After long adorning top fashion houses in anonymity, Begg & Co’s cashmere is boasting its own label

RIGHT now in Tuscany, a field of lavender-petaled teasels is ripening, stretching their spiny stems upwards so their cone-shaped heads bask in the hot Italian sun. They won’t be harvested this summer, but will be left till the flowers drop off and on through the winter till another long hot summer dries the spiky heads and, finally, they are ready to be handpicked.

Only the best will be chosen. Identical in shape and size, and still warm from the Tuscan rays, they’ll be packed into boxes and despatched to Scotland. There they will play a very special part in producing one of the country’s top luxury exports: cashmere scarves, stoles and blankets woven from the finest cashmere, silk and lambswool angora yarns, all made by Begg & Co of Ayr.

In an outwardly unprepossessing factory in the coastal town, Begg & Co is bucking the recession and expanding its operation, thanks to a rising demand for its high-end designs, and this month launches its own label. Inside the building the firm has occupied since 1903, endless brightly lit rooms are filled with humming machinery, spindles carrying yarn of every hue fly back and forth across looms, and acres of cashmere roll out to be washed, dried, fluffed up, trimmed, checked and packed, ready to be despatched to eager consumers across the globe.

The firm started making accessories in 1869 when Alex Begg founded the mill in Paisley, weaving the scarves that saw the town give its name to the pattern, before it moved south to Ayr. It has built its success on handmade quality accessories and prides itself on making the best finished cashmere in Scotland. The highly skilled workforce of 75 turns out a high-end product that is snapped up by some of the top names in couture, the cloud-soft scarves and shawls being sold under their own labels in return for Begg’s discretion. Now, however, the company is stepping out from the shroud of anonymity that cloaks its work for French, Italian and American fashion houses and rebranding as Begg & Co, with its own label and collections for men and women to be stocked in Fortnum & Mason, Trunk and Joseph, along with outlets from France to Japan. To do this, the talented in-house design team has been complemented by the creative input of design consultants Angela Bell of Queene and Belle, a cashmere specialist based in Hawick, and Michael Drake and his design agency, Man Drake. Drake is a long-established designer of men’s accessories and, as one of the founders of Aquascutum, came up with the distinctive tartan lining.

“Begg approached Angela and me because they felt they needed a bit of a shake-up, and the first thing we did was go through their classic colour range and rejig it,” he says.

Shaking up the colours was one thing, but then events took a literally distressing turn, with Drake suggesting putting the cashmere through the wash to get a more casual, slightly crumpled effect.

“It’s the first time they have washed the cashmere like that. These days you have to appeal to the high-fashion users as well as the traditionalists, and everyone in between, and people don’t always want things to look perfect. We also want to start using more new, finer yarns for light spring and summer scarves, to push in that direction. We’ve done the autumn/winter collections, which are now going into the shops, the spring/summer collections are just showing at trade fairs, and we’re about to start on autumn/winter 2014,” says Drake.

While Drake worked on menswear, Bell took on womenswear and introduced her quirky, contemporary edge with designs inspired by the North Indian Nagas tribe and their love of checks, as well as reworking the tartans and paisley for which the brand is so famous.

“I thought it would be really interesting to have that ethnic combination with something Scottish so it’s given an edge to something that’s traditional. We are also doing prints and putting a modern spin on them… thistles and paisley,” says Bell.

Drake and Bell were brought in by sales and marketing director Ann Ryley, who was taken on in 2012 to develop the new brand, and she’s delighted with their input.

“We’ve been playing around with finishes and design but keeping our heritage in there with the traditional patterns running through them, and of course we’re inspired by Scotland in terms of colour. We’ve manufactured for the major couture houses for many years and they appreciate our quality, and now we want to develop our own label too. We’ve a great design team and it’s nice to bring in two people with experience of seeing a scarf as part of an outfit. Also, they’ve both created their own brands too, so have valuable experience in that area,” she says.

In the factory, earplugs are a prerequisite as the looms hammer away, producing long rainbow rolls of cashmere, plain, jacquard and printed. The same raw materials, which start off as the fluffy hair from the belly of Kashmir goats, go into the scarves and throws being made for the big couture brands as for Begg & Co products. They are woven on the same looms by the same people, the only difference being the big brand logos. These are scarves that are destined to dangle around the decolletage of the world’s most fashion-conscious women, and Begg hopes that the new Begg & Co label will develop a similar cachet to consolidate the fan base that already appreciates their products for their quality.

Managing director Ian Laird, sporting a fetching blue Cottlea scarf and matching blue cashmere jacket, both by Begg, explains why the firm is so keen to build its own brand as well as continue to supply lovers of its classic range of accessories.

“It’s about pride, because we make these products and it’s important to put our own label on them. It’s about having control of our own destiny. We love having the big couture clients and working with them, but we don’t want to be solely dependent on them,” he says.

Begg is owned by Moorbrook Textiles, a wholly owned independent subsidiary of Lindéngruppen, a Swedish company whose fortysomething owner Jenny Lindén loves the product and wanted the Begg name to be known in its own right. Moorbrook Textiles has three divisions and two weaving mills in Scotland: Alex Begg & Company producing the cashmere scarves, Robert Noble which supplies tweed and tartan fabric for clients such as Walker Slater, and Replin Fabrics which develops high-performance technical textiles for seating and wall coverings on trains and aircraft – check out the purple seats next time you’re on the Heathrow Express.

Laird splits his time between the Ayr plant and Robert Noble in Peebles, which sells tweed and fabric to the likes of Hackett and Ralph Lauren and owns the rights to the fabric.

“Tweeds and tartans have really taken off,” says Laird. “The staff in both arms of the business are the link; their craftsmanship and ability to deliver quality.” Laird’s background has always been in manufacturing, with stints in coal mining machinery, food production, luxury yachts, then airlines. “I’ve always been concerned about what people want and how we can deliver it, giving them the very best we can,” he says.

“Our owners are very supportive and have been investing in the brand to the tune of a couple of million pounds over the last 18 months,” says Laird. “Last year our annual profit was £340,000 and the turnover £13 million. At a time when manufacturing is facing hardship, it’s good to have a company that believes in the long term. They’ve invested in machinery and production and we’ve been able to take on staff – design, marketing, production – and start apprenticeship programmes, because we have an ageing workforce and these are not skills you can teach quickly.

“We have been a bit silent about how good we are. We make a great-quality product with the best raw material – the world’s best cashmere – and have a great reputation. Now it’s time we told our story.”

Against the hum of looms whirring away, the buzzwords that float in the air here along with the occasional mote of escaped cashmere floating in a shaft of afternoon sun, are “expansion”, “investment” and “innovation”. New techniques to produce lighter, fresher designs are being developed and the company is looking to the future, in contrast to other players in the Scottish textiles industry who have not weathered the recession as well.

“When I started here years ago,” says Margaret Bell, a weaver who retired in 2011 and is back training younger staff, “it was all big thick tartan woollen blankets. We used to do knee rugs for the Queen; I bet she’s still got them. Now it’s fine, light scarves and we’re working more than ever. It’s not seasonal anymore.”

“We’ve gone from heavy blankets and rugs to light and technically complex designs. They’re difficult to weave, but we have a foot in the market no-one else has. We’ve got new kit and it’s generating more work,” says production manager Lorna Dempsey.

Nearby, the prized Italian teasels are being pressed into action on a machine that teases up the nap of the cashmere scarves into a ripple effect, a technique Begg says others copy but fail to master.

“Show me two scarves blind, and I’ll tell you which is ours,” says Dempsey. “Other people try to replicate the ripple effect but they can’t, because we take care of the detail. Nick, who is in charge of the teasels, complained about the ready-filled bars of teasels, because they weren’t uniform enough and were damaging the cashmere, so he started filling them himself, then he complained about the quality of the teasel. So we got a farmer to grow them specially for us. We do think about the details, which is what makes us better.”

Such is the importance of the teasels to the Ayrshire-based operation that they are now the logo of the brand that the company is launching, with a new website going online in the autumn to sell a curated collection.

“They’re what gives our Arran products the characteristic ripple finish, so they’re very important to us. They also have a slight look of a thistle about them to our international customers,” says Ryley. “We also looked at the name and felt Begg & Co had a feeling of the heritage, but sounds contemporary too. The date is in to emphasise our history, and ‘made in Scotland’ is hugely important, because so often things aren’t actually made here. Ours are – people think it stands for quality.”

“People abroad particularly look for ‘made in Scotland’,” agrees Laird. And not just abroad – Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall is a fan and was drawn to a Paisley scarf when she visited Peebles with Prince Charles last month, while Barack Obama wears one of their dark red cashmere numbers.

“We’re not celebrity-chasers though,” says Laird. “It’s nice to see the Duchess of Cambridge in one of our scarves but we’re not looking for endorsement. We make the world’s best product and if people appreciate it they will buy it. We don’t think people will wear it because somebody on Big Brother was wearing it, or even the future king. They will buy it because they appreciate its quality for themselves.”

