AL-QAEDA elements fighting with the rebels in Syria could gain access to the regime’s stockpiles of chemical weapons with potentially “catastrophic” consequences, UK spy chiefs warn.

The parliamentary intelligence and security committee, which oversees the work of the intelligence agencies, said extremist elements in Syria were assessed to represent “the most worrying terrorist threat” to the UK and its allies.

In its annual report, the committee had “serious concern” about the security of the “vast stockpiles” of chemical weapons amassed by president Bashar al-Assad’s regime. They are thought to include sarin, ricin, mustard gas and VX – described as “the deadliest nerve agent ever created”.

MI6 chief Sir John Sawers told the committee there was the risk of “a highly worrying proliferation around the time of the regime fall”.

The committee said: “There has to be a significant risk that some of the country’s chemical weapons stockpile could fall into the hands of those with links to terrorism, in Syria or elsewhere in the region. If this happens, the consequences could be catastrophic.”

The committee also highlighted the threat to the UK of cyber attacks, which GCHQ said is “at its highest level ever and expected to rise further still”.

While foreign states continue to pose the greatest threat – the report highlighted the alleged involvement of China and Russia – the committee said there is evidence of some countries turning to private groups to carry out state-sponsored attacks.

“These state-affiliated groups consist of skilled cyber professionals, undertaking attacks on diverse targets such as financial institutions and energy companies,” the report said.

“These groups pose a threat in their own right, but it is the combination of their capability and the objectives of their state backers which makes them of particular concern.”

ORKNEY is the best place for those looking for a job in Scotland with Glasgow the worst, it has emerged, as a new report showed a widening gap in the nation’s employment rates.

There was a sharp increase in the gap between the top three parts of Scotland for employment prospects and the worst three, the Scottish Government admitted in the report.

In Orkney 81.3 per cent of the population was in work in 2012, an improvement of two per cent on the previous year.

However, there were gloomy job prospects in Scotland’s biggest city Glasgow with an employment rate of just 59.7 per cent in 2012, a fall on the figure of 63.8 per cent for the previous year.

There was also a bleak picture in North Ayrshire, which has an employment rate of 61.7 per cent, similar to its figure of 61 per cent the previous year.

The city of Dundee saw its employment picture worsen over the last year, with its jobs rates falling from 68.4 per cent to 65.2 per cent.

Employment rates in the three best performing parts of Scotland in Orkney, Aberdeenshire and Shetland all stood at about 80 per cent, while the three worst areas had less than two thirds in work.

The overall gap in employment rates between the top three and bottom three local authorities increased by 2.8 percentage points between 2011 and 2012, the report said.

Holyrood’s economy committee convenor Murdo Fraser warned that the picture of two nations, with stark differences in employment rates in Scotland should be a key concern for Alex Salmond.

He said: “Alex Salmond is quick to claim credit whenever there’s positive statistics for Scotland.

“However, he should be concerned that these latest figures show a widening gap between the better performing and poor performing areas.”

The Scottish Government blamed the worsening unemployment rates in parts of Scotland on Westminster and claimed that the UK was one of the “most unequal societies in the developed world”.

There was an increase in employment rates in Edinburgh, with the percentage in work rising from 71.8 per cent to 72.8 per cent between 2011 and 2012.

Oil rich Aberdeen also saw its jobless figure improve, with the employment rate in the Granite City increasing from 75.9 per cent to 76.9 per cent during the same period.

However, the percentage of those in work in Inverclyde fell from 67.3 per cent to 65,3 per cent between 2011 and 2012.

There were similar rates of those out of work in areas such as Clackmannanshire and East Ayrshire in 2012, which had figures of 65.5 per cent and 66.9 per cent respectively last year.

Labour finance spokesman Iain Gray said the findings showed “inequality is becoming more engrained in our communities” as he accused the SNP of promoting independence at the expense of helping unemployed.

He said: “These figures show a government with the wrong priorities. Instead of focussing entirely on next year’s referendum, the SNP should instead be getting on with the day job. Behind all the rhetoric and the spin, these figures show that under the SNP, Scotland is becoming a more divided and unequal society.”

Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Willie Rennie insisted called on Scottish ministers to cooperate with the Westminster Government on job creation schemes.

He said: “This demonstrates that the gap in employment rates between the top three and bottom three local authorities will require both of Scotland’s governments working hand in hand to create job-boosting environments across Scotland on initiatives.”

A Scottish Government spokesman insisted that independence would lead to a “fairer, more equal country”.

The spokesman said: “The UK is one of the most unequal societies in the developed world, and that inequality has been allowed to widen under successive UK Governments. An independent Scotland, with full responsibility for economic and welfare policy, will be able to create a fairer, more equal country.

“We are doing all we can, with the powers we currently have, to address the deep social inequalities which exist in our society. The UK Government’s cuts to capital budgets and welfare cuts add to the pressures that we face in addressing inequality.”

A WOMAN left paralysed by a degenerative illness is to hold an exhibition of extraordinary paintings she created using only the power of thought.

Heide Pfützner can only communicate using her eyes and cannot move, speak or breathe unaided after being struck down by a devastating form of Motor Neurone Disease.

Yet she has been able to create dozens of colourful abstract paintings using new computer technology which she controls with her brain. The former teacher has mastered the BrainPainting device and uses thought to control a palette of colours, shapes and brushes.

She is to show her work for the first time at an exhibition called Brain on Fire on the island of Easdale, near Oban.

Yesterday Heide, from Leipzig, Germany, said her diagnosis of Motor Neurone Disease, which is also known as Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), had been a “personal catastrophe”.

But the new technology has reignited her passion for painting, adding: “This project gives me the opportunity to show the world ALS has not been the end of my life.”

SEE ALSO

• {http://www.scotsman.com/the-scotsman/health/fish-cells-hope-for-motor-neurone-disease-patients-1-2943250|Fish cells hope for motor neurone disease patients|May 24, 2013}

MOST voters in Scotland see themselves as British as well as Scottish, the man leading the pro-Union campaign in the referendum will say today.

Former chancellor Alistair Darling will warn practical and economic arguments “do not make the whole case” for staying in the Union.

“Whether you feel English, Welsh, Northern Irish or Scottish first, you can be British too without contradiction,” he will say in a keynote speech at Glasgow University.

Mr Darling will call on Scots to “make a positive choice to remain part of the UK, and not merely to reject the risks and uncertainties of independence”.

He will add that positive choice is “as much a matter of the heart as well as the head”, telling the audience: “Choices about nationhood are not just hard-headed calculation. They involve sentiment and belonging.”

The Labour MP will highlight the importance of issues such as jobs, the economy, defence, public services and pensions in the run-up to the referendum, to be held on 18 September next year.

“The arguments for staying in the United Kingdom to protect and secure these interests are compelling,” the Better Together chairman will say.

THE mother of murdered teenager Stephen Lawrence has told MPs she does not “know what to believe anymore” amid claims police officers attempted to smear her family.

Appearing before the home affairs select committee, Doreen Lawrence said she had no confidence in the police and it was not right for “officers to investigate each other”.

She said: “I have no confidence whatsoever.

“Over the years, I was beginning to have a level of trust, we had the investigation and the court case… Now I just don’t know what to believe any more.”

She added: “You can’t have police officers investigating each other. It’s proven that’s not the right way to do things.”

Claims have been made by former undercover officer Peter Francis that attempts were made to smear the Lawrence family following 18-year-old Stephen’s murder in April 1993.

Two existing inquiries are to examine the claims – a police investigation into the activities of undercover officers and another into allegations of corruption in the original investigation into the murder, led by Mark Ellison QC, who is also appearing before the committee.

Mrs Lawrence said that in the wake of Stephen’s murder she had felt suspicious of family liaison officers. “The only time that we were questioning certain actions of the police was when the liaison officers were coming to our home,” she said. “My understanding of what their role should have been was to give us information about how the investigation was carried out. But they spent most of their time… asking us about who individuals were who were in our home and what their names were.”

When asked by committee member Michael Ellis whether she felt as if the officers were spying on her family, she said: “It felt like that, at the time it felt like that. Whenever we asked questions about the investigation we were never given any answers.”

She later added: “We were uncomfortable with the liaison officers, we did not understand why they were questioning and asking who people were in our home.”

She said she believes undercover officers could have searched for information to smear her family because they were outspoken in their campaign for justice.

Mr Ellison, who was asked to lead the inquiry in May 2012, said he and junior barrister Alison Morgan had completed seven months worth of work to date. He revealed that the pair had been paid £190,000 for their services so far.

ERIC Joyce has attempted to play down the impact of the Falkirk selection row by suggesting the controversy is less scandalous than “sleeping with a prostitute or a Russian”.

The disgraced Falkirk MP, who was kicked out of the Labour party after committing an assault in a House of Commons bar, said there was a “structural logic and a political logic” to the alleged attempt by the Unite union to rig the process.

But the former army major, who is stepping down in 2015, questioned whether Unite boss Len McCluskey was “thick” and claimed he would have to “accept defeat” or face being ousted.

In an interview with the New Statesman, Mr Joyce suggested “scandal” was the wrong word to use about the furore and made an apparent reference to the alleged affair Liberal Democrat Mike Hancock had with Russian Katia Zatuliveter, who was accused by the Security Service of being a spy and passing information to Moscow, while she was his parliamentary adviser.

Mr Joyce told the magazine: “A scandal is me whacking a few Tories in the bar, or more classically someone sleeping with a prostitute or a Russian… There’s a structural logic and a political logic to all of this.”

He questioned Mr McCluskey’s strategy over recent weeks, saying: “I don’t know if Len’s thick – maybe he’s thick. It might simply be there’s a wee cabal. But either way, I think McCluskey will have to back off completely and accept defeat or risk his position in the union.”

Mr Joyce also suggested his Commons brawling was a mid-life crisis and admitted his political career is “screwed”.

“Life has been quite good,” he said. “I’ve voted Labour, not that there was much voting going on. I’m happy in a relationship and all that stuff. Behaviourally, it was sort of a mid-life crisis... But one has to just try and move on from these things.”

THE worst of the economic crisis is over and a long and fragile recovery has finally begun in Scotland, a major survey of Scottish businesses claims today.

The report from the Scottish Chambers of Commerce (SCC) reveals a marked improvement in business confidence compared with this time last year.

The analysis comes as influential ratings agency Moody’s raised the outlook for Britain’s banks to “stable” for the first time since the credit crunch.

