Thomas Johnston

Thomas Johnston / Political Figures

• Name  : Johnston
• Born  : 1881
• Died  : 1965
• Category  : Political Figures
• Finest Moment : Setting up of the North of Scotland Hydro-Electric Board

'Secretary of State for Scotland who had to decline a peerage'.

Born 2 November 1881, in Kirkintilloch, Johnston went into journalism, working on a relative's local newspapers before becoming editor of the Independent Labour Party's newspaper Forward, for a staggering 27 years. He entered politics after being involved with Keir Hardie's attempt to become Rector at Glasgow University, and finally won the seat of West Stirlingshire in 1922, at the second attempt.

By this time, he was the author of History of the Working Classes in Scotland. He lost his seat but returned as member for Dundee in 1925, finally regaining his former seat in 1929. He gained some experience as Lord Privy Seal before being lobbed out of Parliament from1931-5, after which he was back as member for West Stirlingshire again.

At the onset of World War II, he became Regional Commissioner for Scotland, with the evacuation of children from the cities one of his principal tasks. This he performed with the skill of one who knew people right across the social spectrum.

When Churchill asked him to become Secretary of State in 1941, he made it a condition that he would work with a Scottish Council of State, which would include all living previous Scottish Secretaries. This broad band of experienced, cross-party individuals resulted in much good service to the country, peaking in the setting up of the North of Scotland Hydro-Electric Board, 'The Hydro'. To enable this, Johnston had to allay fears that the Scottish landscape would not be mangled. He must have succeeded, as on leaving politics in 1945 he became the Board's first head.

He stuck to his earlier criticisms of the aristocracy by refusing a peerage, but continued as head of the Board until 1959.

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Thomas Telford Engineer

Thomas Telford / Engineer

• Name  : Telford
• Born  : 1757
• Died  : 1834
• Category  : Engineers
• Finest Moment : Menai Bridge in Wales (1819-26)

Born 9 August 1757 near Westerkirk, Dumfries, the son of a shepherd. Telford was educated in the parish school, beginning his life with an education but no silver spoon. His first career was that of stonemason, and he worked in the Borders, as well as on Edinburgh's New Town. Lacking that silver spoon, he did the next best thing and acquired an influential patron, in this instance the MP William Pulteney.

One logical step up from making the building blocks of structures was making the actual structures, so Telford became a civil engineer. He superintended a large number of public works in the south of England, before being made Surveyor of Public Works for Salop in 1788. Five years later, in 1793, he put in charge of the Ellsmere Canal, as agent, architect and engineer. His design, and spectacular aqueducts at Chirk and Pont Cysylltau, sealed his reputation as a versatile and innovative civil engineer.

In 1801 the government appointed him in charge of a communications survey of Scotland. Following on from his masterful survey, and for 20 years after 1804, he constructed over 1450km (900 miles) of roads and 120 bridges in the Highlands of Scotland, in addition to which he built harbours and jetties for ferry and fishery use. As a useful aside he also built the Caledonian Canal.

In 1818 he became the first President of the Institution of Civil Engineers. He continued working to the end and died in London on 2 September 1834. Like his equally famous predecessor General Wade, he is buried in Westminster Abbey.

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Time of Macbeth in Scotland

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Time of Macbeth

Period: 997 AD — 1070

997 AD Kenneth III begins his reign as King of Alba. He is known as the brown haired one, and is thought to have been the grandfather of Macbeth's wife Gruoch.

1000 The end of the first millennium. Scotland, like the rest of Europe, is gripped by fears that the world will end. It doesn't, so everyone goes back to killing each other again.

1005 Macbeth born, most probably in the North east of Scotland. His father is Finnleach, High Steward of Moray.

1005 Kenneth III murdered by his cousin Malcolm at Monzievaird, who then takes the throne of Alba (Scotland) as King Malcolm II.

1020 Macbeth's father, Finnleach, is murdered by his nephew's, Malcolm (a different one to the King) and Gillacomgain. Malcolm then succeeds to the throne of Moray. The young Macbeth swears to get his revenge.

1029 Malcolm dies, and his position as High Steward of Moray is taken by Gillacomgain.

1032 Macbeth seizes his chance. Helped by his allies, he rounds up Gillacomgain along with 50 others and burns them all to death.