On the new duck-egg-blue labels, the production processes are also explained: the dyeing process of the yarn for the graduated colours of the Nuance scarves, or that each of the diaphanous “Wispy” scarves requires five miles of yarn.

“If people are charged a lot of money they want to know why something’s special, so we tell them what’s gone into making it,” says Ryley.

Michael Drake agrees that it’s time this hidden gem of Scottish manufacturing started blowing its own trumpet and championing the skills of its workforce: “Begg are the best at doing what they do. Couture customers wouldn’t work with them if they weren’t so good in terms of quality, and it’s a mix of craftsmanship, heritage and innovation. They now have products to appeal to trendier shops, to the classic and traditional.”

As Laird dashes off to his other concern, Robert Noble in Peebles, he dons his blue cashmere jacket and proffers it for the touching.

“I’m used to being touched these days,” he laughs. “It goes with the territory. People want to feel the quality. I wear scarves a lot more now too.”

And with new production techniques that can produce ever more fine and fashion-forward products the consumer wants to wear all year round – not just to keep the knees warm at the Braemar Gathering – he probably won’t be the only one.

“When you look at an industry that hasn’t changed, it’s because they have plodded on waiting for the world to get better. But we have changed a lot and blended experience with new ideas. The past is the past, the future is the future,” Laird says.

Begg & Co is hoping customers will see it is offering them the best of both.

Twitter: @JanetChristie2

• Begg & Co’s own-label collection retails from
£85 to £1,275. UK stockists include Joseph,
Trunk (Marylebone, London) and Monocle,

www.beggscotland.com

A TAME wolf. A wild bear. A tiger and a deer – in the same shot. Outdoor heating to keep Karl Lagerfeld from catching a cold. A downpour when the sun is blazing.

Broadband where there is none. Permission to carry a gun on a public street. The world’s fashionistas are a demanding lot, wanting a wild, windswept moor as a location one minute, a quaint cobbled street the next. Then they throw a hissy fit and insist they simply CANNOT do without a crumbling stately home complete with overgrown grounds, moat and a family of elves living in the basement.

OK, that last one was made up. But Marie Owen is accustomed to making pretty much anything happen in the name of fashion. When Chanel was looking for a ruined Scottish castle with a great hall for its Metier d’Art extravaganza, it turned to her for help. When Anthropologie called for misty moors, she took the team to Skye, and when Boden had a vision of its happy, impeccably dressed families frolicking on a grassy beach, Owen knew just the spot.

“My husband had the idea for the business,” she says. “He’s a photographer and lived in Manchester. Then, when we got together and he moved to Scotland, he was just blown away by it. Part of his job was travelling internationally on fashion shoots but he had no idea Scotland was so beautiful.”

Working as air stewardess at the time, three children and redundancy came their way and, by 2006, she was ready to put the idea into action, selling Scotland’s unique qualities to brands as a location for stills photography.

“It doesn’t have to be a really grand castle,” says Owen, “it could be a broken-down wall with a gate on a hillside. You look for something that has its own style.”

That could mean she’s taking a team from Tatler to Skye one day and the big cahunas from Carine Roitfeld’s CR Fashion Book to Gosford House the next, an old sawmill for a Polish fashion label another. “It’s about character, having that special something.”

And while those of us who live in Scotland might say, “But what about the rubbish weather?” Owen says, “A lot of our campaigns are focused on autumn/winter collections so they’re coming for that light, a little bit of mist; they’re not really coming for sunny weather. Actually, quite often they’re saying, ‘It’s too sunny.’”

Her job is not just to find the perfect location either; it is to arrange all the logistics involved in getting a group of fashion people there and catering for their every impetuous need.

“We have a Japanese client who wanted to camp overnight so they could get certain times of day and night, and the location they wanted was only accessible by boat. So you speak to someone who has a boat. And if you need to go up a mountain, you get a mountain guide. On one shoot they wanted us to walk a micro-pig down a street on a lead. We contacted the Micropig Association of Scotland, and apparently it’s illegal to walk a micropig down a public road, but you’re allowed to walk a piglet.

“We do everything they need us to do and have a budget to do – all the production support from the minute they land at the airport, from picking them up to where they’re going to stay, how they get from hotel to set, permits, access, food and toilets and ironing things on set ... everything. If there’s a boat involved, it’s working out tide times and safety, and what kind of boat they want.

“I’ve never had anyone come and say they didn’t like it. Sometimes they come and say, ‘It was Edinburgh or New York ... and we’ve got Edinburgh.’ Like they’re disappointed. And at the end they say, “My God, I had no idea!” n

Twitter: @Ruth_Lesley

www.locationscotland.com

Vanity Fair for Chanel

Linlithgow Palace

“This was photographed very early in the morning, after Chanel’s Metier d’Art show. It was so busy at the Location Scotland studio, producing this shoot alongside another for Karl Lagerfeld. I always think producers are like swans, working maniacally under the water but looking graceful and completely in control to the outside world.”

Pringle of Scotland

Loch Fyne

“This was one of Location Scotland’s first jobs and one we will never forget. It was incredible to work with Tilda Swinton. She was such a gem, and invited us round to her house for tea and cake. We had to wait for hair dye to be delivered in order for her to match the surroundings for the shoot. And when the caterer turned up she thought she was there for Pringle crisps.”

Boden

Bamburgh beach, Northumberland

“We have worked with Boden several times and they are fantastic clients. We use East Lothian beaches a lot – Gullane, Seacliff, Cove, with its beautiful harbour walls. But this shoot actually took place in Northumberland. The team had to build the hut they used in the shoot.”

Anthropologie

Isle of Skye and Edinburgh

“Due to the long hours of light on Skye, the shoot days were long and fun. Anthropologie’s creative director Trevor Lunn is of Scottish descent and it was the first time he’d been back in the country for several years. He was so happy to bring Anthropologie to Scotland for this shoot. It transpired that Trevor’s parents lived just down the road from mine – small world.”

Jan Vanderstorm

Isle of Skye

“This was a hugely successful campaign for the German catalogue company and the first time they had shot in Scotland. It was a fantastic shoot to work on – we took the whole team to a local farm and had a spit roast with plenty of food, music and drinks – all great fun.”

Tatler

Highlands

“We cast local men as models for this shoot, which worked incredibly well and gave a real edge to the finished shots.”

IT’S a constant refrain of friends who live in the area, but despite its huge influx of tourists over the summer months, Fort William has yet to develop the sort of vibrant eating-out culture that has evolved in similar towns like Oban and Inverness.

Old Pines

Spean Bridge, Inverness-shire
(01397 712324, www.oldpines.co.uk)

Bill please

Starters £4.50-£8.50
Main courses £12.50-£19.50
Puddings £6-£6.50


Rating

8/10

If you want to head right upmarket then Inverlochy Castle is on your doorstep, but if you’re not the sort of helicopter-owning high-flier who feels lost without the opportunity to splash out £3,000 on a bottle of Chateau Petrus and just wants a really decent meal within ten minutes of town, my local pals reckon there are basically three choices: the Lime Tree in Fort William, the nearby Crannog seafood restaurant or the Old Pines at Spean Bridge.

The only one of these establishments I had yet to try was the Old Pines, and it was an oversight that was finally remedied on a beautiful evening in early June when the sun was still bright in the sky as I drove past the Commando Monument and, just before I hit the Caledonian Canal, turned into the unprepossessing driveway of a tiny country hotel which must have the most low-profile signage of any hotel in Lochaber.

The Old Pines is a firm favourite of two friends who live up near the Local Hero beach in Morar, and it says much that they will drive for 45 minutes just to eat here. In fact it became clear as soon as I sat down in the lounge to await the call to my table that they are not alone, with the owner Ken Dalley chatting merrily to three separate couples who were all obviously locals.

But then the place has the sort of word-of-mouth ambience and low-key, slow-paced atmosphere that draws in locals, with the Gaelic-speaking couple I chatted to in the lounge admitting they came here most months. They informed me that Dalley often picks up diners from their home or B&B and takes them back without charge. If there’s one thing that’s guaranteed to endear a restaurant to potential diners it’s this sort of palpable demonstration of the lengths to which the Old Pines will go to ensure top-notch customer service. And, of course, car-less customers inevitably have a bigger wine bill.

Unlike most hotels in this part of the world in the summer months, there was just one trio of tourists, three pals from Belgium who were touring the Highlands and had had the place recommended to them by friends back in Brussels. I spotted this partly because I was on my own, flying solo for the first time in over 500 restaurant reviews. It was an interesting experience, not least because it made me focus on the peripheral details of the place as I sat in the comfortable book-lined lounge munching home-made sweet potato crisps and olives while studying the menu and then waiting to be called through to my table. I spent ages wondering what to make of this curious little place, which is a tidy, single-storey wooden structure that looks like my mother-in-law’s house from the outside and a 1970s Alpine lodge from the inside. Above all, it exudes a sort of all-embracing calm. Maybe it’s because the building is all wooden and has relatively low ceilings, or maybe it’s just the fact that by the time the sun gets past the pines that surround the building the light has taken on a curiously dappled quality. It’s a bucolic ambience that was heightened by the view as I sat down at my table, with a babbling burn running alongside the hotel and views out to Ben Nevis making for a spectacular backdrop.

