it can measure 11 metres in length and weigh about 4500 kg. Despite their large size and threatening appearance, basking sharks are not aggressive and are harmless to people. 23 Lobster Pots. Islanders catch lobster, crab and prawn from the waters around Canna using pots or creels. Lobster pots are usually dropped to the sea floor from a small boat and are marked by a buoy so they can be picked up later. The pots contain bait to attract the lobster, which once it is inside the pot, cannot escape. The lobster remains alive until it is picked up. If it is undersize, it’s put back in the water. The main lobster season is between April and October. 24 Walled Garden & Polytunnel. The walled garden of Canna House has provided Canna residents with fresh fruit and vegetables for many decades. But with the often unpredictable weather, or downright inhospitable in the winter, a new community polytunnel has been added to the island’s growing options. Sited just outside the walled garden, next to the picnic tables in what used to be the ‘hen run’, the polytunnel will provide a range of produce throughout the year. 25 Oyster Plant (Mertensia maritime) This low lying plant with greyish-green leaves that taste of oysters, hence the common name, look more like a succullent (Sedum) than a member of the Borage Family. It can be found at Tarbet (west) and on Sanday. Mertensia maritima is known by the common names oysterleaf, oysterplant or sea bluebells. It grows on gravel ground in the Northern hemisphere, reaching north to the northern parts of Canada, Greenland and Svalbard. It is a perennial herb producing a stem approaching 50 centimeters in maximum length. The inflorescence forms a cluster of flowers which are first reddish, and later bright blue. The Man Who Gave Away His Island. Change can be painfully slow. A new conservation campaign, the Our Seas Coalition, is calling for trawlers to be banned from fishing within three miles of Scotland’s shoreline. Almost 90 years ago John Lorne Campbell was campaigning for sustainable fishery in Scottish waters. Decades ahead of his time, John – the man who gave his island to the National Trust for Scotland in 1981 – saw trawling as a threat to sustainability. Now, almost 25 years after his death, the NTS is part of a campaign to reinstate a three-nautical-mile ban which was lifted in 1984. A Rum do: the butterfly that never was. Previously extinct, the Large Blue butterfly has enjoyed its best summer for many years. A report in The Guardian stirs a memory of a much earlier sighting of the rare Maculinea arion in the unlikely setting of the Hebrides, which John Lorne Campbell diligently exposed as a fraud. John Lorne Campbell’s last journey home. Another stormy summer solstice stirs memories. Nine years ago John Lorne Campbell’s body was returned to the Island of Canna for burial in the woodland he had planted near Canna House. That much was planned well in advance but like many island stories it had taken unexpected twists and turns on a long journey home from Italy. Read more. Muck: an island community enterprise. I have been passing Muck on the ferry for more than 30 years, but never managed to set foot on it until recently. It is such a lovely island and such a vibrant community, I wish I had landed years ago. Muck is half the size of Canna, but has managed to maintain its population at around 40 for fifty years – whereas Canna’s has halved in that time. The flexible attitude of the MacEwan family who own it, is a large part of the reason. If someone wants to do something – build a house, keep stock, start a business – the answer is generally ‘yes,’ with no demand for extra rent. Read more. A matter of trust: the enduring history of Canna. How delighted John Lorne Campbell would have been to find – nearly 20 years after his death and more than 30 after first publication – that his book Canna, The Story of a Hebridean Island, is still in print. Read more. Margaret Fay Shaw: a life and life’s work worth celebrating. This year brings the tenth anniversary of the death of Margaret Fay Shaw, surely one of the most remarkable women of the 20 th century, and a life – and a life’s work – worth celebrating. Read more. A country built aslant: exploring Scotland’s fault line. I was born in Islington – a very different place in 1947 than it is now – but I had never been particularly proud of the fact until I heard Alistair Moffat at the Lennoxlove Book Festival, talking about his new book Britain’s Last Frontier, A Journey Along the Highland Line. The London borough, he told us, played a big part in the success of the whisky industry. Read more. Little Bird comes home. It was very fitting that A Little Bird Blown Off Course , the musical tribute to Margaret Fay Shaw devised and performed by Fiona Mackenzie, should have premiered on South Uist, the island where she started her work and her lifelong love of the Hebrides, and finished its first run on Canna, the island which was her home for 70 years. Read more. A return to Fiesole. The No 7 bus takes only 15 minutes to climb the hairpin bends from Florence to the hilltop town of Fiesole, but when you arrive you are in a different world. The heat and bustle of the city are left behind and although the market square is busy, the Via Vecchia Fiesolana, a narrow lane between high walls a few yards away, is quiet and cool. At number 12, the Villa San Gerolamo, is where John Lorne Campbell and Margaret Fay Shaw spent reviving Spring holidays most years in the last few decades of their long lives. Then it was then a pensione run by the Blue Nuns of the Piccola Compania di Maria, the Little Company of Mary. You can understand why. The villa stands on the south slope of the hill and from its terraces and gardens there is a matchless view across gardens, orchards and private villas to the roofs of Florence, dominated by the distinctive terracotta dome of Brunelleschi’s cathedral, shimmering in the heat haze. The villa offered simple rooms and wholesome meals taken at communal tables – all at very low prices. Although the order had been started in England, the house in Fiesole was mainly staffed by women from its convents in the west of Ireland. John enjoyed speaking in Irish gaelic with them. It was a tranquil place to live and a perfect place to die, as John did in April 1996, a few months short of his 90th birthday. On the morning of the 25th he had been netting moths in the garden. The day was warm enough to have lunch outside, but at the start of the meal John interrupted Margaret to point out a butterfly. As he did so he slumped to the table, dying instantly from a heart attack. Alas the nuns have left San Girolamo, a house they had occupied since 1889. Our visit found the villa gates locked. It appears the order had to sell the 50-room house and it is now in private hands. A Jaguar was parked in the driveway and a security camera stares down on those who peer through the gates. The villa was still functioning as a guest house as late as 2005, according to one correspondent on Trip Advisor, who described it: “The building was grandiose,with great artefacts, surrounded by an unbelievable olive orchard, great walking paths, overlooking Florence, the dome, etc. Rooms were scarcely furnished, with bath, large, with great views of Florence. Splendid dining room, with a centre table for 12 or more, along with smaller tables; furniture, tableware, were all old and beautiful. Great meals! The rates were a small fraction of what you would pay elsewhere. Not to mention the uniqueness of the place, that can not be priced.” The Blue Nuns saw their mission as providing spiritual healing, which Margaret always thought was also the special quality of Canna.