My great-nephew recently married in Vancouver and I edited one of the many photographs the family had posted with the words ‘over here I am thinking of Mum and Dad and Eric‘ – my brother, his grandfather, known universally as Fergie. My niece replied saying ‘thank you Uncle Robert, we…
Way back in the late 1980s, we had completed the restoration of the buildings, and I received a telephone call from a very pleasant gentleman called David Morton, who informed me that he had sold a newsagent shop in the town of Dalry. His family had run a newsagents and…
In 1971, I was a young-ish architect working for Sir Frank Mears and Partners, and architecture and town planning practice in Edinburgh. When the competition to design the new Burrell exhibition gallery was announced, so with a fellow architect I entered the competition to design the new gallery in Pollock…
Last autumn, before everything went pear-shape, we answered a telephone call from a lady in southern Ayrshire, who explained they have lived since 1970, but were now leaving: she had a room filled with everything that they didn’t feel able to take with them. It included lace, textiles, China, churns,…
I consider myself blessed because not only did I grow up in a house with books, I had the good fortune to attend Irvine Royal Academy at a time when the Head of English was Dr Alec Forbes. Dr Forbes was famous for two things: the first was that on…