The SCC report, which analysed the responses from 260 Scottish businesses, concluded that “the sense that the worst of the recession is over is more widely evident”, noting that confidence in all sectors had improved over the last year.

In general, businesses expected further advances in economic performance, but the business body warned that sustaining the recovery would be “hard and difficult”, pointing to weak demand and harsh trading conditions. The 30th annual survey, which was carried out in conjunction with Strathclyde University’s Fraser of Allander Institute, is the latest in a series of economic indicators to suggest a rosier economic outlook.

This week, the Royal Institute for Chartered Surveyors (Rics) Scotland reported an uplift in property sales, with more buildings selling within three months of going on the market and an increase in price rises.

Recent labour market figures have indicated rising employment levels in Scotland.

Further cause for optimism came last month, when revised GDP figures suggested that Britain did not go into a double dip recession in late 2011 and early 2012. Rather than enduring months of negative growth, the new figures suggest that the UK economy merely flat-lined.

In the latest study to offer a glimmer of economic hope, Strathclyde University researchers asked firms whether over the past three months and looking forward to the next three months they thought confidence was up or down.

The number of “down” responses was subtracted from the number of “up” responses to calculate a “net balance”, which gives a measure of business confidence.

In the tourism sector, the net balance increased from zero in the second quarter of last year to 18.7 this year – the highest increase in optimism since the recession began. Tourism businesses also reported improved visitor numbers and occupancy rates on last year.

A similar trend was seen in manufacturing, where the net balance increased from minus 3.2 to 18.1. Manufacturing firms also anticipated growing orders in the next three months, fuelled by an expected increase in exports.

Forecasts for manufacturing were also more optimistic when it came to turnover and profitability, with figures expected to rise over the coming months.

Business confidence in the construction sector improved, although the net balance remained negative, moving from -15.8 in quarter two last year to -3.5 quarter two this year.

However, more than half of construction firms reporting working below optimum levels and the sector as a whole predicted a fall in contracts and orders.

Labour market activity remained subdued, with the majority of sectors reporting no change to employment levels, providing more evidence that the road to a full recovery will be long and steep.

The challenges of stimulating a sustainable recovery were also reflected in declining retail sales, with more than half of firms reporting a drop in the amount shoppers were buying.

Looking at the overall economic picture, however, the analysis concluded the outlook was more positive than previous reports and the SCC praised the Scottish Government’s approach to increase capital spending.

Garry Clark, head of policy and public affairs at SCC, said: “Our latest survey indicates stronger signs of an economic recovery, with more positive trends and expectations compared to a year ago.

“Nevertheless, demand still remains weak and much continues to depend upon a return to growth in our major export markets, increased participation in exporting by Scottish businesses and on the policies of the Scottish and UK governments.

“There are more positives to take out of this quarter’s figures, particularly the improving business confidence and the generally stronger expectations as to business conditions over the next 12 months.

“There are signs that the construction industry is continuing to improve and that tourism is having a better season than last year, with some early indications that discounting may be becoming less prevalent.

“The policy of the Scottish Government to maximise capital spending – now also, belatedly, being pursued by the UK government – is extremely welcome and we believe that this investment will achieve the maximum long term benefits to the economy if priority is given to transport and affordable housing projects.”

Mr Clark said more action was needed and called on the Scottish Government to reduce business rates for small and medium-sized businesses that did not benefit from the small business bonus scheme.

He added: “The danger is that, in the lead-up to polls in each of the next three years, politicians are tempted to focus on quick fixes rather than delivering the sustained support for growth that business needs.”

One of the report’s authors, Cliff Lockyer, a research fellow at Strathclyde University, said: “A year ago there was a lot more pessimism, but now there are signs of a fragile recovery emerging. There is more pick-up in businesses, although they are still working from a low base.

“The Scottish Government should be applauded for concentrating on capital projects and affordable housing, but more needs to be done.”

The Scottish Government welcomed the survey’s findings, suggesting they showed that its economic approach was bearing fruit.

A spokesman said: “This report provides further evidence that Scotland’s economy is strengthening This report follows positive indicators of growth in the latest labour market figures, which marked another rise in employment, with an increase of 47,000 people in work across Scotland.

“This government is working tirelessly to retain Scotland’s position as the best place to do business and despite UK government funding cuts, our business rates relief package will reduce business rates taxation by £560 million this year.

“As the Chambers of Commerce highlight, we are also investing in infrastructure – our schools, roads and hospitals –both to stimulate growth in the short term and lay the foundations for long-term success. This investment is set to top £3.4bn in 2013-14, which is estimated to support more than 40,000 jobs across the Scottish economy.”

He added: “The Scottish Government is taking action where we can, and we are seeing results, but there is so much more that we could be doing with the full economic and fiscal powers of independence to strengthen our economy and create jobs.”

Housing crisis ‘will last 20 years’

Scotland’s housing crisis could take 20 years to solve amid rising population levels and more people living in their own, a public spending watchdog has found.

Audit Scotland says the supply of housing is not meeting current need, after the number of new private homes being built fell by a half in recent years.

There has been a shortfall of almost 14,000 social houses since 2005, while Scottish Government housing budgets have fallen by a quarter in recent years.

Conservative housing spokesman Alex Johnstone said: “This is a damning indictment of a housing policy that is failing to deliver, doesn’t plan for well documented demographic changes and lacks the innovation required to lever in extra finance to build the homes we need.

“The Scottish Government has slashed the housing budget, its funding methods are confusing and its attempts at using alternative funding models have been limited.”

It it estimated Scotland will need half a million new homes over the next 25 years, but the number of new private homes being built in Scotland has more than halved since 2007-8, when the economic crisis took hold, to about 10,000 annually.

The Scottish Government has cut its capital housing budget by 29 per cent, from £534 million to £378m, between 2008-9 and 2011-12, the report says.

Caroline Gardner, auditor general for Scotland, said: “Budgets are tightening, while demand is increasing and fewer houses are being built.

“The Scottish Government has an ambitious vision for housing. It needs to work with councils and their other partners to make sure that clear, long-term plans are in place to address challenges and to help them tackle important issues like homelessness and the quality of housing.”

The Scottish Government has set out its vision to provide an “affordable home” for all by 2020. In 2011, it set a target of 6,000 new affordable homes a year.

However, Audit Scotland said the supply of housing was not keeping up with need, and the Scottish Government had to clarify how it would make sure its targets were met.

A Scottish Government spokesman said it was taking “decisive action”. “We are investing nearly £900m over three years as part of our target of building 30,000 new, affordable homes over the lifetime of this parliament,” he said.

Moody’s gives UK banks a thumbs-up

The UK’s banks are now strong enough to face another crisis, an influential ratings agency said yesterday as it lifted the sector’s outlook for the first time since the credit crunch.

Moody’s said Britain’s brighter economic prospects and lenders’ stronger balance sheets were behind its upgrade of the UK banking system to stable from negative – a view it has held since May 2008.

The agency added that once regulators’ demands for banks to bolster their finances by another £13.4 billion have been satisfied, they will be better capitalised than their European rivals.

Moody’s said it did not expect the operating environment for banks to worsen, adding profits would rise from their “very low levels”, while bad debts would shrink.

The upgrade comes weeks after the government announced plans to begin the sale of its stake in Lloyds Banking Group – one of a number of lenders bailed out with public funds during the 2007-9 banking crisis – marking a landmark moment in the sector’s recovery.

The agency said low unemployment had helped contain bad debts, adding that the Bank of England’s desire to keep interest rates low would ensure households and businesses could service their debts.

Moody’s said: “We believe that UK banks are sufficiently well-capitalised to sustain expected losses from both our central and adverse stress scenarios.”

City watchdog the Prudential Regulation Authority recently told banks they must stump up another £13.4bn to plug a bigger-than-expected £27.1bn hole in their finances, under plans to ensure they are strong enough to withstand future shocks.

Moody’s said once these demands were met, UK banks would be “well capitalised for the risks they face and will compare favourably to their European peers”.

It said over the past five years lenders had bolstered their defences against funding shocks by reducing dependence on wholesale money markets, narrowing funding gaps and increasing their holdings of liquid assets, which can be sold quickly in a crisis.

Analysis: More reasons to be cheerful than before

The latest Scottish Chambers of Commerce (SCC) quarterly survey shows Scottish firms are cautiously optimistic about the future and believe the worst of the recession is behind them.

However, caution is the watchword. There are still concerns about the extent to which government policy is aimed at sustainable economic growth rather than at electoral success. The supply of credit to smaller companies is also a continuing concern.

While the private sector would welcome an expansion of public investment, private investment in Scottish manufacturing is aimed mainly at replacing existing equipment or in making efficiency improvements.

Lack of confidence in future economic prospects is holding back a bigger increase in the private sector investment, an essential underpinning for a sustained long-run recovery. The UK now comes 159th in the international league of the share of investment in GDP – lower than Mali. This illustrates how far it has fallen as a favoured investment destination and implies a weakened growth potential compared with other developed countries.

Some of this caution about investing in future growth is evident in the SCC survey. A substantial balance of Scottish firms in construction and wholesale expect to reduce investment, while there was a modest favourable balance among manufacturers.

The SCC survey also shows that business confidence in Scottish manufacturing increased sharply in the second quarter, with strong growth outside Scotland. Export orders are expected to rise further during the remainder of 2013. This contrasts with the experience of the UK as a whole, where manufacturing output fell by 0.8 per cent in May. The UK trade balance also worsened in May, to £2.4 billion.

Optimism in the construction sector has declined, with substantial falls in orders expected in the public sector and in housing. Wholesalers are also depressed, with a balance of 42.9 per cent of firms having had falling orders during the past three months. Retailers were also less optimistic, expecting reductions in cashflow, turnover and profitability. However, they were slightly less depressed than in the last quarter of 2012 and the first of 2013.

This is perhaps the best way to read the SCC survey: things are still bad, but not quite as bad as they seemed three months ago.

• David Bell is an ESRC research fellow at the University of Stirling.

PRIME Minister David Cameron has criticised Alex Salmond for waving a Saltire during Andy Murray’s historic Wimbledon victory on Sunday.

A source close to the Prime Minister said Mr Cameron thought the First Minister’s gesture “didn’t feel right, because it was a day for sport, not politics”.

The source suggested that, had Mr Cameron pulled out a Union flag, there would have been a furore.

The comments came after Mr Salmond revealed the flag was taken onto Centre Court in his wife Moira’s handbag. Large flags are banned by Wimbledon authorities.

