Something Money Can’t Buy
23 Apr '21
Michael McEwan on the failed European Super League At the entrance to Celtic Park, the home of Glasgow Celtic FC, there is a bronze statue of the...
Blog
World Poetry Day: Dispatches from the Poetry Desk
18 Mar '21
We are proud of the Polygon poetry catalogue, which runs the gamut from the collected works of Norman MacCaig and Hamish Henderson, to volumes by...
World Poetry Day Staff Picks: Our Favourite Scottish Poems
18 Mar '21
The act of choosing a favourite can be all about the moment in time, it’s to capture a feeling, mood or resonance rather than to designate a...
A Lesson in the Value of Perseverance: NASA and the Stirling Engine
23 Feb '21
In the week NASA’s Perseverance rover landed on Mars, Birlinn MD Hugh Andrew looks at another case of long-range perseverance with a NASA...
2021 Previews: Alexander McCall Smith
16 Feb '21
What’s coming from the master storyteller this year? Alexander McCall Smith is one of the world’s most prolific authors and his books are in...
‘Movement is Life’: Run Forever
15 Feb '21
Amby Burfoot, author of Run Forever: Your Complete Guide to Healthy Lifetime Running, first competed in the Boston Marathon in 1965. He won that race...
A Valentine’s Day Gift from Alexander McCall Smith
12 Feb '21
Alexander McCall Smith woke up one morning – about a week ago – with a new poem fixed firmly in his mind. It had revealed itself to the...
Countering Disinformation: Russia behind the Headlines
09 Feb '21
When we published Angus Roxburgh’s memoir, Moscow Calling: Memoirs of a Foreign Correspondent, in 2017 it was praised far and wide for offering...
Two Love Poems by Edwin Morgan
08 Feb '21
As Jackie Kay writes in her introduction to twenty poems by Edwin Morgan about love, ‘Edwin Morgan knew all about love: its mysteries, its...
In Flower in February: Alder from Scottish Plant Lore
02 Feb '21
It is finally February, and the earliest signs of spring are beginning to appear, if you know where to look. The alder tree flowers this month, with...
Notes from the Basement – 26 January 2021
26 Jan '21
Will we finish previewing 2021 before the month (or year) is up? Yes, indeed. The final whistle blows this week: here’s what’s coming from...
2021 Preview: History and Current Affairs
22 Jan '21
From books exploring the interwoven history of tea and Scotland to the rise of China’s surveillance state, we have a range of brilliantly...
