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Ian Hamilton Finlay
Ian Hamilton Finlay (28 October 1925 – 27 March 2006) was a Scottish poet, writer, artist and gardener. Life Finlay was born in Nassau, Bahamas, to James Hamilton Finlay and his wife, Annie Pettigrew, both of Scots descent. He was educated at Dollar Academy in Clackmannanshire and later at Glasgow School of Art. At the age of 13, with the outbreak of the Second World War, he was Evacuations of civilians in Britain during World War II, evacuated to family in the countryside (firstly to Gartmore and then to Kirkudbright). In 1942, he joined the British Army. Finlay was married twice and had two children, Alec Finlay, Alec and Ailie. Throughout his life, he suffered severely from agoraphobia. He died in Edinburgh in 2006. He is buried alone in Abercorn Churchyard in West Lothian, Scotland. The grave lies in the extreme south-east corner of the churchyard. The gravestone refers to his parents and sister. Poetry At the end of the war, Finlay worked as a shepherd, before begi ...
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Nassau, Bahamas
Nassau ( ) is the capital and largest city of The Bahamas. It is on the island of New Providence, which had a population of 246,329 in 2010, or just over 70% of the entire population of The Bahamas. As of April 2023, the preliminary results of the 2022 census of The Bahamas reported a population of 296,522 for New Providence, 74.26% of the country's population. Nassau is commonly defined as a primate city, dwarfing all other towns in the country. It is the centre of commerce, education, law, administration, and media of the country. Lynden Pindling International Airport, the major airport for The Bahamas, is located about west of the city centre of Nassau, and has daily flights to and from major cities in Canada, the Caribbean, the United Kingdom and the United States. Nassau is the site of the House of Assembly and various judicial departments and was considered historically to be a stronghold of pirates. The city was named in honour of William III of England, Prince of Or ...
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Rousay
Rousay (, ; meaning Rolf's Island) is a small, hilly island about north of Mainland, the largest island in the Orkney Islands of Scotland. It has been nicknamed "Egypt of the north", due to its archaeological diversity and importance. Like its neighbours Egilsay and Wyre, it can be reached by ro-ro ferry from Tingwall. This service is operated by Orkney Ferries, and can take up to 95 passengers (reduced to 50 in winter), and 10 cars. The ferry links the islands of Rousay, Egilsay, and Wyre with each other, and with the mainland of Orkney. Demographics In the 2001 census, Rousay had a population of 212. Most employment is in farming, fishing or fish-farming; craft businesses and seasonal tourism-related work are present. Geography It is separated from mainland Orkney by Eynhallow Sound. One road circles the island, about long, and most arable land lies in the few hundred yards between it and the coastline. With an area of , it is the fifth largest of the Orkney Island ...
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Roy Strong
Sir Roy Colin Strong, (born 23 August 1935) is an English art historian, museum curator, writer, broadcaster and landscape designer. He has served as director of both the National Portrait Gallery and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Strong was knighted in 1982. Early years Roy Colin Strong was born at Winchmore Hill, London Borough of Enfield (then in Middlesex), the third son of hat manufacturer's commercial traveller George Edward Clement Strong, and Mabel Ada Strong (''née'' Smart). He was raised in "an Enfield terrace sans books, with linoleum 'in shades of unutterable green'", and attended nearby Edmonton County School, a grammar school in Edmonton. Strong graduated with a first class honours degree in history from Queen Mary College, University of London. He then earned his PhD from the Warburg Institute and became a research fellow at the Institute of Historical Research. His passionate interest in the portraiture of Queen Elizabeth I was sidelined "while ...
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Henry Raeburn
Sir Henry Raeburn (; 4 March 1756 – 8 July 1823) was a Scottish portrait painter. He served as Portrait Painter to King George IV in Scotland. Biography Raeburn was born the son of a manufacturer in Stockbridge, on the Water of Leith: a former village now within the city of Edinburgh. He had an older brother, born in 1744, called William Raeburn. His ancestors were believed to have been soldiers, and may have taken the name "Raeburn" from a hill farm in Annandale, held by Sir Walter Scott's family. Orphaned, he was supported by William and placed in Heriot's Hospital, where he received an education. At the age of fifteen he was apprenticed to the goldsmith James Gilliland of Edinburgh, and various pieces of jewellery, mourning rings and the like, adorned with minute drawings on ivory by his hand, still exist. When the medical student Charles Darwin died in 1778, his friend and professor Andrew Duncan took a lock of his student's hair to the jeweller whose apprentice, Rae ...
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The Skating Minister
''The Reverend Robert Walker Skating on Duddingston Loch'', better known by its shorter title ''The Skating Minister'', is a late 18th-century oil painting attributed to Henry Raeburn, now in the Scottish National Gallery in Edinburgh. Because the painting was passed down through the subject's family, it was practically unknown until 1949, but has since become one of Scotland's best-known paintings. It is considered an icon of Scottish culture, painted during the Scottish Enlightenment. History Raeburn painted this portrait of his friend Robert Walker in about 1795, when he was already a fashionable society portraitist in Edinburgh. When Walker died in 1808, Raeburn was one the trustees of his estate. The painting was inherited by Walker's widow Jean, and when she died in 1831, it was passed down to their daughter, Magdalen, and then to her daughter, Magdalen Scougall. Finally it passed in turn to the younger Magdalen's daughter and Walker's great-granddaughter, Beatrix Scott, w ...