The First Minister said he had “no idea” he would be sitting behind the Prime Minister and said the Wimbledon authorities had not minded his actions “in the slightest”.

Sources close to Mr Cameron also said he wants English ministers to start taking the message about keeping the UK together to their constituencies.

One source said there will be “English ministers spreading the word about the Union in English constituencies.

“There will always be Little Englanders – the Nigel Farage types – but you don’t have to scratch very far beneath the surface [of English people] to find a love for Scotland.”

It was also confirmed that Mr Cameron had spoken with Better Together chairman Alistair Darling a fortnight ago, and has also discussed the independence referendum with Labour leader Ed Miliband.

It is understood that the Prime Minister is so confident of victory he “wishes the referendum could be held tomorrow”.

COMMENT:

• Michael Kelly: Salmond’s flag-waving mars Murray’s win

SCOTLAND is to press ahead with legislation to introduce plain packaging for cigarettes – despite the UK government shelving its own plans.

Earlier this year the Scottish Government said it supported plain packs as a way of deterring young smokers, but would await Westminster’s verdict before deciding on “the most appropriate legislative option”.

But following yesterday’s announcement that the UK coalition would not immediately pursue this, the SNP administration said it would now introduce its own law anyway.

The commitment was welcomed by health campaigners dismayed at the Westminster decision. But others questioned how Scotland might fare with legislation in isolation.

UK health minister Anna Soubry said that, following public consultation, the UK decision on plain packaging had been delayed so similar measures introduced at the end of last year in Australia could be monitored.

The Scottish Government’s ­tobacco strategy in March backed plain packaging and other measures in a bid to make Scotland smoking-free by 2034.

Yesterday, Scottish public health minister Michael Matheson said: “It is disappointing the UK government has decided not to take action. The Scottish Government remains committed to introducing standardised packaging. We will now identify an appropriate timescale to introduce legislation.”

Fierce debate has surrounded the proposals to ban all attractive packaging and logos from tobacco products and replace them with standard designs along with health warnings.

Health campaigners argue it will deprive tobacco companies of their last method to promote their products and prevent young people being attracted to smoking by glossy packaging.

However, industry groups have questioned research suggesting plain packets would reduce the number of child smokers and claimed it could play into the hands of counterfeiters.

Action on Smoking and Health Scotland welcomed the moves to introduce Scottish legislation on plain packaging.

Chief executive Sheila Duffy said: “Given that around 40 young people take up smoking every day in Scotland, it is essential that this legislation is made a priority and introduced at the earliest opportunity.”

Dr Charles Saunders, deputy chairman of the British Medical Association Scotland, added: “Doctors see first-hand the devastating effects of tobacco addiction. We support moves to reduce the number of people taking up this deadly habit.

“Packaging is a key marketing tool and can influence young people to start smoking so it is vital that this final source of advertising is removed.”

Smokers’ lobby group Forest welcomed the Westminster climbdown, but questioned the Scottish Government’s stance.

Director Simon Clark said: “There must be a huge question- mark over Scotland going it alone on plain packaging. I can’t imagine how it could possibly work in isolation from the rest of the United Kingdom.”

The Scottish Grocers’ Federation (SGF) said it was disappointed the Scottish Government was to press ahead. But it said the Westminster delay, plus a recent vote in a European Parliament committee against plain packaging, represented a blow to restrictive legislative proposals.

Chief executive John Drummond said: “There is a clear momentum at UK and European level to abandon this ineffective policy. We can now begin to tackle the real issues such as the illicit counterfeit trade, which costs every honest retailer up to £30,000 in lost sales each year.”

Noah Baumbach is talking about what life was like when he was 27 years old. This is the age of the lead in Frances Ha, Baumbach’s sixth feature film and his most joyous and compassionate to date.

Frances (the ‘Ha’ is explained in the film’s lovely final frame) embodies what it is to be 27. She is lost yet hopeful, graceful yet clumsy, deluded yet self aware, and broke but full of ideas.

“I wouldn’t say Frances Ha is autobiographical but it’s definitely very personal,” says Baumbach, 43, slowly and uncertainly. We’re in an Edinburgh hotel, and Baumbach, a famously cerebral and fastidious director, is displaying all the social unease and awkward charm of one of his characters. Meanwhile Greta Gerwig, who plays Frances, co-wrote the film with him, and has since become his partner, can be heard laughing and talking nineteen to the dozen to another journalist next door. The conversation is a little more intense on our side of the wall.

“I would say the kind of emotional and psychological state of this, erm, sort of, age...,” Baumbach trails off before trying again. “I suppose 27 is a time of confusion and conflict. I identify with that. I think I was going through a lot of change at 27 but I didn’t know it was happening until it was over.”

By the time Baumbach was 27 he was a filmmaker living in Manhattan. He had written and directed two small but critically acclaimed films. Kicking and Screaming, a low-fi talkie comedy about four college graduates with a bad case of arrested development, and Mr Jealousy, about a young writer’s dysfunctional relationship with his girlfriend. He had led what you might call a charmed life, the kind you recognise immediately from the movies. The graduation from Vasser with a BA in English (again, like Frances). The spell working as a messenger at the New Yorker. The childhood in the Brooklyn brownstone with the intellectual and emotionally unavailable parents – in this case novelist and film critic Jonathan Baumbach and Village Voice critic Georgia Brown. The attendant trips to the cinema, and earnest discussions around the dinner table afterwards. And, of course, the neurosis.

“Twenty seven is an odd age,” Baumbach muses. “I found myself having made two movies but I felt like I hadn’t yet done what I knew I could do. I was having trouble getting a third movie made. I was in a bit of a crisis but it didn’t reveal itself.” Seven years later the crisis lifted and he wrote and directed the movie for which he is still best known. The Squid and the Whale, based on his own childhood and his parents’ bitter divorce, was an indie masterpiece; a quirky, sweet, and occasionally brutal film shot on handheld camera. Apparently when he first showed it to his mother, he ended up leaving the room in floods of tears.

“By the time I made Squid I was really ready to do it,” he tells me. “For the first time I could really access stuff in myself and translate it into a movie. It sort of changed how I did things. I put everything I had into that film. I felt like it was my... I couldn’t mess it up.”

Does he feel, as many have claimed, that the films he has made since – Margot At The Wedding and Greenberg – have become increasingly misanthropic and embittered? “I don’t agree with the idea that my characters are unlikeable,” he says after a long pause. “I don’t... every movie is... you know… I set out to make comedies every time.” He chuckles and then sighs. “Sometimes people tell me otherwise.”

Frances Ha is the anomaly: a Baumbach film about a genuinely loveable if occasionally embarrassing character. “I think it was clear to me when we were writing her that the movie should protect and honour Frances,” says Baumbach with a shy smile. “Both Frances and Greta have such spirit and hope and romance. But I still wanted to make a film that felt good but acknowledged the melancholy of youth.”

The result is as close to feelgood as Baumbach gets. Frances Ha is a film about female friendship, and how many of those do we get to see amongst all the bromances? It’s also a romantic comedy without a romance. Shot in hyper-glossy black and white, it stars lots of world-weary hipster actors (Mickey Sumner, Sting’s daughter, Grace Gummer, Meryl Streep’s daughter, and Adam Driver of Lena Dunham’s Girls) and is as much a love letter to New York as it is to Frances. The influence of Woody Allen, Richard Linklater, the French New Wave, and the screwball comedies of the 1940s and 50s are all here. In fact Frances Ha has been branded Baumbach’s Manhattan. Gerwig is a kind of modern cross between Diane Keaton and Katharine Hepburn: the wisecracking broad who is forever falling down and then jumping right back up again.

“Woody Allen’s movies are so much a part of me,” Baumbach says. “I grew up watching them over and over and would read all his comic pieces for the New Yorker. In some ways his influence is so much there that I can’t even locate it any more. Frances Ha captures my feelings about New York because the beauty and romance is also cut with the reality of the city today. Young people who don’t have money struggle there. You can’t be an artist in New York any more without being rich. This movie mourns and celebrates the city at the same time.

“I wanted this film to have the classic feel of old and new New York,” he continues. “I’ve always been a very precise director but I haven’t always had the luxury to take my time. We took more time with this movie than I’ve ever had before. Squid was a kind of fever dream – we shot it in 23 days. With this one, I set up a smaller crew and explained to everybody that it would go on a while. We shot mostly in sequence and did a number of takes of many scenes.”

We talk about Baumbach’s collaboration with Gerwig, whom he met after casting her in Greenberg. Frances Ha began as a long series of emails exchanged between them over a year. “In the end we both wrote everything,” Baumbach explains. “It feels very even in the way a good collaboration does. I think of it as a conversation. When you have a great conversation with someone, you can’t really remember who started it or who said what. It becomes its own animal. With a good collaboration you don’t really remember whose lines are whose. And then every so often we would get together, read it aloud, and tinker with it.”

The result was both a script and a romance. It seems that Baumbach, who was previously married to actress Jennifer Jason Leigh (with whom he has a son), fell in love with the character and the actress as they were writing her. By the time they were shooting, he and Gerwig were involved. So Frances Ha ended up being a romantic comedy in which the romance happened off screen. “Right, that’s interesting,” he says. “I hadn’t thought of it like that.

“But of course it can be a distraction too,” he continues. “Yet there was a real feeling of closeness on the set, and not just for Greta and me. And, erm, you know... before I was with Greta I felt inspired by her. In a way it didn’t change anything actually being involved. The whole experience of making Frances Ha was charged and exciting.”

Frances Ha is on general release from 26 July

Divorce has an upside and living a neat and tidy existence is dull, not to mention impossible, says Katie Roiphe

Katie Roiphe upsets people. The New York-based journalist writes things that make people spit their cornflakes across the breakfast table. There is an aspect of this which is deliberate – Roiphe wants to provoke debate. She’s also become used to the hullaballoo that greets her work (it’s been happening since her first book about date rape was published back in 1994) and she knows that it’s a necessary part of what she does. “If I wrote a book and people didn’t have any kind of reaction to it I’d be startled,” she says. “I once read that someone called me an uncomfortablist and I think that is a really good description because I am attracted to subjects that make people uncomfortable.”

In her latest collection of essays, In Praise of Messy Lives, she has done it again. The book ranges across topics from Mad Men to Hillary Clinton, the squeamishness of contemporary male novelists about sex to the novels of Jane Austen. Nothing, though, has riled people more than her thoughts about contemporary family life, more specifically the unintended upsides of divorce and the seldom discussed downsides of striving for a life that is as neat and tidy as a short back and sides. Her argument is that we’ve all grown so obsessed with being healthy and balanced, giving our children the perfect start to life, including, of course, working at keeping our relationships together to do this, we’ve become, frankly, a little dull.