There were two menus, a conventional meat and seafood-based one which was big on game, and a vegetarian menu that was so strikingly inviting that it’s not too much of a mental leap to imagine that Imogen Dalley, who has worked the kitchen for the past nine years while husband Ken takes care of the front of house, is a vegetarian.

As I was on my own, I decided to mix the two menus, and started off with the Mull cheddar and red onion tart from the vegetarian menu. Small, rustic and rough-hewn, it took a fair chunk of time to arrive but was worth every second of the wait: the pastry was beautifully light, the molten cheese tangy without being overwhelming, the portion size absolutely perfect.

If anything, my main course was even better. I often order venison from the menu, but it’s rarely like this. At first the thick slices of venison loin looked a little overcooked, but on closer inspection it became clear that it was so succulent I could easily have cut it with my spoon. It had clearly been hung for a good while, and had that beautifully intense, metallic tang that those of us of a less sensitive disposition love so much but which you rarely find in restaurants. Served with disappointingly bland potato dauphinoise and a gorgeously nuanced jus, it was yet more confirmation of my hunch that this is a locals hangout frequented by folk for whom eating venison is as commonplace as cooking with eggs.

I rounded off with a very decent cranachan with home-made shortbread and a chaser of a solid pear and ginger polenta crumble with crème anglaise: more homespun fare devoid of pretension and prepared for a constituency that knows the difference between good food and food that simply looks good. The coffee, which was black as peat and strong enough to dissolve a teaspoon, capped a hugely enjoyable meal. Maybe, just maybe, I could get into this eating alone lark.

THE 2012 harvest at English sparkling wine producer Nyetimber may turn out to be one of its most significant – yet not a grape was picked.

Winemaker Cherie Spriggs and her team decided that the quality was not good enough – and left them on the vine rather than compromise their standards and reputation.

That is not the only indication of the seriousness that now surrounds English sparkling wine. Many also triumphed at this spring’s wine awards with three of them winning gold awards from the series of blind tastings that comprise the International Wine Challenge. Climate change has probably helped this hike in quality but the terroir is also important. As the similarity of their names implies, the same chalk seam appears to link Champagne’s Côtes des Blancs and the White Cliffs of Dover. That said, weather-related variables this side of the Channel do make the volume here and the quality of vintages capricious. Significantly, too, many vineyards are situated in desirable London commuting areas, so the price of land (and, hence, the wines produced from it) tends to be high.

Nevertheless, several producers have surmounted those difficulties to create top quality sparkling wine. The highest 2013 accolade – the English Sparkling Wine Trophy – went to 2009 Furleigh Estate Classic Cuvee (£28.50 from.furleighestate.co.uk) from a fairly new winery in Dorset. The wine is made from all three of the classic champagne varieties – chardonnay, pinot noir and pinot meunier – to create a rich and creamy style with touches of peach, very gentle yeast and excellent balance.

Another gold medal winner was 2008 Gusbourne Blanc de Blancs (£29.99 at Lockett Bros in North Berwick) from Appledore on the edge of Kent’s Romney Marsh using exclusively chardonnay grapes. The wine has fresh apple touches on the palate and the nose followed by a creamy nuttiness and sustained, but soft, mousse.

The final gold medal winner is the 2008 Nyetimber Rosé (£47.95 at Drinkmonger in Bruntsfield Place, Edinburgh) which has some chardonnay along with the pinot noir that provides its colour and those white grapes help with the fresh lemon-centred acidity and balance that underpin the wine’s strawberry and cream flavours.

There are also a number of English sparkling wines available on the high street. Waitrose is offering the appealing 2008 Jenkyn Place Brut (£21.99) from Hampshire which, in fact, is made by a former Nyetimber man, Dermot Sugrue. The blend is around 70 per cent chardonnay but with contributions from both of the other two classic champagne grapes. The flavours centre around green apples but they are supplemented by some lemon freshness to underline the acidity and a toasty mellowness.

From Cornwall comes the even mellower 2010 Camel Valley Pinot Noir Brut (£27.99 also at Waitrose). This elegant “blanc de noir” newcomer has touches of orange, apricot and red fruits that are counterbalanced by sherbet lemon vitality and a savoury base from the two years it has spent on the lees.

Made by the folk at the Chapel Down Winery in Kent, English Sparkling Brut Reserve (£22) is a non-vintage version with a biscuity backdrop emanating, no doubt, from the time it has spent on its lees. Those touches add complexity to the delicate apple and herbal flavours within the blend which, incidentally, has a small proportion of pinot blanc – to supplement the 48 per cent pinot noir that probably provides the overall delicacy. It’s widely available in nearly 400 M&S stores.

Best buys

2012 Vinas Del Vero Gewurztraminer, Somontano, Spain: 13 per cent

This part of Spain’s higher ground not only allows gewurz to flourish but also injects some welcome acidity to balance the perception of sweetness that underlies the customary honeyed peach and fragrant lychee flavours. £7.99 – instead of £9.99 until 22 July – at Majestic

2012 Barefoot Cabernet Sauvignon, California, USA: 13 per cent

Nicely balanced (rather than blockbuster) Californian red at a great price. Enjoy, in particular, the smooth softness behind its bright, rich and concentrated bramble and cassis fruit and classic minty finish. £5.25 – instead of £6.99 until 14 July – at Morrisons

WHEN I first heard about T in the Park, aged 19, I can remember having two separate reactions. 1. Fantastic, I don’t have to travel hundreds of miles across England to go to a decent music festival, and 2. Did they really have to name the whole thing after the lager sponsoring it?

Twenty years on, I feel more or less the same about T in the Park. I applaud DF Concerts (and, go on then, Tennent’s too) for making it happen each year, and wish the festival a very successful 20th year next month. It’s a world-class event now, its line-ups matching even Glastonbury (try to make a list of acts Glastonbury could get but T in the Park never could – it’d be a very short list). That a T in the Park slot is now the pinnacle of many Scottish bands’ ambitions says a lot about how much the musical landscape has changed here since 1994.

Twenty years on, though, I’m also glad that while I still don’t have to travel hundreds of miles to go to a decent music festival, I don’t have to go to T in the Park either. This year I went to Knockengorroch for the first time and loved its relaxed, intimate, child-friendly, hippyish atmosphere. I’ve still got The Insider and Doune The Rabbit Hole on my to-do list.

This is not a criticism of T in the Park. If you want to see all of the most talked about bands of the moment in one weekend, while drinking a particular brand of lager, it’s the best festival there is. But I think I always hoped for something else from festivals – idealism, possibility. For me the best festivals are the ones that, for a few days, conjure up something that feels like an alternative, utopian, less grey and less corporate vision of modern life, and in doing so send you back to normality with fresh eyes.

That, admittedly, is a big ask. This is not the 1960s, and perhaps it’s hopelessly naïve and idealistic to go to any festival with those sorts of expectations, or for a festival to raise them in the first place. But I can’t help it, and my problem with T in the Park, I think, is that it never seemed interested in trying. It just wants to sell you lager in a park. Beyond that, its principal selling point is just music, lots and lots of it.

Looking back, my happiest T in the Park experiences were the years where I went on my own, with no expectation other than ticking off as many bands as possible. I would get the first bus and walk around the entire site before midday to remind myself how long it took to get from stage to stage, then draw up a plan. 
I’d end the day by watching the headliner from the back of the crowd so I could get to the front of the bus queue quickly. The campsite? Not on your life. Not after the year I woke up in a puddle after a night kept awake by the loudest drunk people in the world.

Antisocial? Probably, but when I did hook up with friends I’d stress about missing bands. Socialising seemed trapped in an unhappy conflict with the principal purpose of the whole event – seeing lots of bands. I couldn’t think of any other reason why I’d be there, so anything that stopped me doing it just made me anxious. I was, I realised, behaving just like I did during a working day.

At Knockengorroch there weren’t nearly enough bands for this to be an issue. More than that, though, there was a sense of community, a messy children’s tent, political idealism, homemade costumes, a quietness and a stillness. I spent half an hour up a hill looking at the view, and returned home subtly changed.

With a score by Belle and Sebastian’s Mick Cooke, an all-new musical in which men are shipped to Mars to satisfy the planet’s demand for human flesh could be the perfect summer show

FOR the Scottish theatregoer, the summer months are a case of feast or famine. Head to Pitlochry Festival Theatre just now and you can clock up four plays in three days. Wait until August in Edinburgh and you can see that many in an afternoon.

Elsewhere, by contrast, the choice is more limited. In the past couple of days, the National Theatre of Scotland has said goodbye to Calum’s Road, Let The Right One In and Paul Bright’s Confessions Of A Justified Sinner, and it will be well into September before all the major producing theatres are back in action with in-house shows. Received wisdom has it that if summer audiences are going to be tempted away from their barbecues, they need to be offered something special, such as this week’s Edinburgh International Magic Festival, or at the very least, something light and amusing.