1034 King Malcolm II of Scotland is murdered at Glamis. It is said that the so-called Malcolm Stone in the manse garden there is his grave slab. He is succeeded by Duncan I - the Duncan of Shakespeare's Macbeth.

1039 Duncan mounts a raid on Durham, but it is a disaster and he is chased by the Northumbrians back into Scotland.

1040 Duncan marches on Macbeth, but is killed in battle against him near Elgin. The story in Shakespeare's version that Macbeth invited Duncan to his castle and then murdered him in bed is totally fictitious. Macbeth then assumes the throne of Scotland.

1046 Margaret, who is to become Scotland's first female saint, is born in southern Hungary. As a child, she moves to England and settles into the English court.

1050 Macbeth goes on pilgrimage to Rome along with Thorfinn, Earl of Orkney. He returns to find his kingdom intact.

1054 Earl Siward of Northumberland invades Scotland. He defeats Macbeth at the battle of Birnam Wood in Perthshire. Most of Macbeth's army are slaughtered, but Macbeth himself escapes and continues to rule.

1057 Macbeth is finally killed in a battle at Lumphanen in Aberdeenshire by Duncan's son Malcolm. The throne is then taken by his stepson Lulach.

1058 Lulach survives only a few months before being defeated and killed by Malcolm at Strathbogie. Malcolm then takes the throne as Malcolm III or Canmore.

1070 Malcolm III (Canmore) marries Margaret at Dunfermline. He meets her when she arrived in Scotland as a refugee and is instantly besotted with her. Their marriage is said to be an extremely happy one. Margaret introduces many of the customs of England to Scotland and carries out many acts of piety and charity. She dies in 1093 and is canonised in 1250.

Over the course of history, Scotland has had many kings. Some have been heroes, some have been villains, and some have been so useless and weak that we've forgotten everything about them.

The greatest of them all, however, was Macbeth - a figure so powerful and larger than life that even now, 1000 years after his reign on the throne, we all still instantly recognise his name.

Macbeth was a towering, dashing figure who managed to keep a grip on Scotland for a remarkable 17 years at a time when kings were deceived, betrayed and slaughtered more often than most nobles ate wild boar for dinner.

Because he combined utter brutality with real compassion, and because ordinary people saw him as a ruler who was firm but fair, he outshines even William Wallace or Robert the Bruce in terms of romantic appeal.

Like Wallace, Macbeth ends up as an ultimately tragic figure, dying a heroes' death on the field of battle. Yet, like Bruce, his reputation as a fighter meant that he ultimately won the respect of Scotland's great enemies, the English.

Of course, most of our modern awareness of Macbeth comes from Shakespeare's famous play, which made him a legend not by showing his strengths, but by painting him as the bad guy.

In the play, Macbeth begins as a trusted and brave soldier in King Duncan's army. But he is gripped by blind ambition and egged on by his equally ambitious wife, Lady Macbeth, murders Duncan. She later dies, Macbeth is killed in battle by his rival Macduff, and Malcolm becomes the rightful king.

Shakespeare's play is wonderful drama - it was by far one of his most successful works, and Elizabethan crowds flocked to see it - but it bears little resemblance to historical reality.

The real Macbeth was undoubtedly a plotter and had no scruples about murdering opponents, but then you had to be tough and ruthless to survive in those days. However, he was also clever, confident, just and deeply religious, taking care to look after his subjects and giving away some of his wealth to the poor.

In fact, he was so settled as King of Scots and loved by his subjects that he left Scotland for the better part of a year to go on a pilgrimage to Rome - the only Scottish ruler to this day to do so. If there had been any question of anyone seeking to overthrow him, he wouldn't have dared step outside the country.

Sadly, there is an awful lot about Macbeth which we simply don't know. At the time of his reign, which was from AD1040 to 1057, only the most rudimentary details about the way Scotland was ruled was written down. It wasn't until the time of David I, after 1124, that proper records and documents began to be kept.

Some journals and chronicles of that time have survived, however - many of them originating in Ireland, which had a close affinity with Scotland. They tell of Macbeth's legendary capacity for keeping the peace at home, of his compassion, and of his desires to help the poor.

Macbeth is thought to have been born around the year 1005, probably in the north east, His father Findlaech was High Steward - ruler - of Moray, which at the time was a semi autonomous kingdom.