“I wrote the book out of the impulse that the current notion of how to live a healthy, sensible, enlightened life is a little narrow and restrictive,” Roiphe says in a voice that sounds surprisingly girlish given that she is 44 and it’s 9:30am on a Sunday morning. “I am trying to argue, not that we should go back to 1964 when people were smoking four packs of cigarettes a day and drinking three glasses of wine at lunch, but just to say maybe there’s a little bit that we can learn from those former periods.”

What Roiphe objects to is the “cultural preoccupation with healthiness above all else”.

Nowhere is this clearer than in relation to fads about childrearing – our obsession with organic diets and educational toys, extra-curricular activities and constant stimulation. You can see why cages have been rattled.

“That sense of trying to create this perfect environment is well intentioned,” she says, “but it also has its repressive side because people who are divorced or single mothers or those who are outside of this perfect environment are particularly stigmatised.

What Roiphe wants to celebrate is “messiness as a value, a good thing, a lost and interesting way of life”.

Much of what Roiphe has written is based on personal experience. The judgments she faced when she divorced the father of her first child, Violet. The disapproval she was met with when she decided to have a second child, Leo, as a single parent. Drawing a comparison to Nathaniel Hawthorne’s scandalous heroine in The Scarlet Letter, Roiphe writes, “The single mother traipsing up the subway steps in heels with her Maclaren is not as many worlds away as you would think from Hester Prynne.”

For Roiphe, arguments about organic milk and hothousing seem to be about our children’s wellbeing but beneath that, there exists a different agenda.

“We have an obsession with leading a healthy balanced life and there is a latent moralism in those terms that does make people who do things outside of what is considered healthy or balanced feel like they are somehow inadequate,” she says. “I do think those notions do contain a kind of new conservativism so even though it might be really liberal, tolerant people trying to live these healthy lives behind these concepts is an old-fashioned conservative morality.”

I tell Roiphe that I’ve been trying to think of the person who might be the apotheosis of the neat and tidy life. Again and again, I come up with Gwyneth Paltrow and her online lifestyle guide, Goop. Who epitomises the super-organised, spotlessly clean, macrobiotically nourished version of parenthood more than an A-list movie star and her yoga-loving rock star husband? And yet, do people really believe that the Paltrow/Martin existence is real? I mean, if we do then how do you explain the heartfelt glee that greeted the photographs which emerged of Chris Martin scoffing a packet of Wotsits?

“It is a fantasy,” Roiphe says, laughing. “I just wonder at the drabness of our fantasy. Why is it that? Why do we get so caught up in these ideas which are so silly and unappealing? Why do we accept that it’s shocking that someone is giving their baby non-organic milk? Why are we subscribing to that?”

Of course, in these financially straitened times, discussion of organic or non-organic might seem moot for hard-up families trying to manage the weekly budget. The notion of actively choosing mess might seem perverse when a relationship breakdown or changed financial circumstances may thrust entirely unwanted mess upon us. Roiphe has certainly been criticised for writing without adequate self awareness of her own privilege, as a member of the New York literati, a professor at New York University, who lives in chic Brooklyn. It’s a criticism she rejects straightforwardly, noting that it has more to do with trying to silence those who speak uncomfortable truths, often women, than anything else.

“I feel that I’m pretty clear about where I’m writing from,” she says. “I don’t think that you need to be of the exact same social background as somebody to get something out of their book.”

And when you come right down to it, Roiphe in her celebration of what messiness can bring us, is arguing for more acceptance, not less, more tolerance of breaking from the plan, perhaps even chucking the plan out altogether, accepting that life’s just not really like that for many of us anyway.

“I think it’s about having more imagination about the possibilities,” she says. “Some of that is just about tolerating and having more acceptance for the way that people already live and then it’s about looking a little more critically at some of these ways of living that we just accept. I guess I’m interested in questioning what the good life is and should be.”

As a project, I can think of few things more worthwhile.

In Praise of Messy Lives (Canongate, £12.99) is out now.

The hardest working identical twins in rock are celebrating 25 years with a Very Best of release of 30 tracks. But Proclaimers Craig and Charlie Reid have plenty more to give

Charlie Reid is in disguise. He arrives at the band’s rehearsal studio in Haymarket sans specs. I’m chatting to the roadies and Stevie Christie, the Proclaimers’ keyboard player, when he appears and I’m aware a tall, sandy-haired guy has come in, but until he says ‘Hi, I’m Charlie’ I would have walked past him in the street. Something Charlie wouldn’t mind at all.

“Yeah, I usually wear contact lenses during the day. You get fewer people stopping to ask you about the football,” he says. “For promotion I stick the glasses on. It’s only fair.”

Craig arrives next, glasses in situ, recognisably a Proclaimer, and the world zooms back into focus. For the photographer, both don their facewear, as they do on stage, but during our interview Charlie doesn’t have his specs on and telling the identical twins apart is a doddle.

The band are just back from playing Glastonbury, and in the rehearsal studio to warm up for T in the Park, which they were due to open yesterday, kicking off the main stage programme.

“Aw yeah, it’s our favourite big gig,” says Charlie. “It’s fantastic, but it’ll be strange because we’re usually on half way through Saturday. This time it’s the opener, on the main stage at five.”

“At least the dressing rooms will be clean,” says Craig with a laugh.

T in the Park is certainly different to Glastonbury, where the boys played the acoustic tent for the first time. How was it? Did they hang out with the Stones?

“Nah. It was good – but we had to get out of there before the Stones played because we had another gig to get to,” says Charlie.

This is typical of the Proclaimers, exhibiting a work ethic that sees them hit the road again immediately rather than hang about being rockstarry, but they did watch Mick and the band later on the TV.

At this point the brothers have one of those back and forward exchanges that characterise relationships where both parties are completely at ease in each other’s company.

Craig: “I thought the Stones were quite good…”

Charlie: “I felt sadness because they were technically good…”

Craig: “I didn’t feel that…”

Charlie: “I thought it was good, but I feel something goes away after a long time and for them it went a long time ago…”

Craig: “I thought it was good that they get to an age and play like the people that inspired them, those elderly black blues players…”

Don’t these discussions ever descend into rancour, don’t they ever fight? “Not really,” says Charlie. “We always shared a room when we were young, were in the same class, had the same pals, shared a flat till we got married.”

What about musical differences? Have they ever felt like splitting up because one feels the need to take the guitar for a 20-minute solo meander, or because the other insists on a lyric that doesn’t ring true? No drug-fuelled egotism, no Jagger/Richards hissy fit spats?

“Nah. The only discussion is maybe about running order. If one of us doesn’t want to do something musically, we don’t do it. We sort it out,” says Craig.

Charlie is the elder twin by 30 minutes (respect to Mrs Reid – what must that half hour have been like?)

“Well, she’s never complained about it,” says Craig, down to earth, which obviously runs in the family. “She was a nurse, so …” Their mother is still alive, though their father died a few years back.

It was Mrs Reid who is responsible for a perhaps surprising interlude in the twins’ quintessentially Scottish Leith/Auchtermuchty upbringing, when a family holiday to Cornwall saw them leave their native land.

“We went there for a holiday when we were about eight, and our parents liked it so much, we went and lived there for two and a half years.

“Our mother got a job nursing there, and our dad was a joiner so he got work too. But our parents missed Scotland so we came back.”

Maybe it was these years “abroad” and the Labour-voting tendencies of their parents that keep the Proclaimers’ politics free from any tub-thumping nationalism despite their long-held desire for independence.

“For me and Charlie it’s not about patriotism or nationalism,” says Craig. “I’m not into flag waving and it’s not about identity. It’s about where the power lies and who wields it, and we believe independence would give a more equitable society.”

His brother takes up the thread, dismissing what they regard as the “just embarrassing” No campaign tactics.

“We have always been for Scottish independence,” says Charlie. “People seem to be very confident it is not going to happen but I think the last six months will be crucial. It’s going to be a lot closer than people think.

“For us, independence was never anything to do with the price of oil. It’s natural to want to run as much of your own affairs as you can. I look at countries like Denmark and Norway, small countries, much of them uninhabitable, which saw mass emigration too, but which are better able to fulfil the needs of their citizenry than us. It’s not how many millions you’ve got, but the gap between rich and poor in your society. It’s the level of helplessness that people feel that’s indicative, and we seem to have a high level of that in the UK at the moment.”

Helpless is not something you could accuse the twins of being. Their workmanlike approach to touring and recording – they have nine studio albums – is mirrored by their attitude to their health. Now 51, there are no burgeoning paunches, shaky nicotine-stained fingers or gizzardy throats in evidence.

“We train hard,” says Craig. “We do exercises in the gym and running, walking, swimming. Cardiovascular fitness is very important.”

“It’s because of the way we perform,” continues Charlie. “Singing for an hour and a half, for nights in a row, it’s quite full on. The last couple of years I’m a wee bit more tired after gigs. But you do four or five and are tired, then after ten or 12 you’re really into the groove. We want to be able to do this for a number of years yet – we’re not qualified to do anything else!”

The pair never seem to stop performing – in theatres, clubs, arenas the world over and on the big and small screen. They’ve been on Emmerdale, and their songs have featured in Shrek, The Simpsons and Family Guy. For last year’s album Like Comedy, massive fan Matt Lucas made his director’s debut on the video for the single Spinning Around in the Air, persuading the twins to embark on a career first, dragged up as elderly ladies. (“I woke up in a sweat at three in the morning the night before that,” says Craig.) If there’s a secret to all this success it lies perhaps in their ability to mix anthemic sing-alongs and oh so personal soul barers, to write autobiographical, observational songs that also have a universal and unifying quality, that have us bellowing them out on the football terraces, or wailing euphorically about our sorrow at last orders in the Port O’ Leith bar.

“It’s great if you write something people want to sing along to and to hear it being sung,” says Craig. “They become everyone else’s songs, not yours. You give them up.”

As for lyrics, Craig who writes the majority of them says: “The best songs are the simplest – Johnny Cash, Steve Earle.”

Simple sentiments perhaps, but big themes, like life and death, and things way more important than that as Bill Shankly once averred, like football, and what the Proclaimers regard as their best song, Sunshine on Leith, the song of the Hibs faithful and many who’ve never even heard of Easter Road.