That’s why we get the Surge street theatre festival, the Merchant City Festival and the outdoor Bard In The Botanics season every July in Glasgow. It’s also why A Play, A Pie And A Pint rounds off the month in frivolous style with a summer panto (A Bit Of A Dick Whittington, seeing as you ask).

Andy Arnold, artistic director of the Tron, shares the same instinct. When he took over the Glasgow theatre five years ago, he wanted to keep the building permanently busy, but he reckoned there’d be little appetite at this time of year for anything too weighty. He didn’t go to the extreme of a panto, but his solution was heading in that direction.

Since 2009, he has brightened our Julys by programming Cooking With Elvis, Lee Hall’s black comedy about a quadriplegic Presley impersonator; Valhalla, an outrageous vaudevillian frock-fest; Casablanca: The Gin Joint Cut, a witty celebration of the classic movie; and Stones In His Pockets, the funny two-hander by Marie Jones about an Irish village turned Hollywood film location.

It is in this tradition that the Tron is bringing us Cannibal Women Of Mars, an all-new musical with a score by Belle and Sebastian’s Mick Cooke. Like the previous shows, it does not ask to be taken too seriously – although with a cast of six plus a four-strong band, it’s one of the company’s biggest ever productions.

“Andy always said this was perfect for a July show,” says Cooke, who plays trumpet and bass for Belle and Sebastian and has worked as an arranger for Franz Ferdinand, Jon Fratelli, Phil Cunningham and Jason Donovan. “We met a few people, but he was the guy who really got it.”

So while bandmate Stuart Murdoch puts the finishing touches to his God Help The Girl screen musical, Cooke has been branching out in his own 
way. “It’s a total cliché,” he says. “There’s a time in life when all your friends 
get married and when all your friends are having kids, and now it seems to 
be the time in life when all my friends are writing musicals or doing a stage show. Stuart was working on God Help The Girl back in 2006 and that made me think I could probably do this.”

Having come up with the merest sliver of an idea, Cooke approached his childhood friend Alan Wilkinson and musical pal Gordon Davidson to see if they’d like to collaborate. Wilkinson is a sub-editor and children’s author; Davidson is a news editor and leading light of ska band the Amphetameanies. For all of them, it was a first venture into theatre.

“I had the phrase ‘Send more men’ and I knew it was going to be set on Mars and that was pretty much all I had,” says Cooke. It was Wilkinson who suggested the cannibal women. “Why are they sending for more men? They’re cannibals,” he said and set about writing the lyrics for the title song.

They batted the material back and forth between them and came up with an epic tale of star-crossed lovers circa 2113. The Earth has got too crowded and any excess men are shipped out to Mars where they will satisfy the planet’s demand for human flesh. That’s 
how jobless 21-year-olds Jaxxon 
McGhee and Largs Lido come face to 
face with Martian princesses Yasmin and Pippa. Before we know it, the 
course of true love has triggered an interplanetary crisis. “There’s a conventional love story running through it – just in an unconventional way,” says Wilkinson.

Whether this adds up to B-movie pastiche, as the poster would suggest, or some other genre altogether has clearly been a matter of debate. They were insistent, for example, that the cannibal women should be “of” Mars. If they had been “from” Mars, the show just wouldn’t have had the feel of Edgar Rice Burroughs adventure yarns such as Tarzan Of The Apes, Pirates Of Venus and The Gods Of Mars. “There’s a fair bit of B-movie in it,” says Wilkinson. “We want that fun feel to it. The Rocky Horror Show would be a touchstone, but also things like South Park, Team America and The Simpsons.”

At the same time, they’re not really in Return To The Forbidden Planet mode either. “I made a point of saying, ‘Let’s steer away from sci-fi,’ because that puts me off,” says Cooke. He’d been inspired by seeing Avenue Q, the hit West End comedy, although he has been influenced less by stage musicals than by stand-up.

“I’m a big fan of musical comedy like Flight Of The Conchords and Bill Bailey,” he says. “What we were doing isn’t traditional musical theatre and it isn’t a sketch show because there’s a narrative arc, but it takes more from musical comedy.”

For Wilkinson, who went to nursery, primary and secondary with Cooke, it was a particular thrill to hear the songs as they were written. Fans of Belle and Sebastian, however, should not go expecting the delicate pop confections for which the band is famed. “I’ve always been in awe of Mick’s musical ability, so I was expecting him to do well, but I was surprised at how he turned his hand to so many different styles so easily.”

Cooke has taken the chance to pay tongue-in-cheek homage to some of his favourite artists and genres, some of which are surprising. “There’s a Barry White-type number and some post-punk parody,” says the musician. “What’s great about Flight Of The Conchords is that everything they do is so well executed, it’s not taking the piss out of the original thing, it’s very respectful. I love Barry White – so it’s taking something that’s great and putting a comedy spin on it. It’s absolutely nothing like Belle and Sebastian. It’s not an indie musical by any stretch. We’ve got Latin songs, there’s even a Bonnie Tyler rock ballad – we do actually love that stuff as well.”

At the same time as indulging his eclectic musical tastes, Cooke has had to be mindful of the demands of writing for the stage. For the audience to get the jokes, he knows the lyrics have to be intelligible. “We were conscious right from the start of getting the words right so you can’t misinterpret them in any way,” he says. “In Avenue Q, they always stop the band for the big gag – that’s not what we do in Belle and Sebastian.”

• Cannibal Women Of Mars is at the Tron Theatre, Glasgow, 5-20 July. www.tron.co.uk

Neil Hannon and Thomas Walsh’s second cricket-themed album is even better than the first, eponymous release, which appeared just before the 2009 Ashes.

The Duckworth Lewis Method

Sticky Wickets

Divine Comedy Records, £13.99

Star rating: * * * *

Opening track Sticky Wickets seems to take its inspiration from Sticky Fingers, and Keith Richards’ syncopated guitar rhythms in particular. It also boasts copious helpings of cowbell to enhance that swampy feel, and a pseudo Jagger falsetto.

But the album as a whole is rich in British pop and even music hall tradition. The scent of Jeff Lynne is all over It’s Just Not Cricket and Third Man, while the production on Line And Length shares the everything-but-the-kitchen-sink approach of ABC, Robbie Williams and Frankie Goes To Hollywood producer Trevor Horn, whirring and blinking all over the place.

There is some beautifully crafted adult pop here, such as Out In The Middle, which seems to have been snatched from the gentlest imaginings of Crowded House’s frontman Neil Finn. Chin Music, meanwhile, is all pastoral French whimsy, a musical curtsy and cute kiss with the merest hint of the bawdy.

The song with the most overt cricket reference is Third Man, on which the scamps return to sumptuous ELO territory, coming across as mildly smug at the level of technical competence being displayed. It is a synthesised stylistic treat; if there is only the merest hint of some substance somewhere beneath the surface, these songs capture the essence of British summer like strawberries and cream – for those who enjoy that sort of sugary dairy delight. 


Download this: Line And Length, Sticky Wickets

The rest of this week’s album releases reviewed by the Scotsman’s music critics

POP

Bell X1

Chop Chop

Belly Up, £13.99

Star rating: * * * *

This is pop with prog ambition, gently beautiful in the style of Elbow but without the angst-fired gruffness of Guy Garvey. Starlings Over Brighton Pier is as lovely and quintessentially English as it sounds, but there is a steeliness about these songs. A Thousand Little Downers boasts an instrumental sting in the tail, Feint Praise surpasses the clever wordplay of its title, and Careful What You Wish For packs more than a dreamy hook. This is music for sensitive grown-ups, with a hard edge. CS

Download this: I Will Follow You, Motorcades

Editors

The Weight Of Your Love

Play It Again Sam, £13.99

Star rating: * * *

The departure of lead guitarist Chris Urbanowicz has not brought any discernible levity to the Editors’ flinty profile, on their fourth album. Ton Of Love, with its incessant one word refrain of “Desire”, tries but fails to batter the listener into compliance, but the band are horribly two-dimensional in an IMAX world, and listening to The Weight Of Your Love is a little like being trapped in a nasty 1980s echo chamber. CS

Download this: Two Hearted Spider, The Sting

JAZZ

David Newton, Andrew Cleyndert & 
Colin Oxley

Out Of This World

Trio Records TR590, £14.99

Star rating: * * * *

This CD was devised to celebrate the 15th anniversary of Trio Records’ first release, My Ideal. The late Colin Purbrook was on piano duties on that recording; here, that role is filled by the equally elegant, though stylistically different Scottish pianist David Newton. What is apparent from the outset is that this is a trio which operates as one: the melody on the opening title number flows from Colin Oxley’s lyrical guitar to piano and back again; on others, Cleyndert’s bass is very much to the fore, rather than confined to background plus token solos. Among the highlights are a hard-swinging Who Cares, a gentle I’ll Be Seeing You, two gorgeous Jobim classics and two examples of Newton’s talents as composer. In all, a classy affair. Alison Kerr

