Time Travels

Susan Morrison and Len Pennie explore what it takes to be King in medieval Scotland, where ruthlessness and brutality where qualities at the top of the job description.

Aberdeen is soon getting the Baird Family hospital for Maternity, Neonatal and Reproductive Medicine - but who were the Baird family and why is it named after them? Dr Alison McCall clues in Susan Morrison on Sir Dugald, his wife, Lady May Baird, son Professor David and daughter Dr Joyce Baird. From Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Shauna Irani introduces Susan to Ned Burke, her favourite person from the poignant Jacobite collection of relics and accounts of sufferings ’The Lyon in Mourning’. Their website for their 'Lyon in Mourning' project is https://dhil.lib.sfu.ca/lyoninmourning/

And how did you tell the future in the past and what did people think about it? Dr Martha McGill of Warwick University has the answers.

Bee keeping, basket weaving - if you lost limbs in WW1, you might need to retrain for a job, Louise Bell of Leeds University tells Susan Morrison about the Erskine Hospital and a Gordon Highlander who wanted to go there. Servicemen of an earlier age might find care more rough and ready - Dr Catherine Beck of Copenhagen University looks at mental health in the age of Nelson’s navy and why it was thought to be such a pressing issue. In the 18th century electricity was thought to be mysterious and scary, and there was still a whiff of that into the 20th century when savvy female demonstrators were wanted to try and get the highland housewife happy with the power supply of the future. Join us as we travel across the centuries.

It’s one of Scotland’s almost forgotten campaigns. James Graham the charismatic Marquess of Montrose and his allies occupied Orkney in 1649 - they were planning to invade the Scottish mainland. Would the islanders turn out to fight? Dr Andrew Lind of the Institute for Northern Studies takes Susan Morrison through the battle that came next and its tragic aftermath. On a lighter wartime note, Susan chats to Dr Michelle Moffat, Tutor at Otago University in New Zealand about how Scots took their holidays in World War 2 and how sometimes there was nothing the authorities could do but to gnash their teeth.

Right in the heart of what’s now Glasgow's 'Merchant City', there was a vanished industry we rarely ever talk about. Dr Jade Halbert, Lecturer in Design Studies at the University of Leeds introduces Susan Morrison to Glasgow’s lost rag trade and what happened to it. Moving back in time to the 16th century we explore the biggest scandal of the early Reformation church - the firebrand minister of Dundee who spectacularly fell from grace. Dr Bess Rhodes of St Andrews University has been digging into the very chequered career of Paul Methven and his relations to women.

Susan Morrison explores the real life behind modern dark mediaeval fantasy. Were Scottish nobles really getting starved to death in dungeons? Who by? Dr Katy Jack has the answers. Once you lost your land in the Highland clearances, how did you fight to get it back? Juliette Desportes of Glasgow University looks at the Galson raiders in Lewis. And finally, are you melancholy? Does your parrot have a ‘looseness’? You might need an 18th century recipe book. Susan chats with Dr Charlotte Holmes about their contents

Susan Morrison explores cabbage - no, not the stuff that used to bulk out the school dinners, but a mysteriously legal perk they used to carve out of the rag trade. Fashion historian Dr Jade Halbert of Leeds University has the goods on Scotland’s surprising contribution to cabbage history. A bit of sly cabbaging might get you a cheap designer wedding dress, but would a Scottish bride have changed her name in times gone by? Dr Rebecca Mason has the answers and they might surprise you. Scottish traditions were different - find out why. And what does a real dungeon look like? Susan and Dr Katy Jack get medieval.

Yes we’ve all heard about Vikings and monasteries but there’s a lot more to it than that - they might make you a business offer you couldn’t refuse but their fashion and language really caught on. Dr Adrián Maldonado of National Museums of Scotland, author of 'Crucible of Nations: Scotland from Viking age to Medieval kingdoms' chats to Susan Morrison about the new cultures emerging in 9th-11th century ‘Scotland’. Norse culture in the Northern isles produced striking carved stones and in the 20th century a Shetlander with a love of carving stone heads came to Montrose asylum - Adam Christie - he’s just one of the people whose work is represented in the Art Extraordinary collection which Dr Cheryl McGeachan is so fascinated by. It’s art work made by people in asylums who had a yearning to create - from Adam Christie’s stone heads to Mrs McGilp’s fluorescent bunnies from Aberdeen.

Susan Morrison explores with Dr Callum Watson how King Robert Bruce and Sir James Douglas were best chivalric buddies in the wars of independence and how chivalry was nothing to do with throwing down cloaks for ladies over muddy puddles. Dr Désha Osborne and Lisa Williams introduce us to the Garifuna people and the horrific colonial violence they faced in 18th century St Vincent. Scots settlers trying to make their fortunes played a prominent part. Moving back in time, Susan talks to Dr Adrián Maldonado of National Museums of Scotland about what was going on up here before the Vikings got a foothold.

Dr Jade Halbert of the University of Huddersfield would have loved to be alive in the sixties! She introduces Susan Morrison to the glories of Glasgow’s boutique culture where you could finally buy trendy clothes your mum wouldn’t be seen dead in and listen to music your dad would shout at. Emily Hay of Glasgow University heads for the not-so-swinging 1560s and looks at why you might use a sonnet sequence to help frame a queen for murder. Did Mary Queen of Scots have her own poems taken down and twisted against her? And is she a much more important Scottish female author than we realise?