“I’d say that is the one that communicates most with people, the one they identify with,” says Craig. It’s also a dead cert for their new album, The Very Best of The Proclaimers (25 years 1987 to 2012), a retrospective of 30 tracks picked by Craig and Charlie and out this month.

Surely we’ve all got all of their best tracks already, I venture, but the boys point out they’ve made five studio albums since the last Best Of so there’s a lot of material out there to choose from.

“We don’t have delusions that we’re going to sell lots of records but it’s good to put something like this together after a quarter century,” says Craig. “The last dozen years have been our most productive and we’ve done a lot since Sunshine on Leith. We thought it was time for an overview, a proper retrospective.”

Then there are those whose record collections have gone the way of their relationships, Sunshine on Leith and This is the Story lost in the great album divides when couples split up.

“Yes,” laughs Charlie, twice divorced and on his third marriage. “We should sell our records at Ikea because that’s where the divorced guys go to get their new furniture.”

Craig explains a new track, Not Cynical, that embodies their spirit of perseverance. “It’s about people our age or a bit older who have experienced plenty of knocks but don’t allow that to embitter them.”

Charlie joins in: “I’m as mystified as Craig by happy go lucky people, but we are not miserabilists. Watching what goes on with the human race, how politicians never learn from history, it’s hard to be cheerful all the time. When you see the terrible misfortune some people are given, it’s hard to believe there’s a just god.”

Craig continues: “You hear the same old lies and cheating going on in politics. That was the thing about Thatcher dying. She won. We’d just landed at Newark Airport for a show and were waiting to go through immigration and could see the screens with her face on. I resisted the temptation to punch the air, and I’m glad I did, but she won. I’m very glad I lived to see her demise but in the end there was nothing to celebrate.”

The Thatcher years left their mark on the Reid brothers and when they speak now of their drive and success, they hark back to their days in the early 1980s on the dole in Edinburgh.

“We know what it’s like not to have money and be at the mercy of other people,” says Craig. “I remember spending a whole day with Charlie at the DSS, queuing for housing benefit, crowded in like cattle and you had no say, no economic power. The fear of going back to that has helped gee us along whenever we’ve needed it.”

Nowadays they don’t have to worry about money. Exactly how much have they made?

“Enough to get by,” says Craig. “Enough not to worry about it, which a lot of people don’t have.”

His brother laughs and says, “After two divorces you never have that.”

If they’ve mellowed somewhat on Thatcher, what about football? Back in the day the Reids were figureheads of the Hands off Hibs campaign to repel a bid to merge the club with arch rivals Hearts.

Charlie declared he’d never go to Tynecastle, but these days if his team is playing there he has no problem. “I didn’t go to Tynecastle for years but that’s all over now. Hibs and Hearts quite clearly need each other. And it’s a tragedy that’s now unfolding. It’s not going to do anybody any good, Hearts or the league. Scottish football is often so bad that the only thing that gives it a frisson is local rivalry. I hope Hearts don’t go under.”

Just out of interest, since they’ve been singing about it for so many years, what’s the furthest they’ve ever walked? “About 16 miles,” says Charlie, deadpan. “For charity.”

The pair have been putting their walking skills to the test in the film of the musical inspired by their songs, Sunshine on Leith, now turned into a film directed by Dexter Fletcher. Starring Jane Horrocks and Peter Mullen it opens on 4 October and sees the pair with a walk-on part, leaving Nobles bar in Leith and crossing the road. “We’d never have asked to be in it but Dexter Fletcher asked us,” says Charlie. “With people like Peter Mullen and Jane Horrocks, it’s going to be good.”

As for the future, Charlie and Craig intend to just keep putting one foot in front of the other.

“We just want to keep going and get better at what we do, write the killer song. The next album is always the best, the next song… the next season for Hibs [wry laughter]. So you keep going.”

They’d better keep going – with only 16 miles walked, by my reckoning that leaves another 484 to go.

The Very Best of The Proclaimers (25 Years 1987 to 2012) (EMI); Sunshine on Leith is released on 4 October.

I guess you could say I have bread in my blood. I come from a line of Lincolnshire Masseys who built up a bakery empire in the 1950s, but sold it before I was old enough to take over. So fast forward to 2005, and I set up the Manna House on Easter Road in Edinburgh to continue the tradition.

Bread is at the heart of what the Manna House does and my team and I bake from about 11pm every night to ensure the shelves are groaning by 8am the next day. Doing this seven days a week, 362 days a year is quite a production and although it makes a bit more work, we use a sourdough levain as the raising agent in many of the breads we make.

Our sourdough levain has been going since we opened in 2005 and, each time we take some of it out to make bread, the addition of flour and water replenishes and reactivates it. In this way the original yeasts in the starter “live on” so it’s a direct link with our first days at the Easter Road bakery.

I love using sourdough levain in our breads – it reconnects us to the earliest type of bread baking before freeze dried yeasts, bread machines and the dreaded Chorleywood process bread came to dominate. You can smell the yeast and acid in a good sourdough and it’s this tang that gives the finished loaf its robust flavour.

Using my recipe given here, you can grow a starter and begin to make great bread. While it may seem daunting (and sometimes messy), it just requires a little care to make and keep and, with practice, gives a great loaf with a chewy texture, rich deep nose and a complex very slightly sour flavour.

I also include the recipe for a new cake one of our team has adapted for the shop. Moist and lemony, it has the advantage of being both dairy and gluten-free and has been a hit with our regulars. It’s easy to make, but don’t try and cut corners by shortening the egg beating stage – it’s vital for the finished product.

Shopping list

LEVAIN

300g fine rye flour

300g water

BREAD

1kg strong bread flour

85g rye flour

20g salt

20g olive oil

450g levain

550g water

CAKE

3 lemons

6 eggs

250g caster sugar

250g ground almonds

1 tbsp cornflour

2½ tsp baking powder

1 tbsp sunflower oil

For the icing

1 lemon, zest and juice

250g icing sugar

100g toasted almonds

SOURDOUGH LEVAIN STARTER

A levain is pre-ferment starter, cultured only with wild yeast found naturally in rye flour. In our case it’s simply flour and water left to stand for many hours. A bread dough fermented with a levain is much slower to rise than one fermented with cultured yeast, but results in amazing acidic flavour, solid crumb structure, great crust and increased shelf life. We use a slightly looser, more acidic levain, but that’s all down to personal preference and depends on just how much acidity you want to achieve in the finished loaf.

1 Make your levain by combining equal parts fine rye flour and water – use about 300g each. Place it in a sealed container, set aside at room temperature and leave it alone for 24 hours.

2 Then the process of feeding the levain starts – it might seem a long process and there will be wastage, but it’s well worth it. Everyday you must discard half the levain and replace it once again with equal amounts of flour and water. Repeat this process daily for a minimum of two weeks. I find that doing it for any less time leaves the levain lacking in strength and flavour.

3 After two weeks of feeding you’re ready to bake. If you don’t use it daily just store it in the refrigerator or even freeze it. Just remember to fully defrost it and bring to room temperature and then feed it 24 hours before you need to use it.

PAIN DE CAMPAGNE

This is a classic French loaf and a great seller in my bakery. It’s rustic and a great all rounder with a good crust and solid crumb. It’s wonderful toasted or for sandwiches and perfect to accompany a meal.

MAKES 2 LARGE LOAVES OR ONE LOAF AND ROLLS

1 Mix all the ingredients for a good 15 to 20 minutes until you achieve a rich smooth dough.

2 Put into a bowl, cover with cling film and set aside for an hour.

3 After an hour tip out the dough and give it what we call in the trade a “knock back” – which is simply flattening it out and rolling it up a couple of times. This evens out the temperature of the dough and creates more strength in the protein – which is vital for creating a good loaf.

4 Place the dough back in the bowl, cover again and set aside for a further 30 minutes.

5 From this recipe you can create a couple of good sized loaves or a loaf and some rolls as required – it’s your choice. So divide the dough as you want and shape into nice smooth round ball shapes, it should feel nice and “gassy”.

6 Place the dough on to floured baking trays, cover with a damp tea towel and set aside somewhere nice and warm. Now you need patience – maybe three or four hours’ patience – until the dough has doubled in size. Don’t be hasty, it may take longer depending on how warm an environment it’s left in.

7 Pre heat your oven 240C (230C fan).

8 Place a wire rack on the centre shelf and a shallow baking tray on the oven base, you will use this to steam your loaf to help develop a good crust.

9 Once you are ready to bake, score the loaf with a sharp knife to form a square on the top and place immediately on the centre wire shelf. Pour a small amount of water (½ cup) in the shallow pan in the base of the oven creating steam and close the oven door. Reduce the oven temperature to 230C (220C fan).

10 After 10 minutes, open the oven door briefly to release the steam then continue baking for about 25 to 30 minutes, or until golden brown.

11 Place on a wire rack to cool … and devour.

LEMON AND ALMOND CAKE

One of our pastry chefs Peter adapted this recipe for the shop recently and it’s become a firm favourite. Not only is it delicious – our main criteria – but it’s gluten and dairy-free too. Wonderfully moist, it’ll keep in an airtight tin for a couple of days.

MAKES ONE 8IN ROUND CAKE

1 Boil the lemons in a pot of water on a medium heat for 1 hour, then drain.

2 Once they have cooled, cut in half and remove any pips then put into a food processor and blend to a purée.

3 Combine the eggs and sugar in a large bowl and whisk for at least 5 minutes until very pale and light.

4 Add the puréed lemon and all the remaining ingredients to the bowl and fold until just incorporated. Pour into a lined cake 8in tin.

5 Preheat the oven to 170C (160C fan) and bake the cake for 50 to 60 minutes. It’s ready when a skewer inserted into the middle of the cake comes out clean.

6 Once the cake has completely cooled remove from the tin and make the icing.

7 Mix the lemon juice with the icing sugar. It should be runny enough to drizzle easily – an extra splash of water may be needed. Completely cover the cake with the lemon icing, then scatter with the zest and toasted almonds. Leave for 20 minutes to set.

If I were a cow, I would not be holidaying in Glasgow this summer. There’s a blood-thirsty revolution going on, with US-style burger, rib and barbecue joints spreading across the city like the marbling in a Porterhouse steak.

The last few months have seen the opening of Buddy’s BBQ and Burgers in the Southside, which is so queues-round-the-block popular that it’s already up-sizing to a 100-seater venue on Pollokshaws Road. Then there’s Burger Meats Bun, Cocktail and Burger and the Chophouse.