Download this: Valse Jaq, Por Toda Minha Vida/O Grande Amor

FOLK

Michael And The Lonesome Playboys

Bottle Cap Sky

Blackwater Records BW002, available online only

Star rating: * * * *

This is an altogether well-made album of songs written by Michael Ubaldini, who has won the title “The Jack Kerouac of Americana” or, more colloquially, a rock ’n’ roll poet, for his proven songwriting class. Here he re-invents the North American songbook, but the arrangements are inventive and strong, and the band all also contribute dense vocal harmony, adding an emotional tenderness to the loose searching spirit that sustains what is now seen as the leading band in California. Even if you won’t or don’t like alternative, new country or Transatlanticana, these guys certainly do the business. Norman Chalmers

Download this: Three Cheers For Heartache

CLASSICAL

James MacMillan

Magnificat

Challenge Classics CC72554, £14.99

Star rating: * * * * *

This recording of James MacMillan’s music by the Netherlands Radio Chamber Philharmonic covers almost 20 years of his composing career. The oldest work, Tryst, is the one that brought him to public attention with its performance by the SCO at the 1989 St Magnus Festival in Orkney. Based on a Scots poem by James Soutar, it’s a multi-faceted work, which graduates from the startling 
to the settled, but without ever losing its edge.

Three religious works complete the album: O, an antiphon composed as part of his Strathclyde Motets for liturgical performance by parish church choirs, and a Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis composed for Wells and Westminster Cathedrals respectively. All demonstrate the beautifully rounded atmospheric effect, deriving from a thoughtful, modern writing style, that makes MacMillan one of today’s most popular composers of religious music. Alexander Bryce

Download this: O

The press release for this Glasgow singer-songwriter’s third album, Viva Melodia, pitches him as “one of Scotland’s best-kept secrets”, so it seems fitting that it’s produced by another unsung talent of Scottish indie, Biff Smith of the Starlets.

The two have obvious things in common: a featherweight androgynous singing voice, a romantic streak and a songwriting style that is gentle, understated, charming, bittersweet and at its best when embellished with the gorgeous string arrangements of Pete Harvey, a long-time Starlets associate, more recently a member of the Edinburgh band Meursault, and a prominent presence here. Like the Starlets, Kerr has found a supportive audience in the Far East – a Japanese music magazine listed his debut as one of its 20 best Scottish albums of all time, and he has played there several times since, as well as in Shanghai and Beijing. Viva Melodia, released last week, looks set to build on this. It’s a lovely album, on which Kerr’s simple engaging songs are fleshed out with flutes, brass, piano and sweet harmonies from Smith. 


SOFIA Coppola’s stories always have a dreamlike quality, but The Bling Ring is close to soporific. Want to watch some rather dull characters oohing over clothes? This is your jam.

The Bling Ring (15)

Director: Sofia Coppola

Running time: 95 minutes

Star rating: * *

Want to know why middle-class kids commit larceny for Louboutins? This film isn’t so interested. The answer is probably rooted in greed and envy, but, you know: whatever.

This is a fictionalised version of events in 2008 when Californian teens who Googled the home addresses of young Hollywood actors, effortlessly broke into the unsecured homes of Paris Hilton, Megan Fox, Orlando Bloom and Lindsay Lohan, and lifted cash and desirable items like designer shoes, clothes, and jewellery. Their crime spree lasted a year until the gang’s careless public bragging finally reached the ears of the cops, whereupon one of them tried to parlay her arrest into a bid for stardom in her own right, calling the experience “a huge learning lesson” and telling reporters that: “I think it is my journey to push for peace and the health of the planet.”

The gang comprises four girls and a guy with a penchant for cross-dressing. The ringleader is a bored student called Rebecca (Katie Chang) and most of the cast are unknowns, except for Emma Watson as one of Rebecca’s acolytes, and Leslie Mann as her mother. Watson isn’t bad, since you ask, but apart from a convincing LA attitude, there’s still a question mark over whether she’s the next Kate Winslet.

Each character gets a small character detail. Israel Broussard is a chunky nerd with a passion for female fashion, Rebecca’s parents are divorced, Watson and her screen sister are home-schooled by their wacky mother with lessons based on the self-help book The Secret. The Beautiful People targets usually pop up on archive or computer screens, although Hilton does appear in the movie as herself – and so does her house, where her face is everywhere, including the cushions. Most of the pleasures of The Bling Ring lie in such small observant touches.

If you’ve sat through Lost In Translation, Marie Antoinette or Somewhere, you’ll know that Coppola is fascinated by the way the rich live, yet reluctant to make judgment calls. I think we’ve reached a tipping point on this now: her allusiveness has become frustrating, and its weightlessness is now damaging.

There are big unanswered questions in The Bling Ring – did the kids in this fellowship think they would ever get caught, for instance? And how do celebrities like Hilton and Bloom feel about the thefts? Coppola’s combination of arresting imagery and soft-focus storytelling witnesses acquisitiveness, privilege and celebrity obsession, but never reaches a punchline. In the absence of critique, there’s a lingering sense of complicity between Coppola and her Bling bunch. It’s certainly curious that while the kids can recognise a Birkin bag by Hermes from ten feet, none of these label-savvy teens namechecks one particularly covetable luxury item; a spendy brand-leader bag made by Louis Vuitton and named Sofia, after its inspiration, Sofia Coppola.

Twitter @SiobhanSynnot

9 Filmhouse, Edinburgh, Friday until 1 August; Glasgow Film Theatre, Friday until 18 July; Dundee Contemporary Arts, 19-25 July.

CARD trickster Daniel (Jesse Eisenberg), escapologist Henley (Isla Fisher), mentalist Merritt (Woody Harrelson) and lock-picker Jack (James Franco’s younger brother, Dave) team up to form a Las Vegas supergroup of magicians, who stage a series of raids on vaults and bank accounts, then shower audiences with the proceeds.

Now You See Me (12A)

Star rating: * *

Unsurprisingly, this cross between David Copperfield and Robin Hood draws stadium-sized crowds, but also the attention of the FBI and Interpol.

In supporting roles, Michael Caine plays a businessman prepared to bankroll the foursome with private jets, and Morgan Freeman is an ex-magician who has made a career out of exposing tricks of the trade.

In the case of Now You See Me, the closer you look, the more this movie feels like a second-hand bag of tricks. With the exception of one bravura opening card trick performed by Eisenberg, the illusions owe more to CGI than genuine sleight-of-hand magic, and the convoluted heists borrow lavishly from better, breezier ensemble films such as Ocean’s Eleven and The Italian Job.

Worst of all is the third act’s big reveal, which requires an awful lot of explanation for a twist that is just a mildly interesting piece of misdirection when compared with Christopher Nolan’s The Prestige.

Director Louis Leterrier and co-writer Boaz Yakin shift characters around like a game of Find the Lady, but this flashy, flat, dispiritingly personality-free drama is more likely to make audiences disappear.

Ben Wheatley’s psychedelic civil war horror about a group of deserters gets a simultaneous cinema, DVD and TV release.

A Field In England (15)

Star rating: * * * *

To say much more would kill some nasty lo-fi surprises. The cast includes The League Of Gentlemen’s Reece Shearsmith.

On general release from Friday

Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer (TBC)

Star rating: * * * *

A documentary about the feminist punk band who were arrested after a protest in a Moscow cathedral and sent to Siberia. Not the most talented rockers, but certainly the most courageous.

Glasgow Film Theatre, Saturday and 7 July

The Internship (12A)

Star rating: * * *

Eight years after Wedding Crashers, Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson reunite to play two watch salesmen who are downsized. Joining Google’s internship programme puts them in competition with younger geeks in a film that shamelessly plugs the search engine behemoth as a workers’ idyll of free food and nap pods. Vaughn and Wilson have a nice bantering chemistry but their material is terribly thin.

On general release from Wednesday

Chasing Mavericks (PG)

Star rating: * *

Gerard Butler stars in a hokey surfing drama about real-life big wave legend Jay Moriarity (Jonny Weston) who is taught to Face His Fears when he’s tutored by a gruff father figure called Frosty, who Butler seems to interpret as an excuse for some bleached blond highlights. Michael Apted and Curtis Hanson co-direct a movie that rolls out like a waterlogged Karate Kid. Board-paddlers may enjoy the surfing lessons, but when it’s on dry land this is a beach to watch.

On general release from Friday

Renoir (12A)

Star rating: * * * *

Michel Bouquet’s portrait of the artist shows Pierre-Auguste in later life when he is rich, famous and grumpy but finds fresh inspiration with a young model (Christa Theret). Gilles Bourdos’ biopic is plenty pretty but the drama is a still life.

Glasgow Film Theatre until Thursday; Filmhouse, Edinburgh, Friday until 11 July; Dundee Contemporary Arts, Friday until 
18 July

IN A recent interview about her debut novel, The Death Of Bees, which earlier this month won the Commonwealth Book Award, Lisa O’Donnell said that her screenwriting background helped her with the pacing of a novel.