It probably looked after its own affairs, though it may well have had an agreement with the rest of Scotland, known then as Alba, to share foreign policy. In fact, the arrangement may have been similar to Scotland's relationship with the rest of Britain under the devolved Scottish parliament to be established later this year!

Macbeth's mother's name is unknown, though she was almost certainly a royal and may have been the daughter of King Kenneth II or Malcolm II. In 1020, when Macbeth was 15, his father was murdered by his nephews Gillacomgain and Malcolm. Malcolm then succeeded to the throne of Moray until the year 1029, when he died and in turn was succeeded by Gillacomgain.

As Macbeth grew older, however, he swore revenge for the murder of his father. His chance finally came in 1032, when he is believed to have rounded up Gillacomgain along with 50 others and burned them all to death.

Having carried out this barbarous act of mass murder, he then assumed the throne of Moray himself. At the same time, he married Gillacomgain's widow. Shakespeare, of course, calls her Lady Macbeth, though in reality, she wasn't - her real name was Gruoch.

There is absolutely no evidence that Gruoch was the scheming, plotting, fearsome woman that the bard painted her to be - though she is thought to have had royal blood and must have been pretty feisty to consider marrying a character as single minded as Macbeth.

She also brought her son from her first marriage, Lulach, with her. Incredibly, despite having slaughtered his father, Macbeth seems to have taken to the boy, adopting him as stepson even though he was nicknamed Lulach the Simple - in other words, he wasn't very bright.

By all accounts, Macbeth was a good King of Moray. He is said to have been fair, and to have looked after his subjects - though, like most rulers and politicians of the time, the thought of having to kill someone to retain power didn't bother him at all.

His chance to seize the throne of all Scotland (or Alba, as it was then known) came when Duncan I, who held the throne, mounted a raid on Durham in Northumbria in 1039.

The battle turned out to be a disaster, and Duncan was quickly driven back over the border and into Scotland. The next year - perhaps in an attempt to assert his authority, or perhaps because his counterpart in Moray was laughing at him - he decided to march north and mount an attack on Macbeth.

The two armies clashed near Elgin and this time, Duncan failed to escape with his life. He was killed in the battle and Macbeth, who had a legitimate claim to the Scottish throne through his mother's line, assumed rulership of all Scotland.

Once king, Macbeth and Gruoch would have adopted all the traits of monarchy. Rather than having one palace, They would have moved around Scotland with their court and armed retinue - probably amounting to at least some dozens of people - and stayed in one place until they had exhausted the food supplies of the long suffering locals. Then they would have moved on, probably constantly travelling between places such as Scone, Dunkeld, St Andrews and Forteviot in Perthshire.

David Brown, a lecturer in Scottish history at Glasgow University and an expert on the period, says that Macbeth's court would have been a fairly impressive sight. "It would have been a pretty grand affair, and the size of the gathering would have been pretty substantial. On special days such as feast days, others would have arrived and it would have been even greater."

As well as being a good king, Macbeth was also a clever politician. He quickly formed an alliance with a Norseman, Thorfinn of Orkney and the son of the wonderfully named Sigurd the Fat, who was otherwise known as Thorfinn Skullsmasher. The two men often formed a common front, and in 1050 decided to go on a pilgrimage to Rome together.

It is this pilgrimage - a journey of more than 3000 miles which took nearly a year to compete - which tells us about Macbeth's compassion and concern for his fellow man. According to one of the writers of the time, the Irish hermit Marianus Scotus, when Macbeth arrived in Rome he "scattered money to the poor like seed."

This visit is thought to have been hugely important. Macbeth would almost certainly have met the Pope and told him all about Scotland. It was probably the first time that a reigning Pontiff had learned much about this small and wild country at the far north of Europe - and about which subsequent Popes were to hear much in the coming centuries.

Alex Woolf, a lecturer in Celtic and early Scottish history at the University of Edinburgh, believes that Macbeth may have gone to Rome as a penance for killing Duncan.

"In England, King Canute had been there about 15 years before, and it was beginning to get quite popular. Macbeth may have felt that killing Duncan was a sin", he says. "The Bishops may have suggested the trip to him as a form of repentance."