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Charles Rennie Mackintosh
Charles Rennie Mackintosh (7 June 1868 – 10 December 1928) was a Scottish architect, designer, water colourist and artist. His artistic approach had much in common with European Symbolism. His work, alongside that of his wife Margaret Macdonald, was influential on European design movements such as Art Nouveau and Secessionism and praised by great modernists such as Josef Hoffmann. Mackintosh was born in Glasgow, Scotland and died in London, England. He is among the most important figures of Modern Style (British Art Nouveau style). Early life and education Charles Rennie Mackintosh was born at 70 Parson Street, Townhead, Glasgow, on 7 June 1868, the fourth of eleven children and second son of William McIntosh, a superintendent and chief clerk of the City of Glasgow Police. He attended Reid's Public School and the Allan Glen's Institution from 1880 to 1883. William's wife Margaret Mackintosh née 'Rennie' grew up in the Townhead and Dennistoun (Firpark Terrace) areas ...
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The Scotsman
''The Scotsman'' is a Scottish compact (newspaper), compact newspaper and daily news website headquartered in Edinburgh. First established as a radical political paper in 1817, it began daily publication in 1855 and remained a broadsheet until August 2004. Its parent company, National World, also publishes the ''Edinburgh Evening News''. It had an audited print circulation of 8,762 for July to December 2022. Its website, Scotsman.com, had an average of 138,000 unique visitors a day as of 2017. The title celebrated its bicentenary on 25 January 2017. History ''The Scotsman'' was conceived in 1816 and first launched on 25 January 1817 as a liberal weekly newspaper by lawyer William Ritchie (Newspaper Editor), William Ritchie and customs official Charles Maclaren in response to the "unblushing subservience" of competing newspapers to the Edinburgh establishment. These two plus John Ramsay McCulloch were co-founders of the venture. The paper was pledged to "impartiality, firm ...
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Scotland On Sunday
''Scotland on Sunday'' is a Scottish Sunday newspaper, published in Edinburgh by National World and consequently assuming the role of Sunday sister to its daily stablemate ''The Scotsman''. It was originally printed in broadsheet format but in 2013 was relaunched as a tabloid. Since this latest relaunch it comprises three parts, the newspaper itself which includes the original "Insight" section, a sports section and ''Spectrum'' magazine which incorporates ''At Home'', originally a separate magazine. It backed a 'No' vote in the referendum on Scottish independence. History ''Scotland on Sunday'' was launched on 7 August 1988 and was priced at 40p. Ultimate ownership of ''Scotland on Sunday'' has changed several times since launch. The Scotsman Publications Limited, which also produces ''The Scotsman'', ''Edinburgh Evening News'' and the ''Herald & Post'' series of free newspapers in Edinburgh, Fife, West Lothian and Perth, was bought by the Canadian millionaire Roy Thomso ...
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Pentland Hills
The Pentland Hills are a range of hills southwest of Edinburgh, Scotland. The range is around in length, and runs southwest from Edinburgh towards Biggar and the upper Clydesdale. Etymology The hills take their name from the hamlet of Pentland, situated a short distance beyond the eastern end of the range. The hamlet's name, which was first recorded in the 12th century, probably comes from Cumbric ''pen llan'', meaning "head or top end of the church or enclosure". It was applied to the nearby hills from the 16th century onwards. The name of the Pentland Firth, the strait separating Orkney from Caithness, is entirely unrelated. Geology The southern and western parts of the Pentland Hills are formed from sandstones together with some conglomerates, all of Devonian age and assigned to the Old Red Sandstone. Within the sedimentary sequence are extrusive igneous rocks, principally of basaltic and andesitic composition. The sedimentary rocks are also intruded by dykes ...
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Concrete Poetry
Concrete poetry is an arrangement of linguistic elements in which the typographical effect is more important in conveying meaning than verbal significance. It is sometimes referred to as visual poetry, a term that has now developed a distinct meaning of its own. Concrete poetry relates more to the visual than to the verbal arts although there is a considerable overlap in the kind of product to which it refers. Historically, however, concrete poetry has developed from a long tradition of shaped or patterned poems in which the words are arranged in such a way as to depict their subject. Development Though the term 'concrete poetry' is modern, the idea of using letter arrangements to enhance the meaning of a poem is old. Such shaped poetry was popular in Greek Alexandria during the 3rd and 2nd centuries BCE, although only the handful which were collected together in the ''Greek Anthology'' now survive. Examples include poems by Simmias of Rhodes in the shape of an egg, wings and a ha ...
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Monostich
A monostich is a poem which consists of a single line. Form A monostich has been as "a startling fragment that has its own integrity" and "if a monostich has an argument, it is necessarily more subtle." A monostich could be also titled; due to the brevity of the form, the title is invariably as important a part of the poem as the verse itself: Some one line poems have "the characteristics of not exceeding one line of a normal page, to be read as one unbroken line without forced pauses or the poetics of caesura", and others have "a rhythm, (as with one-line haiku), dividing easily into three phrases". History Modern monostich was started in Russia in 1894 when Valery Bryusov published this apparently absurdist single line: :''О закрой свои бледные ноги.'' :''O zakrój svoí blédnye nógi.'' :(Oh, cover thy pale feet!, as translated by Babette Deutsch and Avrahm Yarmolinsky) Perhaps the first to reintroduce one-line poems was Guillaume Apollinaire with ...
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Poor
Poverty is a state or condition in which an individual lacks the financial resources and essentials for a basic standard of living. Poverty can have diverse environmental, , , , and causes and effects. When evaluating poverty in statistics or economics there are two main measures: ''