Closed Doors

Lisa O’Donnell

William Heinemann, £14.99

She said she had learned to set things off early “with a bang”. In that novel, she certainly did – we learn within a few pages that the mother of two young girls on a Glasgow housing estate has hanged herself after finding her husband dead.

Similarly, it’s on page 13 of Closed Doors that our narrator, 11-year-old Michael Murray, hears a commotion downstairs and goes to find his mother screaming and covered in blood. His father tells him that she ran away from a man who flashed at her in the nearby woods and subsequently tripped and fell. But the conversation makes it clear to adult readers that she has, in fact, been brutally raped.

The dissonance between what a child narrator knows and what adult readers can make out is fully exploited here to great effect, and is reminiscent of Emma Donoghue’s excellent, and equally disturbing novel Room, about a boy held captive by his mother’s rapist. O’Donnell’s streak of black humour does lighten the story somewhat – Michael is charmingly innocent, even when he’s behaving irrationally, but he’s not spoilt. He lives with his family, his parents and grandmother, in Rothesay (where O’Donnell grew up), and his main concerns are excelling at keepie-uppie and trying to understand girls. Boyhood and impending adolescence collide perfectly in those concerns, and when the household is shaken to its core by the attack on Michael’s mother, it seems that boyhood is about to be left far behind.

Michael’s parents naturally want to shield him from the truth of his mother’s attack, but they also want to hide it from their small town. Repeatedly, his mother Rosemary refuses to let her husband, Brian, go to the police. Michael registers her new shorn haircut and her desire to study with the Open University in the same way that his father does: even he understands that she is trying to leave behind the woman who was raped, to assume a new identity. She has so little faith in her community sympathising with her – and little wonder, when her own mother-in-law calls every other woman a prostitute, as Michael observes, much to his father’s delight.

So Rosemary keeps quiet. But it’s not long before her son discovers the truth. O’Donnell is excellent on how this affects him – how it makes him shy of his mother, suddenly; how it makes him angry; how he becomes aware not just of his own family’s secrets, but everyone’s secrets, and the power that a secret has. A childlike fumble in the woods with a fellow schoolgirl, Marianne, gives him a secret of his own, and he holds it close, aware of its power. Meanwhile, another young woman has been attacked but has managed to free herself; all too soon, the newly engaged, soon-to-be stepmother of his nemesis, “Dirty Alice”, is also raped and left for dead. Will Rosemary speak up now?

O’Donnell’s book isn’t simply a modern play on children keeping damaging secrets, a genre perhaps most famously associated with LP Hartley’s The Go-Between and Ian McEwan’s Atonement. In those novels, the children hold on to what they know until a moment when betrayal or disillusionment allow them to expose it, to devastating effect. Michael’s secret about his mother isn’t a bomb waiting to go off, but O’Donnell makes it feel like that: despite knowing more than Michael does, we are as powerless as he is to help his mother, desperate as we are for her to gather her strength and report the crime. Every page builds on this tension.

This is very much a story about women and how they find strength in numbers, but also weakness. With a less gossipy mother-in-law, perhaps Rosemary would have felt more inclined to brave the talk and judgment of the women of the town, and it is they whom she fears the most. It’s women who have the public brawls in this town, physically fighting each other when Rosemary’s friend Tricia is revealed to have been having an affair with married “Skinny Rab”. In this still industrial, working-class world of the 1980s, the men may earn the money but it’s the women who run things.

Some may feel O’Donnell is playing safe with a second novel told from a child’s viewpoint, set in a similar kind of place and which revolves around an act of violence which must be kept secret. But while she may have used similar tools, she has nevertheless fashioned yet another humane and compulsive read, grounded in a realism which, depicted through a child’s eyes – with that hint of a child’s surreal perception – gathers together violence, humour and love in a most believable way. n

Twitter @LesleyMcDowell1

WITH the exception of Charles McCarry, there hasn’t been a first-rate American spy novelist who claims to have worked as an intelligence officer before turning his hand to fiction – unlike the British tradition, that takes in John Buchan, Ian Fleming, the undisputed master of the genre John le Carré, and former MI5 director Stella Rimington.

Until now, that is. Jason Matthews is a 33-year veteran of the CIA who has “served in multiple overseas locations and engaged in clandestine collection of national-security intelligence”. Lord knows how he got his manuscript past the redacting committee at Langley, but he has turned his considerable knowledge of espionage into a startling debut.

The novel pits an ambitious, hot-headed rookie spook, Nathaniel Nash, against a gorgeous Russian intelligence officer named Dominika Egorova. The plot begins with echoes of Fleming’s From Russia With Love – an attractive Soviet “sparrow” is used to compromise a randy Western spy – and ends with an extended homage to the denouement of Le Carré’s Smiley’s People.

What distinguishes Red Sparrow from so many of its ilk is not merely Matthews’ skill as a writer. He is smart and fluent, with a terrific ear for dialogue and a gift for quick, effective characterisation.

The author also possesses an extraordinarily deep knowledge of his subject. I have rarely encountered a nonfiction title, much less a novel, so rich in what would once have been regarded as classified information.

This is not to say that Red Sparrow is perfect. I think it was a mistake to give Vladimir Putin a walk-on part, and some of the character names (Korchnoi, Ustinov, Delon) are oddly chosen, given their real-life antecedents. These are minor faults, however. Although Matthews may have a rose-tinted view of the CIA, he is terrifically good on the turf wars and enervating bureaucracy of espionage. And there are several digs at the FBI – including an operation in Finland botched by the excitable feds – which his former colleagues will doubtless cheer to the rafters.

THERE’S not much that Ruth Goodman hasn’t attempted in pursuit of authenticity. She has gone four months without washing; made her own hair conditioner from lard and beeswax; used powdered cuttlefish as toothpaste; worn a whalebone corset while working the fields. Made a condom out of sheep’s gut.

How To Be A Victorian

Ruth Goodman

Viking, £20

Goodman, who spent a year living the Victorian farm life for the cameras, has an unashamedly populist approach, but her dressing-up-and-living-it style makes things compelling for television, and the strategy works for the reader too. The “be a Victorian” invitation isn’t one to be taken seriously; it’s surely just a ruse to draw us in.

Goodman structures her study of Victorian domestic life around the routines of a single day, from getting up in the morning to retiring at night. It’s a simple formula but not a simplistic one. A chapter on breakfast, for instance, becomes a lesson in engineering (the internal workings of a coal-fired kitchen range), industrialisation (how the steam engine aided coal mining), and ethics: why the Irish potato famine was such a crime. There’s a bleak account of a five-year-old left out in a field all day without food, tasked with scaring away crows; and chilling statistics revealing how Victorian city workers were two inches shorter on average than their medieval forebears. The only cheering news for Scottish readers comes from the Lowlands, where a mixed agricultural economy early in Victoria’s reign meant access to provisions the urban poor could only dream of.

Two chapters on working life – separated by one on the midday meal, and an account of women’s work in the home – reveal the interconnectedness of things, from technological advances (there’s a lively account of the coming of the railway) via public health to fashion. The late Victorian penchant for black suits, we learn, was not so much an expression of national gloom as a desire to hide the smoke smuts that came with city living, and was only possible thanks to a new chemical dye that didn’t fade in sunlight.

Goodman’s personal insights (“I have tried this myself”) could become a little tiresome were the experiences not so enlightening. She mines the magazines and periodicals of the time and draws on others’ experiences too: a cast of characters from all ranks of society provide clues to the daily realities of life.

Inevitably, there are gaps. With so much of working-class life a matter of grimly hanging on, for instance, I’d have liked a sense of how ordinary Victorians coped with the big question: What’s it all for? Did they have energy for such contemplation? Did they go to church or chapel willingly? A glimpse into the parallel universe of a Victorian Sunday would have been an education.

Goodman’s book didn’t make me want to travel back in time. But it had me looking afresh at things we take for granted today. n

Mary Crockett

OH WOW. I hope the right photo is sitting next to these words. It’s the one that made me go: “I have to see this made-for-TV movie!” It suggested that lots of camp madness was involved, that maybe Spector wouldn’t be great but it would certainly be unforgettable. Oh wow and “Hoo-ah!”

Spector

Sky Atlantic, Saturday 9pm

Mad Men

Sky Atlantic, Wednesday 10pm

Andy Murray: The Man Behind The Racquet

BBC1, Sunday, 10.25pm

There’s a view that Al Pacino wasn’t quite the same after Scent Of A Woman, the film in which he played a blind army man and said “Hoo-ah! a lot. That was the moment he went from being a great actor to a great over-actor – when some people, emboldened by their ability to impersonate him (basically “Hoo-ah!”), reckoned he was now dealing in ham, albeit that it was prime, succulent and deftly cut.

