More people visiting Scotland for fine dining - as Michelin Stars increase
Rosalind Erskine
By
Known for cake making, experimental jam recipes, Champagne, whisky and gin drinking (and the inability to cook Gnocchi), Rosalind is the Food and Drink Editor and whisky writer for The Scotsman, as well as hosting Scran, The Scotsman's food and drink podcast.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Scotsman
9 hours ago
- Scotsman
Trooping the Colour: Black armbands for India and a wave from Louis
Central London came to a standstill for the celebration of the King's Official Birthday. Sign up to our daily newsletter – Regular news stories and round-ups from around Scotland direct to your inbox Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... The King has celebrated his official birthday with an eco-friendly flypast by the Red Arrows and a minute's silence for all those killed in the Air India plane disaster. Trooping the Colour was a display of military pomp and pageantry but Charles asked for the traditional programme to include the remembrance, and for senior royals and officers taking part to wear black armbands as a mark of respect. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad When the royal family gathered later on Buckingham Palace's balcony they acknowledged thecrowds and watched an aerial display of vintage and modern aircraft with the Red Arrows' finale powered by a blend of sustainable aviation fuel. The world-famous acrobatic team also used vegetable oil to produce their trademark red, white and blue vapour trails over the royal residence – believed to be a first. Trooping, also known as the King's Birthday Parade, fell silent after Charles had inspected hundreds of troops on Whitehall's Horse Guards Parade from a carriage with the Queen by his side. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad The moment of reflection acknowledged the aviation disaster on Thursday that killed 241 passengers and crew, including more than 50 British nationals, and around 30 people on the ground. Charles led the royal colonels in wearing black armbands, with the Prince of Wales, Colonel of the Welsh Guards, Princess Royal, Colonel Blues and Royals, and the Duke of Edinburgh, Colonel Scots Guards, all wearing bands on their left arms. Young royals delighted monarchy fans by making an appearance, with Prince George, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis riding in a carriage with their mother Kate. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad George, Charlotte and Louis joined other members of the royal family, including the Duchess of Edinburgh in theformer office of the Duke of Wellington, to watch the spectacle in honour of their grandfather. Kate took her place next to the King and Queen on the dais, in her role as Colonel of the Irish Guards – a symbolic position and one she was unable to take up last year because she was receiving cancer treatment, and instead watched the ceremony with her children. Trooping the Colour is as much a social occasion as a ceremonial celebration, and stands around Horse Guards Parade were filled with around 8,000 wives, girlfriends and parents of the guardsmen and officers on parade. The minute's silence was observed when Charles and Camilla returned to the dais, following an announcement to the spectators and a bugler sounding the Last Post. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Thousands lined the royal procession route from Buckingham Palace to Horse Guards Parade where Trooping was staged. A group of activists from the anti-monarchy group Republic staged a 'not my King' protest.
.jpeg%3Fwidth%3D1200%26auto%3Dwebp%26quality%3D75%26trim%3D49%2C0%2C355%2C0%26crop%3D&w=3840&q=100)
Scotsman
13 hours ago
- Scotsman
AL Kennedy: ‘I get very fed up with depictions of glamorous sociopaths'
Ahead of her appearance at this year's Edinburgh International Book Festival, AL Kennedy talks to David Robinson about her latest novel, in which she explores the worlds of a 'spy cop' and an idealistic teacher Sign up to our Arts and Culture newsletter, get the latest news and reviews from our specialist arts writers Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... The face on my screen is in silhouette against a window whose curtains haven't been completely pulled back, yet when she moves nearer her computer I can see that it is indeed the writer AL Kennedy. On the internet, you'll find some people saying she now lives in the Scottish Highlands and some that she lives in north Essex, so I ask her where she is. She won't say. 'Not even which county?' 'No.' 'Or which country?' 'No. I'm keeping it variable. I get a lot of Brexiter hate mail. It's expensive to have to put up CCTV and motion sensors and lights and things.' 'Is this all because of one person or more than one?' Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad 'I don't really know. If it's handwritten then you do know, but if it's a big bag of dog shit, it's hard to identify. And the police are literally no help at all.' AL Kennedy | Robin Niedojadlo Wherever she actually lives, the dark, divided Britain beyond the multi award-winning Scottish novelist's letterbox and curtains, the Britain about which she has been such a pithy and acerbic commentator on Radio 4's now sadly defunct Points of View and as a columnist for Germany's Süddeutsche Zeitung, is what prompted her to write her latest book, Alive in the Merciful Country. At first she'd wanted to set it in the first 100 days of Boris Johnson's premiership, but Covid put paid to that. 'I got Covid at the Tutankhamun exhibition [at London's Saatchi Gallery] right at the end of 2019,' she says. 'I remember standing in the packed crowds thinking 'There's this huge mystery pandemic across the whole of East Asia and half the people here have clearly come from there. Is this really the best idea I've ever had?' And then, a week later...' The virus left her with no sense of smell for six months, exhausted through chronic lack of sleep and with residual symptoms of Long Covid that lasted until 2023. Yet the spring of 2020, when Covid came for so many of the rest of us, is the setting for her novel: not just because time back then suddenly seemed both so spongily absorbent and absurdly finite but because that – the very first week of lockdown – was when her fictional protagonist, London primary school teacher Anna McCormick, finally heard again from the lost soul she has always known as Buster. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Anna and Buster had known each other back in the Eighties, when both were part of a group of radical clowns, musicians and street theatre performers who called themselves the OrKestrA. They were the kind of people you might see floating around Edinburgh's Hunter Square right now – more Merry Pranksters than any serious revolutionary threat to society, though that didn't prevent them being infiltrated – and ultimately betrayed – by undercover cop Buster. Yet all that was a long time in the past: in 2020 Anna is happier than almost any AL Kennedy character I've ever read, fulfilled in her job, with a great, bantering relationship with her teenage son and at the start of a promising, loving relationship. Herself the daughter of a primary school teacher, and the author of four children's books (as well as the nine novels, short story collections, plays and radio dramas for which she is better known), Kennedy creates in Anna a character who is the antithesis of anyone pushing dog faeces through someone's letterbox. At Oakwood Primary (motto: 'There's always a bright side – we just need to find it') she is, says Kennedy, 'trying to raise good people, to be kind and manifest love as a practical force – without which everything goes wrong.' Back in the Eighties, the OrKestrA also tried to change the world – and again, there are some echoes of Kennedy's own interests there too. 'I was a drama student, and I did dramatic and activist-type things. I love magicians, and watching all that circus stuff. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad 'When I was a student, I remember reading the autobiography of Grok [the Swiss clown usually hailed as Europe's greatest]. He was just so physically clever, in a way I just wish I could be. Still, I suppose you could argue I have spent 50-plus years trying to be good at making sentences, and trying to make some sentences that make people laugh and some that do something to people. So in a way, you know, Grok did that, but in another format.' The contrast between Anna and Buster couldn't be greater. Yes, he had charisma and was as good at his role in the OrKestrA as the silent film star they named him after, but when the whole country is in lockdown he sends her an unsigned letter in which he confesses not only to being a 'spy cop' but a hired killer too. As if she can sense raised eyebrows at this, Kennedy points out that the whole novel started with the Buster character, and not (as I had thought) Anna; that 'like a number of policemen I know' he has grown disillusioned with the job and that many 'spy cops' become deeply damaged by having to immerse themselves in undercover work. 'I get very fed up with depictions of glamorous sociopaths. So much of our culture is like that – drawn to the thrill of power, of what it would be like if there were no rules – you know, wouldn't it be great to be [Breaking Bad's] Walter White or Hannibal Lecter. I wanted to say no, if we had an inside view of a psychopath we'd see a person who can't be fully human and it's not glamorous at all. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad 'In a way, the book is Anna trying to change the world for the better in all the ways you can by not killing people, while also in a way being furious. And Buster is, as far as he can have an emotion, kind of furious, but he is trying to make the world a better place by killing people.' There's a hyper-articulate fury in most things Kennedy writes about contemporary Britain. It's all here too, but – look again at the title, at Anna's motivations and at her creator's – so too is the idealism that underpins it.