Four years later, Macbeth suffered a serious challenge to his kingdom when Earl Siward of Northumberland - with which Scotland was almost perpetually at war - invaded Scotland. He defeated Macbeth at the battle of Birnam Wood near Dunkeld in Perthshire - again, mythologised by Shakespeare in his version.

The truth, though, is that Macbeth was not slain during this encounter. He suffered a heavy defeat and most of his army were slaughtered, but he slipped away and continued to rule.

By this stage, though, the writing was on the wall. After another three years, Macbeth was finally killed in a battle at Lumphanen in Aberdeenshire by Duncan's son Malcolm, and his rule was over.

Strangely, though, Malcolm didn't take the throne. Instead it went to Macbeth's stepson Lulach, though he survived only a few months before being ambushed and killed by Malcolm at Strathbogie. Malcolm then took the throne as Malcolm III or Canmore.

Isn't this a bit odd? David Brown believes there may be a plausible explanation. "It may be that Lulach and Malcolm had done a deal whereby Lulach got the throne but Malcolm followed him. However, one contemporary account describes Lulach's death as treachery, which perhaps means Malcolm did the dirty on him too.

"You have to remember that these were bloodthirsty times, and that politics often involved murdering your opponent. When they talked about stabbing someone in the back in those days, they really meant it."

Meanwhile around the world...

*1020 The Shetlands, Orkneys and Faroes recognise Olaf Haraldsson as their king

• 1027 Omar Khayyam, Persian scientist and poet - writer of the Rubaiyat - is born

• 1035  King Canute divides his kingdom between his three sons, giving England to Harold

• 1016 King Canute takes the throne of England

• 1041 The Lombards and the Normans defeat the Greeks at the Battle of Montemaggiore

• 1045 One of Spain's national heroes, El Cid, is born

• 1050 The astrolabe arrives in Europe from the East

• 1053 The Normans conquer Southern Italy and found an empire there

• 1054 There is no Pope during this year, and there is a permanent schism between the Roman and Eastern churches

• 1066 William of Normandy invades and conquers England, taking the throne from King Harold who is killed at the Battle of Hastings

• 1070 The Order of St. John is founded in Jerusalem

*1000 Around this time artistic and literary expression in Japan was at its peak.

• 1054 Orthodox and Catholic Churches split apart.

• 0997 St Stephen, King of Hungary began his reign.

• 1013 The Danes conquer all of England.

• 0997 From 0976-1026, Basil II rebuilds the Byzantine Empire.

*1000 Southwestern and Mississipi cultures begin to peak in North America.

• 1056 Henry IV begins conflict with the Pope.

• 1000 Tiahuanaco and Huari abandoned in the Americas.

• 1038 Seljuks conquer Khorasan (Afghanistan).

• 1055  Seljuks conquer Baghdad.

• 1000 Culture and economy thrive in China (Song dynasty begins in 0960).

• 1068 Wang Ashi's reforms begin (1068-1086).

• 1071 Seljuks defeat the Byzantines at Manzikert.

• 1081 Founding of the Seljuk sultanate of Rum.

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Timothy Pont

• Name  : Pont
• Born  : 1565
• Died  : 1614
• Category  : Religious Figures
• Finest Moment : Completing his epic mapping of Scotland

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Twelfth Century Scotland History

• 1100 - Beginning of formation of the clans.
• 1120 - Alexander II founds St. Giles Cathedral.
• 1124 - David I takes the Scottish throne. Period of strong ties with England begins.
• 1128 - David I founds Holyrood Abbey.
• 1130 - Edinburgh becomes a burgh.
• 1153 - David dies at Carlisle. The new king is Malcolm IV.
• 1156 - Somerled wins a naval victory against the ruling Norsemen off Islay.
• 1157 - Henry II of England reclaims Northumberland and Cumberland.
• 1158 - Malcolm goes to France to fight for Henry.
• 1164 - Somerled dies. His land is broken up between his three sons.
• 1165 - William I "The Lion" takes the Scottish throne.
• 1174 - William forced by the Treaty of Falaise to accept Henry II's overlordship of Scotland.
• 1178 - William founds Arbroath Abbey.
• 1189 - He buys back Scottish sovereignty from Richard the Lionheart at the so-called Quitclaim of Canterbury for the sum of £6600. The Quitclaim is the oldest public record in Scotland.

