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It’s just not Woking: Prince Andrew has already ruined The Crown 

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The thought of having to wait a decade for the Netflix take on the most staggering spectacle of our time – Prince Andrew’s interview – is torture

Does anyone else wish The Crown would get a bloody move on? Because, sure, despite the new intake of actors, the third season of The Crown is exactly the same as the previous two. It’s slow and staid and sumptuous, and largely about a very rich woman who basically has a very nice time without any sort of incident most of the time. It’s good and impressive and all, but there isn’t exactly a lot of high drama.

I can’t speak for everyone but the reason I keep watching is because The Crown is, to all intents and purposes, Better Call Saul With Corgis. The drama isn’t in what we see onscreen, but what we all know will definitely happen later. There will be death. Divorce. Windsor Castle will burn down. Prince Charles will get married to Princess Diana, but declare his wish that he was another woman’s tampon. Prince Harry will dress up like a Nazi. And Prince Andrew will deny having sex with a minor at the behest of the world’s most notorious billionaire paedophile shortly after having a pizza in Woking.

This last one has prompted the biggest crisis the monarchy has had to face for over two decades, and there’s a real sense that the whole thing will end in total disaster if it isn’t handled with extreme care. Everything is going wrong, and we still cannot rule out the possibility that The Crown will end with Queen Elizabeth undertaking the royal equivalent of opening a Cinnabon in Nebraska. That’s dramatic tension, not countless scenes of Prince Philip demonstrating an appropriate level of excitement about the moon landing.

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How did historic alehouses, taverns and inns evolve into the pubs we see today?

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The Skirrid Inn

Getting together over a drink – or some other psychoactive substance – has played an important part in the social evolution of human beings for millennia

Bristol is gaining recognition for its influential music and street art. But Monocle’s Rory Gooderick thinks that the city’s best-kept secret is its flourishing food scene. He tells us why. { . . . ]

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When outlaw and folk hero James Macpherson was hanged

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Robert MacPherson
Robert MacPherson

He is described as Scotland’s answer to Robin Hood – an outlaw and freebooter who shared the spoils of his thieving campaign against the gentry with the poor of the north.

On November 16 2018, a form of justice finally caught up with James Macpherson whose life and death has become the stuff of legend and lore. Reportedly the son of a Highland laird and a gypsy woman, Macpherson is remembered as a man of magnificent stature, strength and intellect who could handle a sword as expertly as he could play a fiddle.

Some accounts record him as the leader of a band of caterans, or cow thieves, as well as a legitimate horse trader. His story was so rich that it caught the attention of Sir Walter Scott with Robert Burns rewriting a lament composed by Macpherson in the run up to his death.

On November 16, 1700, Macpherson was hung from the clocktower at Banff with foul play surrounding events that led him to the scaffolds.

His downfall was executed by his enemy-in-chief, Lord Duff of Braco, who had become increasingly incensed by the antics of the outlaw’s armed posse who were increasingly brazen in their deeds, often marching into towns on market day. Sometimes, they would be led by a piper. Macpherson was captured on two occasions, once in Inverness and another in Aberdeen before being finally seized in an operation executed by Lord Braco in the autumn of 1700 at the St Rufus Fair in Keith. One of the posse was killed when fighting broke out with Macpherson captured after a woman threw a piece of rug over him from an upstairs window. He was tried in Banff by Sheriff Nicholas Dunbar, a friend of Lord Braco, and was condemned to hang for the crimes of purse cutting, theft – and of being an Egyptian or gypsy.

Lord Braco, on hearing that a lone rider was approaching from Turriff with a reprieve, had the town clock turned forward by 15 minutes to ensure the execution went ahead. Before his death, Macpherson apparently mounted the scaffold at Banff to play a fiddle tune that he had composed in his cell. When finished, he offered the fiddle to the crowd which had gathered – but no one dared to accept. He then smashed his instrument and dropped it at his feet, with the remnants on display at the Clan Macpherson Museum in Newtonmore.

The tune said to have been played ahead of his execution is widely known as Macpherson’s Rant or Macpherson’s Lament. Robert Burns later used it as the basis Macpherson’s Farewell. Those involved in moving the clock forward were punished, and for many years afterwards the clock was kept fifteen minutes fast, as a reminder of Macpherson’s killing. Some time after 1839, the faces of the clocktower were removed from Banff and rehoused in the newly built Dufftown tower. It is known locally as ‘the clock that hung Macpherson’. [ . . . ]

Nicked from THE SCOTSMAN: When outlaw and folk hero James Macpherson was hanged – The Scotsman