Scotsman
13 hours ago
- Scotsman
The 11 discontinued sweets and chocolate bars of the 70s, 80s and 90s that you miss the most
They include the 'stickiest sweet known to man' Sign up to our daily newsletter – Regular news stories and round-ups from around Scotland direct to your inbox Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... There have been some amazing chocolate bars and sweets over the years - and some very strange ones Many confectionery favourites of the 70s, 80s and 90s were discontinued before their time We asked readers to name the lost sweets which they would most like to bring back, and there were some great suggestions The UK's most-missed sweets and chocolate bars, discontinued before their time, have been named by readers | Getty Images/Submitted They are the fallen confectionery giants which hold sweet memories for generations of snack lovers but were discontinued before their time. When we asked readers to name their favourite sweets and chocolate bars of the past, which are no longer available, there was a great response. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Below are the most popular sweet treats of the 70s, 80s and 90s, according to you, which are no longer on sale in the UK. The retro treats include one described as the 'stickiest sweet known to man', and another which would 'rip your tongue to shreds'. How many of these do you remember, and is your favourite among them? Nutty bar Lots of you have fond memories of this sweet treat, which consisted of fudge and caramel covered in peanuts. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad It was sadly discontinued in the 1980s by Rowntree's, which said sales were too low. Hundreds of people have joined a Facebook group campaigning for the return of the 'gorgeous' snack. One fan called them 'heavenly', but another person jokingly recalled: 'We used to joke that it came out the other end unchanged.' Cabana Rowntree's Cabana bar consisted of caramel, coconut and cherry pieces wrapped in milk chocolate. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad It first hit shelves in the 1980s, advertised with a version of 'Day-O (The Banana Boat Song and promoted as a taste of 'tropical magic', but it was sadly discontinued in the early 90s. More than 1,000 people signed a petition calling for Rowntree's to bring back the Cabana bar, to no avail. Fry's 5 Centre Chocolate Cream These were hugely popular back in their day. They were effectively five chocolates in one, with each of the five chocolate covered segments containing a different flavoured fondant centre. The classic flavours were raspberry, coffee, blackcurrant, orange and lime, though the line-up did occasionally vary, sometimes including vanilla, strawberry or pineapple. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad The 5 Centre Chocolate Cream was launched in 1934 and lasted for nearly 60 years before being discontinued in 1992, reportedly because it was so expensive to produce. One fan joked: 'Fry's 5 Centre was too powerful. People who ate it were folding space and time and seeing the future.' Spangles An advert for Spangles boiled sweets, which were discontinued in the 1980s | Submitted Lots of our readers wanted to see these sweets revived. Spangles were boiled sweets which were made by Mars between 1950 and the early 80s. The original Spangles packets contaibed a variety of flavours, including strawverry, orange, lemon, blackcurrant and cola but single-flavour varieties introduced later included acid drop, liquorice, spearmint and tangerine. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad They were briefly brought back in the 1990s but the comeback was not a success. Mint Cracknel Mint Cracknel was the chocolate bar, which, so the advert said, 'takes you somewhere cool and green'. It featured a crunchy mint centre, enveloped in milk chocolate, with a small cardboard tray holding two squares. One person recalled how it tasted 'a little like toothpaste', another likened it to 'mint fibreglass coated in chocolate' and a third recalled how it would 'rip your tongue to shreds' Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Mint Cracknel was made by Mackintosh's and was reportedly most popular during the 60s and 70s before being discontinued in the 90s. Coconut Boost The Cadbury's Boost bar remains a popular treat but many readers lamented the loss of the coconut and peanut varieties. More than 300 people signed a petition to bring back the coconut version, which fans described as 'fantastic' and 'amazing'. Texan bar The Texan bar | Submitted The Texan was a US-themed chocolate bar containing nougat and toffee which was popular in the UK during the 1970s and early 80s. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad The TV adverts featured a cartoon cowboy who would declare the Texan bar 'sure is a mighty chew'. It was withdrawn from sale in 1984 but, after being named the UK's favourite sweet of all time in a 2004 survey, it was briefly revived by Nestlé the following year as a limited edition 'nostalgia' product. Toffos There's a lot of love out there for Mackintosh's Toffo toffees, which were particularly popular during the 70s and 80s. They were available in plain, mint and assorted flavours, with the assorted packs including apple, chocolate, banana, mint, pineapple and strawberry varieties. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad They were advertised with the slogan 'a man's gotta chew what a man's gotta chew', and lots of people did chew them before they were discontinued in the noughties. Topic bar The Topic bar, made by Mars, contained hazelnuts, nougat and caramel. It was launched in the UK in 1962 and proved particularly popular during the 70s and 80s but was discontinued in 2021. Among its fans is the comedian Bob Mortimer, who described it back in 2015 as 'the most underrated, neglected chocolate bar', adding, in his inimitable style, that it had 'so much going on and terrific top rippling'. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad One of his followers concurred, calling the Topic bar 'a prince amongst confectionery'. Tooty Frooties These colourful chewy, fruit-flavoured sweets with a crunchy shell were launched by Mackintosh's in 1963 and were popular during the 60s, 70s and 80s. They were later sold under the Rowntree's name but were discontinued in 2019. One fan called them 'the best sweets', while another described them as 'cavity makers and filling pullers' but added 'loved them'. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Polo Fruits Polo Fruits were launched in 1954, with flavours including orange, lemon, blackcurrant and strawberry. They lasted for seven decades before being pulled by their maker Nestlé in 2023, provoking a furious response on social media. They are fondly remembered despite people describing them as the 'stickiest sweet known to man'. One person joked that they were 'so sticky that once dropped in the car, you take half the upholstery up with it'. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad