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Twenty First Century Scotland

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Twenty-First Century Scotland

• 2000 David F. Brown becomes compleatist number 2,500; the deluge continues.  

• 2001 The Centenary of the Rev. A.E. Robertson's compleation; the SMC plan a celebratory dinner  

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Union of the Crowns

Union of the Crowns

By the time James VI arrived in London in 1603 to unite the crowns and take up his throne as James I of England, he had one main aim - to fully bring the two countries together and create a brand new United Kingdom.

After centuries of warfare between the two countries, many Scots supported him in this. Yet it was the English who blocked a quick union because they didn't think it would be good for them.

Astonishingly, many of the arguments made by the English against a union at that time are exactly the same complaints against Scotland that you regularly hear voiced in England today.

Under pressure from James, the Scottish parliament actually passed a Treaty of Union in 1607, exactly 100 years before the two countries finally did merge into one when they both agreed the Act of Union. However, England would have nothing to do with the idea.

After nearly 1000 years of fighting to try and dominate Scotland, it seems incredible that when union was offered to the English on a plate, they turned it down.

They rejected the idea because they claimed - just as English politicians maintain today - that Scotland was poorer than England and so would demand subsidies from London to keep it afloat.

Another worry they had was that if the two countries did join together, then Scots would flood south in the hope and expectation that "their" king would give them a job.

James was able to grant a common citizenship to people born on both sides of the border, but that was about as far as union went during his reign. Both countries kept their own parliament, their own economies and their own trading arrangements.

Despite the setbacks, James's desire to draw the two countries together never dulled. He started to call his new kingdom Great Britain - a name which the English parliament of the time wasn't happy about - and personally supervised plans for a new union flag, which was finally agreed in 1606.

James was a shrewd king who quickly ensured that Scottish influence played a major part in decision making in London. He tried hard to be even handed, giving four out of ten of the appointments to his court at Whitehall to Scots and installing one in five members of the English privy council from north of the border.

Hundreds of Scots joined James in England, determined that they should profit from the closer relationship between the two ancient countries. By and large, they were successful. Slowly but surely, Scotland was finally starting to relinquish its freedom and independence.

James never lost his broad Scots accent, but he felt perfectly happy in London and never really felt the desire to return north. He didn't think he needed to, since he found governing the two countries a relatively easy task.

James even went as far as to boast to the English parliament that he was managing to control the Scots in a way which England had not managed over centuries of war.

He told them famously: "This I must say for Scotland, and may truly vaunt it: here I sit and govern with my pen; I write and it is done; and by a Clerk of the Council I govern Scotland now, which others could not do with the sword." And he was absolutely right.

However, it wasn't just the English who were cautious about the new relationship between the two old enemies. The Scots, too, had every reason to be careful. They recognised that theirs was a poor country, while England was rich, powerful, and influential. Even then, there were worries that the new accommodation could end up being a takeover rather than a partnership.

The fact that Scotland no longer had its own king was something of a shock to the system north of the border. Scots had grown used to their monarchs being away for long periods - not least because of imprisonment by the English - but it was always thought that they would return eventually. It quickly became clear that James VI was not coming back.

There were financial disadvantages too. Edinburgh, for instance, felt the loss of the royal court and its spending power. There was also a worry that trade would begin to suffer.

For all his interest in England, the king did not forget Scotland. The lawless Highland clans, for instance, were still extremely powerful, and he now felt empowered to take them on. He hunted down one of the most troublesome clans, the MacGregors, and effectively banned them, forcing them to take to the mountains.

In another move aimed at bringing order, James ordered the Bishop of the Isles, Andrew Knox, to meet with several of the chiefs on Iona. The aim was to try and persuade them to abandon their Catholic faith and become Protestants, and also to adopt more civilised lowland ways. Unsurprisingly, it didn't take long before the inter-clan slaughter started again.

James was always preoccupied with religion. He rejected the Catholicism of his mother, but at the same time felt uncomfortable with the harsh Calvinist faith of the Church of Scotland. However, he loved what he felt was the ordered, Episcopal dignity of the Church of England, and wanted to see the Kirk adopt the same style of worship.

The king didn't use gentle persuasion against the Kirk as much as brutal bullying. He invited eight of the most important Scottish ministers to talks in London in 1606, only to abuse them to their faces.

One of those who went down was his old adversary Andrew Melville, a leading thinker who had studied Calvinism on the continent and helped to draft the Kirk's Second Book of Discipline. James sent him to the Tower and forbade him ever to return to Scotland.

The king felt there was still a real chance of turning his native land away from the harshness of Calvinism and towards the Anglican form of worship. The Kirk was not yet a completely dominant force in Scotland, since parts of the country were still Catholic and some areas, notably Aberdeen, had already embraced episcopacy.

On his one and only visit back north of the border in 1617, James was determined to reform the Kirk and bring it more into line with English practice. However, his actions simply caused antagonism. When he introduced a choir and organ into the Chapel Royal at Holyrood, for instance, it only served to infuriate the locals.

More trouble followed when he attempted to reform the Kirk itself. James wanted to make a series of major changes to the way the church conducted its worship which struck at the very heart of Presbyterianism.

He insisted that Easter and Christmas were both celebrated as religious festivals in Scotland - they had fallen out of favour by this time for being unnecessarily Papist - and also demanded that, as was the case in England, Scots should receive communion on their knees.

Other changes he imposed were to allow private communion and baptism and the insistence that confirmation was carried out not by ministers but by bishops of the Kirk, who still existed at this time.

In 1618 the changes, known as the Five Articles of Perth, were put to the General Assembly, which was meeting in the city, and forced through. The ministers, though, were in rebellious mood and many refused to implement the changes. The result was that an enraged king banned the General Assembly, which did not meet again for another two decades.

It was not just the clergy who were infuriated and insulted by the king's attempts to force Anglican worship on them. The people too, were angry. Quietly and slowly, the Kirk began to plan its fight back.

It was a battle which would eventually split Scotland and consume the whole of Britain in civil war.

Meanwhile...

• 1605 Cervantes publishes Part I of Don Quixote
• 1606 Guy Fawkes is sentenced to death for his part in the Gunpowder Plot
• 1606 Rrembrandt van Rijn, the Dutch painter, is born
• 1606 Galileo Galilei invents the proportional compass
• 1609 The Blue Mosque is built in Constantinople
• 1609 Henry Huson explores Delaware Bay and the Hudson River
• 1617 John Calvin's collected works are published in Geneva

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Victoria & Balmoral

Victoria and Balmoral

Queen Victoria was the first English-born monarch of Great Britain ever to fall in love with Scotland. She thought it was the finest country in the world, and came north of the border as often as she could.

Yet the Queen - who ruled over the British Empire for 64 long years - only discovered the delights of the Scottish landscape, scenery and people by accident.

She was meant to be going to Brussels for a summer holiday in 1842, but she fell ill and her advisers thought a trip to Scotland would provide a good but less strenuous alternative.

Victoria came north and was immediately captivated. The affection she had for the Scots from then on was to profoundly shape both her own life and that of the country she effectively adopted.

She put the Highlands on the map, made them popular, sparked off a craze for tartan in fashionable society - and struck up a relationship with a servant which almost certainly developed into an illicit love affair.

Victoria's first sight of Scotland after arriving by ship at Leith was Edinburgh. Incredibly, she was only the second reigning British monarch to come north of the border - the first was George IV in 1820 - but she took to the country and its people straight away.

The young Queen was immediately enchanted with the capital, but her true heart lay in the Highlands. She travelled on to Perthshire, with her husband, Prince Albert, enjoying the deerstalking.

The pair immediately fell in love with the vast, open views and the stern but respectful people. And they quickly developed an affection for Balmoral, with its pocket-sized castle hidden deep in the Deeside countryside

At that time, the castle and estate were owned by Sir Robert Gordon, the brother of the Earl of Aberdeen. Victoria was offered the remaining lease when he died in 1847, and she decided to take it, renting the place out for her by-now annual visits north of the border.

The castle was small, but it afforded her privacy and an escape from the rigid protocol and often dull routine of royal life in faraway London. Prince Albert loved it as much as she did, partly because the countryside reminded him of his childhood in Germany.

The royal couple were offered the chance to buy the property and estate in 1852. They snapped up the opportunity, and decided to build a far grander castle on the site.

The old property - which, in any case, was in pretty bad repair - was demolished and a replacement, fashioned in granite and designed in the new and fashionable Scottish baronial style, built in its place.

