Jolabokaflod
Books for gifting inspired by Icelandic Christmas tradition
Books for gifting inspired by Icelandic Christmas tradition
Inspired by Jólabókaflóð, the unique Icelandic tradition of gifting books on Christmas Eve to be read that night, this Issue presents a selection of stories across fiction, non-fiction, and children's. If you're looking for ideas for books to give - on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day - then we've got it covered.
A Work of Beauty: Alexander McCall Smith’s Edinburgh By Alexander McCall Smith Published by Historic Environment Scotland
City of Literature
Is there something in the Edinburgh water that explains why the city has produced so many writers? BBC Scotland, in a playful mood, broadcast a discussion on this subject some years ago – on the First of April. It is hard to imagine anybody falling for such an absurdity, but the setting of a city – if not its water – probably does help literary creativeness. Edinburgh is a city of fragile beauty, of secretive corners and sudden vistas – such a city will always attract writers and provide them with inspiration.
...I don’t know how you are about new technology, but me, I’m a late adapter. So late, in fact, that I still don’t want a smartphone and have only now, about eight years after everyone else, discovered podcasts.
Why did nobody ever tell me about them? Why did no-one ever shake me by the lapels and insist that I listen the New Yorker’s Fiction podcast? That I really ought to download John Lanchester’s exquisite exposition of the Brexit bungle – still the best I’ve heard – on the London Review of Books? That ...
Christmas Stories by Matt Haig
Two enchanting audio extracts read by Stephen Fry and Carey Mulligan
Just what is your cat thinking?
‘The idea of announcing a child’s name immediately after birth is not a universal practice’
‘The lasting popularity of fairy tales also allows many lesser-known tales to come to prominence’
Scotland’s Landscapes: Coastlines
‘For millennia the coast has been a gateway for the people of Scotland’
Charles Rennie Mackintosh In France
‘His French watercolours can be seen as a natural, fully orchestrated development’
Recovering Scotland’s Slavery Past
‘If Scots think their country has few or no connections to slavery, they are sorely mistaken’
The classic picture book now charmingly recreated in Scots for little adventurers
Upbeat: Iraq’s National Youth Orchestra
Audio of Beethoven’s Eighth played by the National Youth Orchestra of Iraq
A stunningly illustrated Scots version of the traditional Christmas rhyme
‘It’s actually the little things that fascinate me – the lives of everyday people’
The Making Of An Art Adventure
Behind the scenes of the making of this unique colouring book
Scots Who Left a Stain on American History
‘Vitriolic personal attacks, dirty tricks and mud-slinging that would make the most hardened modern-day spin doctor blush’
Hogg’s Highland Journeys and Mine
‘The journeys would change the next half of Hogg’s life’
‘The Men2be agency promised that only “discerning professional men” were on their books’