Not to mention the Meat Bar. Halfway up West Regent Street, it’s situated in a basement premises with a frontage that’s been stripped to reveal the original shop sign painted in rust red on to the naked brickwork – Splendor Lamp Company, Electrical Lamp Manufacturers.

Inside, there are tan leather diner-style booths, beams made from layered strata of wood and toilets that are as gleamingly pristine as a morgue. The all-male troupe of waiters and bartenders wear white tees and jeans, just like Nick Kamen in the 1980s Levi’s 501 advert. A shame this ain’t no laundrette.

The food offerings are all pretty tempting when you’ve got a trucker’s hunger. I did.

We shared a couple of the sliders (aka mini burgers) – a sriracha chicken tender (£3.50) and a pulled duck leg version (£3.50), both of which came in dinky brioche buns. The former was not-too-hot but smoky, with chipotle mayo, little bits of frazzled onion and a coriander salad, while the latter was sweeter, with shreds of buttery soft fig, flaky duck, a peanut relish and a mild kohlrabi and radishy slaw.

Our third option – from the Starters/Small Plates menu – was a smartly presented patty of shredded pig’s cheek (£5.50), which was pleasingly furry textured and caramelised on the outside. It came with a super-sized and clean-tasting piccalilli of chunky cauliflower, courgette and onion.

All good, but my ginger-rubbed smoky brisket (£9.50), which had been cooked in their imported American pit oven for 12 hours (apparently), was doubly so. Salty, hot and sweet, with a rich and silky bone marrow gravy on the side, this dark shredded meat speed-dialled all my umami buttons (0800 SAVOURY).

It came with a little more of their minty slaw and a tongue-shaped sliver of token toast.

Carb heavy sides were required, and the triple-cooked fries with truffle and parsley (£3.50) were pretty magnificent, as were the crumble-coated and crispy dry rub red onion rings (£3).

We probably shouldn’t have bothered with the deep fried pickles with blue cheese dip (£3.50). I feel that vinegared gherkins are one of the rare things that don’t taste better with an oily coating of batter. Others may disagree.

Our other main – their signature grinder burger (£8). This beast featured a burly and fat disc of oregano-spiked and paprika sprinkled beef, cooked medium pink, and sandwiched into a seeded bun. Its fixings included cubes and strips of nutty iberico chorizo, a blanket of manchego and a tomato compote.

Everything you’d want from a burger (unless you prefer skinny ones, in which case, this is probably not the hang-out for you).

Sweet Things. I found it quite hard to look at those words after all the stuff we’d guzzled. But, after a pause, I managed to nibble daintily on a helping of hot peanut butter shortbread with salted caramel ice-cream (£4.50). Decent, as was a particularly fruity raspberry New York baked cheesecake (£5).

We would have liked to have tried one of their grisly sounding carnivorous cocktails, which, the waiter told us, are infused with meaty flavours that are harnessed after they freeze stock and remove the fat.

“They’re big in the US, but we’re the first to do them over here,” he added.

As I said, if you’re a cow (or any other form of livestock), stay away from Glasgow.

The verdict

How much? Lunch for two, excluding drinks, £49.50

Food - 9/10

Ambience - 8/10

Total - 17/20

At the Citizens’ Theatre in Gorbals Street, Glasgow, the auditorium is stripped bare.

All the old red plush seats are stacked on the stage, available for sale at £25 each; and there’s a rare chance to stand in the middle of the auditorium’s bare and tilting wooden floor, gazing up at the gleaming gold plaster and warmly curved balconies of one of the loveliest theatre auditoriums in Britain.

The Citizens’ is a legend for its quality as a playing-space. First opened in 1878 as the Royal Princess’s Theatre, a home for pantomime and variety in the Gorbals, it’s a small theatre by Victorian standards, seating just under 500 people; and its combination of glamour and intimacy lends itself to live theatre in a way that has been brilliantly exploited over the years, by inspired directors from James Bridie to Giles Havergal.

For all its glory, though, the Citizens’ in an old lady now; and this summer’s work on new seating in the auditorium is only the beginning of what promises to be at least half a decade of reconstruction work.

Architects have already been recruited for the first phase of the project, which will involve the replacement of the 1980s glass foyer, and Glasgow City Council has stepped up with a generous contribution. Overall, though, the cost of making the old theatre fit for the 21st century has already been estimated at £10 million; and it could rise to as much as £15 million.

That the Citizens’ Theatre is worth it seems beyond doubt; it is one of Scotland’s leading producing theatres, and a much-loved centre of Glasgow’s creative life. Yet it is worth pondering, just for a moment, the survival into the 21st century of so many glorious Victorian and Edwardian theatres, despite the huge expense of maintaining them, as the buildings age. Some great theatres have been lost; Glasgow alone has seen the demolition of at least three in my lifetime, the old Glasgow Empire, the Metropole at St George’s Cross, and the glorious Alhambra, the first theatre I ever visited.

Yet the Citizens’, the King’s, the Theatre Royal and the Pavilion in Glasgow still thrive, along with the Royal Lyceum, the King’s and the Festival Theatre in Edinburgh, Perth Theatre, and His Majesty’s in Aberdeen; and several others – the Ayr Gaiety, the Alhambra in Dunfermline, the Britannia Panopticon in Glasgow, the Tivoli in Aberdeen – are gradually re-emerging from the dark. And this despite a strong argument that by their very shape, appearance and image, these spaces perpetuate a nostalgic vision of theatre – a recurring demand for well-made plays by Coward or Wilde, Rattigan or Christie – that makes the art-form itself seem like a thing of the past. Despite the 21st century appetite for open, unstructured theatre spaces, though, it seems that these much-loved buildings – created as proud palaces of popular entertainment, in an age of explosive urban expansion – embody something about our common life that we can’t easily let go; perhaps something about the idea of the city itself.

For in the end – and despite all the care rightly lavished on backstage and front-of-house spaces – it is the big auditorium that is the heart and soul of the Citizens’, and of any theatre of this vintage; a magical space that brings together an audience of 500 or 1,500 scattered souls, that wraps itself round them in a soft stucco embrace, that draws their attention towards the stage, and that seeks to make them one, in a single, shared experience. The great Victorian/Edwardian theatre is not the kind of performance space we would build today. Yet it still seems to embody some essential part of ourselves and our history; something we cherish, and which we strive to maintain, with love, with persistence, and despite the cost.

Charismatic central characters in this belated prequel to 2001’s Monsters Inc help keep Pixar at the top of the class

MONSTERS UNIVERSITY (U)

Directed by: Dan Scanlon

Voices: Billy Crystal, John Goodman, Helen Mirren, Nathan Fillion, Aubrey Plaza

* * * *

In the last few years it almost seems as if Pixar has become a victim of its own success. The animation studio’s game-changing early films were of such impeccable quality that delivering anything less than boundary pushing perfection with each successive effort was always destined to incur a little bit of a backlash, especially given the Pixar-inspired ubiquity and box-office dominance of CG animation.

This began to happen with Cars, continued with Cars 2 and happened again, albeit to a lesser extent, with Brave (the imperfections of which actually made it a far more interesting movie than it was generally given credit for).

The thing is, at a time when technology has advanced to a point where visual wonders are a given and beautifully told stories that appeal to all ages are fairly common (just check out the likes of How to Train Your Dragon and Wreck-it Ralph to see the positive impact Pixar has had on the industry as a whole), it is perhaps also becoming a bit too easy to dismiss the second wave of Pixar films for merely being good rather than spectacular.

That’s certainly seems to be the case with Monsters University, a belated follow-up to 2001’s beloved Monsters Inc. Exploring the college-forged origins of Mike and Sully’s friendship, Pixar’s first prequel may be a further sign of the studio’s increasing reliance on pre-established characters, but it’s also an entertaining and well made film that serves up some of the subtle story twists and complex thematic ideas one has come to expect from the studio that delved into the existential dilemmas of toys, the parental anxieties of fish and the artistic proclivities of rodents.

Chief among these ideas is the notion that following your dreams doesn’t always lead to the actualisation of those dreams, a fairly radical idea for a family movie, the core audience for which is usually fed the lie that perseverance, hard work and tunnel-vision focus will always bring you what you most desire.

This lesson is gradually impressed upon the nervy, nerdy Mike Wasowski (Billy Crystal), who in Monsters Inc was the whip-smart assistant to the titular corporation’s star scarer James P “Sully” Sullivan (John Goodman), but here is revealed to be an aspiring scarer himself.

Having years earlier been awed by a school trip to the Monsters Inc factory (where energy is harnessed by closet-dwelling bogeymen from the screams of young kids), he’s set his heart on joining the elite ranks of those entrusted to sneak into the human world and frighten – but crucially, not traumatise – children.

This has led him to the titular seat of academic learning, where monsters on the much sought-after “Scare Programme” are trained in the art of assessing their targets’ primary fears and delivering appropriate jumps to elicit maximum energy with minimum psychological damage. It’s a fine art too, requiring a lot of study (something at which Mike is very adept) but also natural born talent (of which he has very little). Sully, the big purple-spotted monster whom we know will eventually become his compadre, is the exact opposite: the latest in a long line of scary monsters, he has breezed through life on his family name, and arrives in Mike’s class fully aware of his practical abilities and equally determined to perpetuate the nonchalant air of someone who doesn’t have to try.

Naturally they hate each other from the off and while genre rules – and the fact that this is a prequel to a buddy comedy – dictate that they’ll eventually realise that working together is better for both of them, the film avoids arriving at this point in predictable fashion, even as it takes on the guise of a sports movie by forcing them to join a fraternity of underdogs to participate in an annual scare competition in order to save their university careers.

Indeed the film, which has been directed with a lot of energy by Dan Scanlon, throws a surprising number of curveballs into the mix to find the silver lining in things not quite going to plan.

Where Monsters University doesn’t make the grade is in its supporting characters. As Dean Hardscrabble, the imperious-seeming head of Monsters Uni, Helen Mirren isn’t given a whole lot to work with; she’s entertainingly severe, but not especially memorable. Nor are the ragtag band of misfits with whom Mike and Sully end up joining forces.

Fortunately, its central duo is so entertaining that almost doesn’t matter. Crystal and Goodman, both now in their 60s, deliver bravado vocal performances, reprising their earlier roles, but injecting them with a surprising amount of youthful vigour and callow indignation. They sound like proper freshers; appropriate really since this ends up feeling fresher than its prequel status might have warranted.