But Victoria didn't just like the building and the countryside - she loved the local people too, and forged an affection between the Royal Family and the inhabitants of nearby villages such as Braemar and Ballater which continues to this day.

The Royal couple delighted in adopting Scottish customs. They ate porridge for breakfast, for instance, and quickly fell in love with tartan - to the extent that they decked the castle out in it.

Victoria often wore a tartan plaid and clothed her children in the kilt, while Albert actually designed his own tartan for use by the Royals. Their interest in the subject created an enthusiasm for it which made it the most fashionable cloth of the age, and which secured its position in the fashion world right through to the present day.

The Queen also deliberately set out to make contacts with local residents, and even visited them in their homes and made friends with their children. However, there was one local who stood head and shoulders above the rest in terms of her affection - the ghillie John Brown.

Victoria first met Brown shortly after taking the lease on Balmoral. At the time, he was a 21-year-old stable hand on the estate; the Queen was eight years older.

Prince Albert also took to him quickly, since the two men shared a love of shooting, hillwalking and deer shooting. As a result, the ghillie was a natural choice to accompany the Queen when she ventured out in the area alone.

When her beloved husband died suddenly from complications arising from a chill in 1861, Victoria was devastated, and took to the mourning black she would wear for the rest of her life.

In a bid to try and revive the shattered Queen, who was virtually on the edge of a nervous breakdown, courtiers summoned Brown. He travelled down to the Isle of Wight where she was staying at the time and her condition immediately improved.

There is little doubt that from then on, their relationship deepened and probably turned into a love affair. Remarkably, she became submissive to him. If he told her to do something, she immediately obeyed - she would, for instance, change an outfit if he didn't like it or felt it wasn't right for her.

His influence became overpowering. No longer were they just together in Scotland - the dour ghillie from the Highlands was expected to be by the Queen's side in London, too.

On one famous occasion, she refused to attend a military review in Hyde Park unless Brown was with her. Her advisers gently tried to persuade the Queen that with gossip over their relationship at fever pitch, this could cause a riot, but she refused to budge.

The problem was only solved when the Mexican Emperor fortuitously died, allowing relieved officials to cancel the whole thing as a mark of respect for his passing.

Unsurprisingly, rumours about the relationship spread far and wide, and there were even wild allegations that the Queen had given birth to a secret love child by Brown during a holiday in Switzerland in 1868.

Brown's position was deeply resented by the Royal Court, and the Prince of Wales - later to become Edward VII - is said to have loathed him. Yet his power over Victoria simply seemed to increase as the years passed.

He began to be privy to state secrets and exert his own influence and opinions over the politicians of the time. He could hire and fire household staff, and is said to have saved her life on a number of occasions by grabbing attackers and taking control of her runaway horses.

Then, in 1893, tragedy struck again for the ageing Queen. She had bought Brown a house at Balmoral for his retirement, but he never lived to enjoy it. Like Albert before him, he caught a chill while outdoors. Complications turned it to fever, and he was dead within days.

Once again, Victoria went into acute shock. She lost the use of her legs, complaining bitterly: "My grief is unbounded, dreadful, and I know not how to bear it or how to believe it possible. Dear, dear John, my kindest and best friend, to whom I could say everything."

This time, she never really recovered. Four years later, she celebrated her Diamond Jubilee, and four years after that, she died.

An age was finally over. But it had been an age which had been good for Scotland. At the end of Victoria's reign much of he country was prosperous, and its people well educated, ambitious and content.

Thanks to the efforts of the Queen who loved Scotland and everything about it, the country was finally on the world map in a new and different way. Stories of impoverished Highlanders and slum cities had been replaced by the powerful imagery of the shortbread tin - lochs, heather, porridge and tartan.

It was false, kitsch, and touristy, but the world loved it - and continues to love it to this very day.

Meanwhile...

• 1848

The first settlers arrive in Dunedin, New Zealand

• 1848

Hale and Burnett found the New York News Agency - later the Associated Press

• 1848

William Thomson, Lord Kelvin, determines the temperature fo absolute zero

• 1861

Russian serfs are emancipated

• 1861

Mrs Beeton?s, ?Book of Household Management? is published

• 1901

The Mombasa to Lake Victoria railway is completed

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