Say that to his face. Or say it to the face of Michael Corleone or Tony Montana or Carlito Brigante. I’m still more interested in Pacino than his contemporaries Jack Nicholson and Robert De Whatisname. Daniel Day-Lewis: world’s greatest actor? I refer you to Gangs Of New York, Bill the Butcher, ham in every sense. Who did Saturday Night Fever’s Tony Manero (John Travolta, and where’s he now?) want to be when his gran caught him posing in the mirror? I don’t think any of these guys could have worn Spector’s ginormous wig quite like Al.

The movie is controversial for focusing on the Svengali of the pop 45’s first, aborted trial for the murder of B-movie actress Lana Clarkson and not the second which resulted in him being banged up for 19 years. By the second, Linda Kenney Baden was too ill to defend him. Here played by Helen Mirren, the lawyer started out convinced of his guilt, throwing around the word “freak” like everyone else. Then she visited him at home – the castle with the suits of armour, stuffed owls, bad art, “Back to mono” slogans, white china tigers, white John Lennon piano and the wall reserved for his guns, all by that point seized – and wasn’t so sure anymore.

Spector, via David Mamet’s teleplay, had some smart lines. “First time you were felt up? You were listening to one of my songs. Sidney Poitier broke the colour bar – are you kidding me? He was playing an uptight, frightened white guy’s version of a black man. I put the Ronettes in the home! I put black America in the white home!” Baden was so charmed by him that she almost stopped noticing the procession of rugs – Bee Gee to Maureen Lipman to 1970s Woolies checkout girl to Black Sabbath roadie – and didn’t protest when the Wall of Sound pioneer arrived for court under a Planet of Hair. The film didn’t spend a long time on the pop trailblazing but as a portrait of a misunderstood genius – intelligent, crackpot, lonely – it was almost touching. That must have been hard for the Clarkson family to watch. And of course Pacino’s an incredible actor.

The last episode of season six of Mad Men began with Don and Roger sure of New York (as the centre of the creative, chauvinistic universe) and their places in it. LA, said Don, was Detroit with palm trees. Detroit, said Roger, was all fun and games until they shoot you in the face. But by the end, almost everyone wanted a district-office transfer. Would this be the moment for the mass skyscraper leap, as the titles have been promising since 2007? Hang on you idiots, there’s one more season to come!

Poor Bill, he of the magnificent Buffalo Bill suede jacket: the LA office was his idea, only for Don to pick it up and run with it, leaving Bill with his best-ever line for consolation: “I’m going to have a sandwich at my desk. Need to get to it before you do.”

Theft was a bit of a theme. Don had been drinking a lot, sleeping with Peggy for old time’s sake and, last week, punching a preacher man and ending up in jail. He steadied his quivering hands long enough to deliver a stupendous advertising pitch, of the kind which confirms Mad Men as still the best drama around. For Kodak and the carousel, read Hershey’s and the whorehouse. Well, I thought it was stupendous.

He began by recalling a happy childhood of gardening chores for chocolate rewards, his father ruffling his hair while he ceremonially unwrapped the bar. A Hershey’s was “a currency of affection, the childhood symbol of love”. A pause for acclaim, then: “I have to say this. I don’t know if I’ll see you again.” He was, in fact, a brothel orphan, the hooker forced to raise him didn’t want to know, but another one got him to go through customers’ pockets and if he produced a dollar he got a Hershey’s – “The only sweet thing in my life.” The room was stunned. I thought “Hershey’s – they’re so whoreish” could have been a winning slogan but no one else did. Don lost the contract and was placed on indefinite leave. Only one more series, then, for he and Peggy to walk off in the sunset together, or right over the top of their building.

If Andy Murray: The Man Behind The Racquet didn’t endear our lad to the Wimbledon debenture-holders who don’t think he smiles enough or would know which spoon to use for quince or the correct way to address an earl on a Tuesday – that he isn’t Tim Henman, basically – then I don’t know what will. Henman was among those testifying to his all-round good guyness, and owned up to being partly responsible for Andy wanting Paraguay to beat England at football, the start of all the trouble.

PERCHED on Scotland’s shelf-like north-east coastline, Gardenstown was always going to be an unlikely home to a reality show starring erstwhile punk godfather Malcolm McLaren.

ITV’s The Baron also featured Mike “Runaround” Reid and Suzanne Shaw (once of Hear’Say). The trio were competing to become Baron of Troup but due to his unruly behaviour, the late Sex Pistols manager was run out of town. The Banffshire fishing village returned to normality when the TV cameras had packed up and gone. And a good thing too because Gardenstown (nicknamed Gamrie by the locals) is a tranquil little gem.

We were staying in Owl Cottage, a cosy dwelling in the part of the village known as Seatown. The cottages here are built side-on to the sea for protection from the worst of the gales and are separated by narrow, stepped lanes. It’s an architectural delight with great views on your doorstep and the beach just yards away.

BUDGET OR BOUTIQUE

Value for money at £423 for a seven-night stay. Ideal for a family holiday (it sleeps four) or for a couple seeking tranquillity. The wood-burning stove in the living room is a boon, while the kitchen is well stocked and includes a dishwasher and microwave. There are two bedrooms (one double, one twin) upstairs and a shower-room.

ROOM SERVICE

DVD and CD players are welcome additions to Owl Cottage and there is also a selection of books. Mobile reception is somewhere between tricky and nonexistent but there’s a landline if you really need to keep in touch with the outside world. The beach is on your doorstep and when the tide is out you can search for starfish and crabs.

WINING AND DINING

The Garden Inn is a real hub thanks to friendly staff and free wifi. Nice, uncomplicated menu and kids are welcome. It also has a pool table and Thursday is quiz night but be warned – the locals have it sewn up. For a special treat visit the Harbour Restaurant, the place to go if steaks are your thing. Booking essential. The Gamrie Larder sells local produce and the staff in the Spar are friendly and helpful.

There are plenty of culinary treats nearby. Visit Cullen for soup (obviously) but also try the Cullen Skink pies. Downie’s fish shop at Whitehill is worth a visit for these and other pescatarian treats. Further west is Portsoy, home to quite possibly the world’s finest ice cream shop. It boasts a bewildering array of flavours including Cranachan and Fudgey Wudgey Sandwich, and you get to try before you buy.

WORTH GETTING OUT OF BED FOR

Leave Owl cottage, walk to the seafront and turn left for a bracing walk up the hill to the Old Kirk of St John. Built in 1513 to celebrate the defeat of the Danes at this site in 1004, it was restored in the 1960s when the remains of the roof were removed. It’s a fairly steep climb but worth it for the views.

Head in the other direction for Gardenstown harbour where the visitor centre is worth a look. Wild salmon fishing has begun again after a 20-year lull which is good news for local restaurants but bad news for the seals, many of which have been culled.

Leaving the village, visit Troup Head to see gannets and puffins and try dolphin spotting in Cullen Bay. Nearby Pennan is a delight and Local Hero fans shouldn’t miss the chance to get their photo taken at the famous old red phone box.

Further afield, Duff House at Banff (ten miles away) has impressive grounds, a coffee shop and playground. The nearby football and rugby pitches are great for a kickaround with the kids. There is also a woodland walk which takes in a mausoleum and ice house.

LITTLE EXTRAS

A small patio at the front of Owl Cottage is perfect for barbecues. It’s sheltered and has sunset views to the Black Isle. To get to Owl Cottage you must drive along the harbour wall at Seatown, both exhilarating and terrifying in equal measure.

GUESTBOOK COMMENTS

Nothing beats being tucked up in a warm cottage as nearby waves batter harbour walls. Throw another log on the fire, pour yourself a local malt and tuck into a Cullen Skink pie.

Graham Bean

• Owl Cottage, Gardenstown near Banff, 0845 268 0760, www.cottages4you.co.uk

A gourmet guided visit round the infamous family’s Spanish stronghold offers plenty of food for thought

THE Borgias. A family never noted as warm and wonderful human beings. Bribery, corruption and nepotism, not to mention murder, rape and incest, were all part of the mix for these consummate politicians who were prepared to do anything to get and retain power, and they were for a time in the Catholic church, uncontainable.

With a TV series and books exploring their life and times stoking interest, it seemed a good time to go to Spain to see where their story began. We started in Xativa, a prosperous city in the Valencia region, with a castle towering over the old streets. We walked past the solid townhouse where Rodrigo was born, where he grew up looking onto the unchanged plaza and fountain, explored the church where he was christened, and found not just the Borgias, but many aspects of old and new Spain.

We were in good company, for our guides were Patrick and Julia Waller of The Spanish Thyme Traveller, he English and she Spanish. Patrick was employed in the food industry in both England and Spain, and also has contacts with beer and wine producers, so although our tour was loosely based on the Borgias, it included much of his expertise. Julia was our introduction to Mediterranean life and because there were just five of us in our people carrier – although larger groups travel in a small executive coach – we could all interact and endlessly quiz the Wallers about Spain now and then.

But back to the Borgias, and Pope Calixtus III, an elderly Spanish cardinal who the Italians appointed as a sop to those who objected to an entirely Italian succession, reasoning he wouldn’t last long. He didn’t; a mere three years, but what they hadn’t expected was his nephew Rodrigo, abbot of the monastery of Santa Maria de Valldigna, a gloriously baroque edifice where we started our tour. The monastery is set in the most beautiful and peaceful gardens, just outside Valencia, and as always in Spanish history it has been the subject of changing fortunes. Well funded in its heyday, it was latterly a farm store, and housed soldiers during the Spanish Civil war, before being restored when its value as part of Valencian history was recognised. For Rodrigo Borgia it was a stepping stone to becoming a cardinal as he intrigued and manoeuvred to such effect that he became Pope Alexander VI.

We had other professional guides with us as well as the Wallers, and during our day in Xativa we learned of the city’s prosperous past when it was a hub for various industries such as silk weaving and paper making. I drank from Xativa’s famous Trinity fountain which the Borgias must also have used, the waters of which promise what all ancient fountains promise; long life, prosperity, happiness, maybe even becoming Pope. Later I discovered that the magic only works if you drink from each of the 25 spouts. Ah well.

Visits that proved to be highlights of this lush, green region were a walk through vineyards, and seeing cellars with 3,000-litre amphoras dating back hundreds of years, then tasting Cullerot wine with Manchego cheese and almonds at a table under the almond trees of the orchard. Also of interest were: a bullring carved out of stone; caves dating from the 10th century said to have been lived in by Moriscos (expelled Moors after the Christian reconquest of Spain) in the 16th century; and a visit to the bodega of Heretat de Taverners, a small winery where the sweet red Punt Dolc was a revelation, as were the craft beers in a wine shop in Xativa, where we learnt that gin and tonic is the party drink in Spain.

Not that it was all drinks – there were also hearty lunches with the Wallers in different restaurants, with tapas, and paella, the traditional lunchtime dish of Valencia, and two charming Relais de Silence hotels. One of these, the Station hotel in Bocairent, was the quietest hotel ever.

Stand-out occasions were a lunch at a rural house where paella Valenciana was prepared over the flames of an open fire and we sat on a covered terrace looking out over the countryside. And, a mountain top, Les Alcusses at Moixent, with the remains of an Ibero village from 500BC that had been abandoned in a hurry, probably after an attack 100 years after being built. From these heights we could see three different regions and appreciate what a wonderful look-out position it was. The guide here, Jose Maria, really made history sing, showing us the village street and dwellings, the guards’ stations at the gates, and in a restored home a pre-Christian approach to security, a huge wooden five lever action lock and key.

Then to Valencia, and back to the grandeur of the Borgias. The city has many great sights; the cathedral, the house of silk – a commodity exchange and a World Heritage monument with graceful arched ceilings where you can picture the bustle of the merchants of the Borgia era as they went about their business – an art deco rail station, many modern museums and a great food market.

There is also the Palace of the Borgias, now the headquarters of the Valencian Parliament, and a reminder that the Borgias, dreadful as they were, were also contributors to the arts and the glories of the Renaissance. n

• The Borgias, Sky Atlantic HD on Mondays, 9pm; The Borgias: The Hidden History, G J Meyer, Random House, £19.70; Blood and Beauty, Sarah Dunant, Virago, £10.87

You are really going to have to get a grip,” says Eldest Child. “I was out, my phone died. I was with my friends. I was fine.” Sigh.

Last weekend I jumped off my hamster wheel of domestic drudgery and ran away to the sun. And among two snatched selfish days there was a brief period of pure hedonism when 
I forgot who, when, where I 
was, and lived entirely in the 
moment.

It wasn’t when I was supine on the beach under an Italian sun so hot I could feel my pale Scottish skin sizzling. Even then as I lay with eyes shut, the gentle kiss of waves meeting shore was interrupted by a call from a child – could they have a tenner? No, they couldn’t.

It wasn’t when I killed time in the airport sniffing the buttery soft handbags in the Mulberry shop. Could I blow the mortgage just this once? No, I couldn’t.

It was when I kicked off my flip-flops and really ran, for the first time in years, barefoot through Pisa railway station. Unburdened by the paraphernalia of parenthood – kids’ coats, bags, buckets full of rockpool finds, snacks, gadgets, guilt, worry, disappointment, I ran as I had in childhood. As fast as I could, not caring how I looked, just enjoying the slap of sole on marble. And yes, I still could.

And then, best of all, a special moment of unadulterated joy as I arrived panting on the platform, just seconds too late. And laughed like a drain as 
my train home left without me.

With two successful restaurants, Carina Contini knows all about the benefits of using fresh produce. Try this quick-to-prepare summer meal

Brought up in a Scots-Italian family, Carina Contini opened her first Edinburgh restaurant in 1996 in her husband’s family delicatessen.

Carina and husband Victor left the family business in 2003 and opened Edinburgh’s Centotre (www.centotre.com), which serves fresh, simple southern Italian food.

In 2009 Contini opened award-winning Scottish Cafe & Restaurant (www.thescottishcafeandrestaurant.com) at The Scottish National Gallery, where the menu uses seasonal goodies from more than 60 artisan producers around Scotland.

My friend asked me recently when the baby was due. At 42, already with three babies, not to mention two restaurants and my husband Victor, I’ve no plans to have any more. But the effect of those extra comfort cookies and cosy cakes had only really become apparent when my summer wardrobe came out. Not to fear, I have a plan: our kitchen garden.

Not wanting to disappoint my friend I said the baby had arrived three months ago and she’s called Poly (short for polytunnel).

Thankfully it’s our one-acre garden that is in full bloom, not me. But Poly is like a new baby. Our kitchen garden on its own is a full-time occupation but the micro-environment created by the polytunnel adds a different kind of work. On hot days the temperature can go up to over 40C in there, so the plants need even more attention. Checking they are aired, watered and tended to is vital.

Erica, our gardener, is doing all the technical stuff, but every night it’s down to Victor or me to tuck Poly up and make sure she’s safe and sound for a good night’s sleep.

These three recipes are fast, healthy, light, full of flavour, easy to prepare and may even help shift some cookie weight.

CHILLI AND COURGETTE SQUID

This is a really quick, stir-fried dish. You’ll need a little time to make sure everything is prepared before you start cooking, but once you’re good to go you’ll be surprised at how quick and easy this is. And it’s a really great dish for dramatic entertaining if you’re in the mood for a bit of a performance. If you have some samphire or spinach that will add another level of flavour. This can work well as a main course instead of a starter.

Serves one

1 Rinse the squid again just before you are due to start cooking, drain well and dry with some kitchen towel.

2 Choose a large frying pan or wok and heat about two tablespoons of olive oil, add the garlic and chilli and cook for a minute to release the flavours.

3 Add the courgettes and squid and fry over a very high heat for about 3 minutes. Don’t overcook the squid. As soon as it is firm to the touch remove from the heat and 
serve.

4 Check seasoning – it may just need a small pinch of salt.

5 Serve straight away with a wedge of lemon.

BARLEY AND FENNEL SALAD WITH TOASTED FENNEL SEEDS AND FRESH MINT, ROCKET AND BASIL

The nuttiness of the barley 
and the added crunch of the 
fennel and almonds makes this dish good enough on its own. But 
for those of us who crave a protein kick, it is also delicious with roasted chicken. I like to soak my barley in 
cold water first for about half an hour if I’m making a salad. This helps 
to dilute the heavy starchy taste and leaves a nuttier flavour.

Serves one person, or four as a small side salad served with a whole roast chicken

1 First, measure one cup of barley 
and leave covered in a large pot with cold water for about half an hour. Rinse and return the barley to the pot. 
Add two cups of cold water and 
bring to the boil. Lower the heat and simmer gently for about 20 minutes until cooked but with a little bit of a bite. Drain any remaining water and allow to cool.

2 Choose a shallow, non-stick frying pan and add a small spoonful of olive oil. When the oil is hot, add the coriander seeds and whole almonds.

Allow to cook for a few minutes until the almonds start to colour. Remove from the pan and allow to cool slightly.

3 Very finely chop all the herbs and add to the cooled barley.

4 Wash, trim and thinly slice the fennel and add to the barley.

5 Add the nuts, chilli and grated zest.

6 Dress with equal parts of both oils, a squeeze of lemon and a good pinch of salt. Check seasoning. Serve.

STRAWBERRY AND GINGER WINE SYLLABUB WITH PANSIES

Summer and syllabub go so well together. This incredibly light dessert is so easy and so delicious. Only 
make this if your strawberries are super sweet and Scottish strawberries at this time of year can’t be 
beaten. We have loads of edible flowers in the garden and a couple 
of pansies delicately placed on 
top of this dish are the perfect 
finishing touch.

Serves four

1 Whip the cream, wine and sugar 
in a large bowl until at a soft peak stage.

2 Cut the strawberries into quarters and divide.

3 Choose large wine glasses and layer the strawberries and cream mixture equally between four glasses.

4 Serve with a sprinkle of icing sugar and a few little purple pansies for that final flourish.