Other new releases

WE STEAL SECRETS: THE STORY OF WIKILEAKS (15)

Directed by Alex Gibney

* * * *

Documentary maker Alex Gibney provides another typically clear-eyed account here of a major story, the repercussions of which continue to be felt every day. In tracing the story of WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange, he uncovers yet another contentious figure blinded by his own hubris who ultimately proves damaging to the cause for which he professes to stand.

All the major Assange talking points are covered in forensic detail – the founding of the website, the release of the Afghan and Iraq War logs, the Swedish sex scandal – but it’s the heartbreaking, relatively untold story of Bradley Manning, the US intelligence analyst who leaked the bulk of the information to WikiLeaks (and was arrested and incarcerated for three years; his trial has only just begun), that gives the film real emotional depth.

What’s fascinating too, though, is the way Gibney contextualises the WikiLeaks saga within the larger story of the information age, exploring how the subtle paradoxical change that happened after 9/11 – when the US intelligence services began sharing more information while simultaneously attempting to classify more – created a pressure that made the leaking of sensitive information inevitable.

THE DEEP (15)

Directed by Baltasar Kormákur

Starring: Ólafur Darri Ólafsson, Jóhann G Jóhannsson, Theodór Júlíusson, María Sigurðardóttir

* * *

After helming last year’s so-so Contraband, Baltasar Kormákur returns to his native Iceland for this miraculous based-on-true-events tale of survival in the face of extraordinary adversity. Set in 1984, it’s the story of Gulli (Ólafur Darri Ólafsson), an overweight commercial fisherman who smokes and drinks too much and is prone to getting into bar fights. His life changes irrevocably when his trawler sinks in the North Atlantic, plunging him and his crew into near freezing nightime waters.

With no hope of rescue, the only choice is to swim for shore, a horrific decision Kormákur makes more intense by shooting at sea level to intensify the disorientation and the hopelessness of their task. What happens to Gulli, though, takes the film into unchartered waters as swimming to shore proves to be just one of the major problems with which he has to contend in order to survive. Mixing in flashbacks to Gilli’s childhood survival of an volcanic eruption that gutted the family home where he still lives with his elderly parents, what ultimately emerges is a low-key study of the faith, superstition, luck and tragedy that binds together communities living in extreme environments.

PARIS-MANHATTAN (12A)

Directed by: Sophie Lellouche

Starring: Alice Taglioni, Patrick Bruel, Marine Delterme

* *

Save for the anomalous Midnight in Paris, the declining standard of Woody Allen’s output seems to be having an adverse effect on those he’s influenced, if this French-made rom-com is anything to go by.

Revolving around the romantic travails of a Woody Allen-obsessed pharmacist (Alice Taglion) battling her family’s desire to marry her off, the film pays tribute to Allen by having its heroine’s neuroses about life and love manifest themselves in the form of an ongoing dialogue with him, particularly as she begins to form an unlikely friendship with an unsentimental burglary alarm salesman (Patrick Bruel). The conceit is a specific homage to Play it Again Sam, which saw Humphrey Bogart (played by Jerry Lacy) fulfilling the same role for Allen’s film critic protagonist.

The crucial difference is that where Allen was talented enough to write authentic Bogey-sounding dialogue himself, Paris-Manhattan’s writer/director Sophie Lellouche merely samples Allen’s actual films, thus adding witty and philosophical profundity to a movie that hasn’t really earned it. That said, Allen seems to have been charmed enough by the idea to make a cameo appearance, so easily pleased fans of the New Yorker might find it a delight. Sadly, I just found it slight and trite.

CITADEL (15)

Directed by: Ciaran Foy

Starring: Aneurin Bernard, James Cosmo, Wunmi Mosaku, Jake Wilson

* *

Another high-rise horror clunker, this Glasgow and Dublin-filmed supernatural tale limps into cinemas with little fanfare after having its release pulled earlier this year. It’s not hard to see why. It’s a fairly inauspicious feature debut for writer-director Ciaran Foy, who fails to give the film the kick needed to make its fanciful plot – about a young agrophobic father convinced that the gang of feral kids who fatally stabbed his wife are now after his baby daughter – work.

Up-and-coming actor Aneurin Bernard mostly looks baffled as the film’s traumatised protagonist, which makes it hard to buy into the notion that what’s unfurling is really a manifestation of some form of post-traumatic stress disorder, a point of view we’re encouraged to share courtesy of a kindly nurse (Wunmi Mosaku) who takes an interest in Bernard’s character, Tommy. Not that the film is particularly interested in maintaining a sense of ambiguity for long. From the moment James Cosmo turns up as a vigilante priest hell-bent banishing Tommy’s demonic tormentors from the Earth, the film descends into a form of silliness which is at odds with its somber tone.

PACIFIC RIM (12A)

Directed by: Guillermo del Toro

Starring: Charlie Hunnam, Idris Elba, Rinko Kikuchi

* *

Guillermo del Toro’s most distinctive visions (Cronos, Pan’s Labyrinth) have always emerged from darkness and silence – so why has he given in to making the same loud noises as everybody else? In the summer’s biggest disappointment yet, human-piloted robots clash with sea monsters and a bereaved pilot hero (Charlie Hunnam) re-enters battle alongside a female partner (Rinko Kikuchi).

There are fun footnotes – cities get clogged with monster dung – but any nuance gets squashed amid rusty plot and splurgey effects. The actors come cheap and uninteresting: we’re meant to be stirred by Elba’s rewording of Bill Pullman’s Independence Day peptalk.

Marginally better-natured than every other spot of dollar-chasing out there, it’ll nevertheless stand as del Toro’s most anonymous, safest bet to date.

In 1969, the Paisley-born painter John Byrne portrayed Alexander Wilson as a white suited, panama-hatted St Francis of Assisi surrounded by stiff-necked owls and rather wooden fluffy animals.

Alexander Wilson – Paisley’s Poet, America’s Ornithologist - Paisley Museum

* *

The self-styled “Giotto of Ferguslie Park” wouldn’t get any prizes for his grasp of natural history or for that matter historical accuracy.

The painting, on show in Paisley Museum this summer, tells us more about Byrne than it does about Wilson, who is one of the great lost characters in Scottish history. But it’s a lovely work and however wildly speculative, it captures something of the excited dissonance that one feels on learning that Wilson, an 18th century weaver, a poet, radical activist and briefly a jailbird, was also the founding father of American ornithology.

This year, two centuries after his death, Wilson’s contribution is being marked in natural history circles around the world. Harvard University Press has just published a new biography, by eminent zoologists Edward H Burtt jnr and William E Davis jnr. But he is remembered particularly in Paisley, the hometown he left under a cloud on 23 May, 1794.

Wilson never returned to Scotland, but when he died of dysentery on 23 August, 1813, he was completing the eighth volume of his book American Ornithology and, as the first person to survey comprehensively the birds of North American wilderness, had changed the practice of natural history in many ways. The ninth and final book was completed posthumously.

A delightful exhibition in Paisley Museum brings together some surviving letters and documents with a handful of extremely rare original drawings and five volumes of the original edition of his book, which was sold by subscription.

Wilson, who in his chequered early career had also been an itinerant pedlar, knew how to do business. In 1809 he even knocked, uninvited on the door of the White House (then known as the President’s House) to show Volume 1 to Thomas Jefferson, with whom he had corresponded. He didn’t leave without ensuring that the President had signed up for a set.

The story of how a young man who only received five years of formal education became a poet, a prisoner and then a bird artist is the story of radical Scotland and American opportunity.

Born on 7 July, 1766, the son of a onetime smuggler and prosperous weaver, Wilson too became an apprentice weaver and later a packman or itinerant cloth pedlar. His indenture document, though, shows his other interests: scribbled in the corner is the first recorded example of his verse, “Be’t kent to a’ the world in rhime… For three lang years I’ve sert my time”.

His first volume of poems was published in 1790, but despite his skills as a salesman it wasn’t a financial success. His best-known poem, Watty and Meg, was a Scots version of Taming of the Shrew, published anonymously in the wake of Tam o’ Shanter.

Paisley weavers were literate and radical. Wilson’s poem The Hollander described the terrible working conditions in the grim mills and led to him being sued by a mill owner. That case never proceeded, but a later protest poem The Shark and a blackmail note to mill-owner William Sharp led to spells in the Tolbooth in 1792 and 1793.

Wilson left Scotland forever in 1794. Settling near Philadelphia, he pursued a number of trades, but it was as a schoolmaster that his mentor William Bartram, a Quaker landowner and naturalist who encourage his interest in birds, first befriended him.

If ornithology sounds a rather tame pursuit these days, then in the wilderness of 19th century North America it was anything but. Popular legend has it that Wilson was the model for the kind of scout and man of the forest who featured in James Fenimore Cooper’s stories and perhaps in part for Hawkeye himself in Last of the Mohicans. A huge musket on show in Paisley reminds us that specimens were shot and preserved and thus ornithology required more than observation skills. Wilson travelled some 12,000 miles on foot, by boat and horseback across what was often wilderness. It was risky and took its toll on his health.

But Wilson’s reputation was not just as a survivor and crack shot; his work established new standards in the observation of the habits and habitat of birds. In his early years as an immigrant, Wilson had learned about land surveying and his quantitative methods were applied to bird counts in a new way. He set up a network of observers and guides, a methodology still in use today. It’s not clear how Wilson’s drawings returned to Paisley, but there are eight original works in the collection, second only to the extensive holdings of his work at Harvard. They are revealing and not only because they give some sense of the artist’s own hand.

Their rough trimming shows the manner in which the original drawings were arranged so they might form a kind of collage, which could then be engraved as a plate. This arrangement of birds by families, together with Wilson’s extensive notes on bird behaviour, served as the earliest consistent template for what we now know as the field guide.

For even the untrained eye, though, this exhibition has delights to offer. The world of bird art has been dominated by the showmanship of the figure who all but extinguished Wilson from the record, the Frenchman John James Audubon, whose Birds of America took the later 19th century by storm. When he started out, Audubon couldn’t even afford Wilson’s book, but he set out to surpass him.

The simple clarity of Wilson’s drawings is a pleasure to behold. He had an astonishing eye for detail, from scaly feet to feather patterns, and the final prints both monochrome and hand-coloured are full of liveliness and anecdote.

This year, Wilson is moving out of his successor’s shadow. If Audubon was a grand artist in the modern mould, then Wilson, weaver, poet and Paisley agitator, turned out to be a poet and a scientist – in other words, a renaissance man.

Until 1 September.

David Lynch is one of those rare artists whose vision is so distinctive that it has spawned an eponymous adjective.

David Lynch: The Big Dream

Sunday Best, £13.99

* * *

The “Lynchian” style of film-making is characterised by weird narratives, unsettling juxtapositions, claustrophobic atmosphere and distorted soundtracks.

You might describe his music in the same terms. Not so much the music in his films, which is often lush, classic and elegant, according to composer Angelo Badalamenti’s haunting style. But Lynch hasn’t made a film since 2006, shifting his focus instead to the more solitary pursuits of art and home recording, and his budding solo work bears only scant resemblance to the music of Chris Isaak, Julee Cruise or any of those vintage bubblegum pop confections which Lynch deploys in the most disturbing contexts.

A more focused and song-driven follow-up to his 2011 debut album Crazy Clown Time there are moments in The Big Dream when you might want to wake up from its woozy, disorientating distortions of everyday environments but this collection of prowling monologues, warped with reverb and other effects, coheres to Lynch’s description of “modern blues”. This manifests itself in the sonorous trip-hop stealth of the title track, the off-kilter Tom Waits-a-like lope of Star Dream Girl, the rock’n’roll reverb of 1950s-influenced ballad Cold Wind Blowin’, the plangent psych country song Are You Sure and also in his bleak, brooding rendition of Bob Dylan’s wretched Depression tragedy The Ballad Of Hollis Brown where lines such as “your empty pockets tell you you ain’t got no friend” resonate right through this present recession.

Lynch’s high-pitched, nasal voice is the defining instrument throughout. It is manipulated to a comical degree on the otherwise straightforward Sun Can’t Be Seen No More, but he makes an affecting, pleading job of the psychedelic indie torch song The Line It Curves and sounds downright creepy as the narrator of Say It, lingering malevolently with stalker intent.

Even if you can acclimatise to his strangulated whine, however, it is still a relief to hear guest vocalist Lykke Li’s pure, plaintive pipes on the wistful bonus track I’m Waiting Here, like coming up for air after a stifling, though intriguing experience.

POP

MAYER HAWTHORNE: WHERE DOES THIS DOOR GO

ISLAND, £13.99

* * * *

Once the novelty of preppy-white-guy-sings-like-a-black-dude wears off, where does that leave LA-based soul man Mayer Hawthorne on his third album? Clearly chasing the same market as Justin Timberlake, who has declared himself a fan. At times, Where Does This Door Go is too slick for its own good in its appropriation of bygone styles from smooth 1980s soul to 1990s G-funk, but the likes of immaculately produced current single Her Favourite Song and Wine Glass Woman should hit the spot for fans of the Pharrell/Daft Punk hook-up. The title track and closing lighter-waver All Better suggest a natural affinity for 1970s MOR balladry that is easy to fall for.

FIONA SHEPHERD

LAKI MERA: TURN ALL MEMORY INTO WHITE NOISE

JUST MUSIC, £11.99

* * * *

The title of Laki Mera’s second album is lifted from a line in Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake and used with the author’s blessing. Like Atwood, this Glasgow trio create their own convincing, absorbing, and atmospheric world with, it seems, not a care for fashion, setting Laura Donnelly’s light, fragrant voice against a range of backdrops, from the sparkling chime of dulcitone and playful strings on Red Streak-Cut Sky to the more sinister martial beats and industrial pulses of Come Alone, from undulating piano on Seraphine to the Vangelis synthscapes of In the Tunnel.

FIONA SHEPHERD

CLASSICAL

THE CHOIR OF GONVILLE AND CAIUS COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE: DEUTSCHE MOTETTE

DELPHIAN, £15.99

* * * *

If there’s such a thing as fulsome German ecstasy, then it is encapsulated in the title track of this new Delphian disc celebrating German Romantic choral music stretching from Schubert to Richard Strauss. The joint choirs inhabit the thick-spun harmonies and soaring melismas of Strauss’s Deutsche Motette with utter belief. The lesser emotional opulence of works by Schubert, Brahms, Rheinberger and Cornelius balance the listening load, and there’s particular charm in the delicate, fortepiano-accompanied Gott is mein Hirt.

KEN WALTON

FOLK

CHRIS WOOD: NONE THE WISER

R.U.F., £13.99

* * *

What happens when one of England’s premier singer-songwriters starts gigging with Hamish Stewart of the Average White Band? He records his latest album using an old Epiphone electric guitar, accompanied by grainy tones of Hammond organ, as well as bass, piano and occasional flugelhorn.

A pithy and compassionate commentator on social iniquity, Wood turns his trenchant, if here morose-sounding, muse on the evils of the age, as in the title track, which bounces along in almost country-ish style. Others, such as A Whole Life Lived or the baleful collision between mid-life angst and recession, Thou Shalt, maintain a brooding tone, as opposed to the fine, lyrical indignation of, say, his Trespasser album.

He delivers William Blake’s Jerusalem as a world-weary questioning rather than as an anthem, and brings tenderness to John Clare’s heartbreaking I Am, while the guarded optimism of The Wolfless Years fades into a gurgle of Hammond that would do Procol Harum proud.

JIM GILCHRIST

JAZZ

REUBEN FOWLER: BETWEEN SHADOWS

EDITION RECORDS, £15.99

* * * *

A very ambitious debut from the young British trumpeter, who won the Kenny Wheeler Music Prize last year. Fowler is heard on trumpet and flugelhorn with a big band playing his intricately wrought compositions, while the trumpet associations extend to having Guy Barker on board as conductor and Tom Harrell as a guest soloist, alongside saxophonist Stan Sulzmann and vibist Jim Hart. Fowler’s writing and arranging is subtle and attractive, with palpable echoes of the large ensemble approach associated with Kenny Wheeler and Gil Evans. The centrepiece of the disc is the five-part Between Shadows, which skilfully incorporates an arrangement of A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square. In addition to the guests already mentioned, the ensemble features many of Fowler’s contemporaries at the Royal Academy of Music, including saxophonist Joe Wright, a former Young Scottish Jazz Musician of the Year.

KENNY MATHIESON

WORLD

THE ROUGH GUIDE TO AFRICAN MUSIC FOR CHILDREN

ROUGH GUIDES, £9.99

* * * *

If there’s one thing which Rough Guides do superbly well, it’s drawing together strands from a wide variety of sources to create a lovely tissue of words and music. If you don’t listen to your parents is the title of one of songs from the Congo; in Brotherhood Vieux, Farka Toure sings about the importance of mutual help. We get gentle drumming and call-and-response from many different countries, and typically charming numbers from the Malagasy maestro Lala Njava and that imperishable blind husband-and-wife duo Amadou et Mariam. The bonus CD is by the Italian-Somali singer Saba.

MICHAEL CHURCH

Jazz masterwork or act of worship? Both, one can say of Duke Ellington’s Sacred Concerts, which he wrote during the 1960s and early 1970s – the third and last in 1973, shortly before his death.

The best of this music was acclaimed at the time, and its relatively rare performances today can elicit enthusiastic and even emotional responses, says Clark Tracey, who will preside over two performances of this landmark music at the Edinburgh Jazz and Blues Festival, which opens on Friday.

Tracey will forsake his habitual drum stool to conduct a mighty amalgamation of the Edinburgh Jazz Festival Orchestra and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra Chorus, soprano and baritone soloists, and his father, pianist and elder statesman of British jazz, Stan Tracey.

Ellington described his Sacred Concert music as “the most important thing I have ever done”. Combining jazz and choral classical music with elements of gospel, blues and even tap dancing, it is, says Clark, “magnificent, one of the most profound pieces of music I’ve ever been involved in, and I know that Stan feels the same.”

Premiering the project at Durham Cathedral almost two decades ago, the Traceys have performed their arrangements in such hallowed precincts as York Minster and St Paul’s Cathedral, although this is the project’s first excursion north of the Border.

“Sometimes,” says Clark, “it’s a concert, sometimes it’s performed as an act of worship – so we’ve had a few converts to jazz along the way,” he laughs.

“I don’t think you can date it,” he adds. “It’s a piece of history but it is also, because of its dedication to the service of God, if you will, something very special.

“It goes down a storm, although when it’s done as a service, people don’t know whether to applaud or not. At York Minster it was a massive choir and orchestra, and we held this huge note for four seconds, then I cut it off and there was a natural reverb through the cathedral for ten seconds or so. Then the ministers would just get up and continue the service, so at the end of the whole thing the place erupted.”

The solo vocalists for the Edinburgh performances are the Albanian soprano Teuta Koço and baritone Jerome Knox (who returns during the Fringe to sing in the Okavango Macbeth by Tom Cunningham and Alexander McCall Smith), while the tap dancing honours in the celebrated ‘David Danced Before the Lord’ sequence – first danced by the legendary Bunny Briggs – will be taken by the London dancer Junior Laniyan.

The Edinburgh Jazz Festival traditionally occupies a diversity of venues, from mainstream concert halls such as the Queen’s Hall to fringe-style venues such as the Spiegeltent. This year, however, the festival spans the Forth to mount one of the two Sacred Concerts in what should prove a resonant space in every sense, Dunfermline Abbey (the other performance is in the Queen’s Hall).

Stan Tracey, now 86, hadn’t been feeling too well at the time of this interview, but he still plans to play in the Ellington piece, which, he agrees, was a challenge when he first took it on. “But, you know, that’s what I do,” he observes, in typically laconic terms.

“It’s a tremendous work, and I’m looking forward to it, as I always do.”

As Clark says, “Stan’s voicings on the piano can be very Ellingtonian anyway, and I can’t think of anyone better for the job. He doesn’t think too much about how Ellington would have done it, he just plays the way he hears and wants it, and it comes out right.”

The concerts are just part of a ten-day festival programme encompassing that broad church that is jazz. Crowd-drawers include US saxophonist Tia Fuller, a long-time player in Beyoncé’s group; Jools Holland; veteran Geordie blues-rocker Eric Burdon and the Animals; as well as the offspring of two legendary names – pianist Darius Brubeck, son of the late Dave, and Mud Morganfield, son of Muddy Waters.

Other visitors include New York singer-pianist Champian Fulton, gypsy swinger Fapy Lafertin, Neil Cowley’s power piano trio and high-energy fusioneers Hidden Orchestra and Snarky Puppy. Stan Tracey will also bring his own quartet, featuring his celebrated Scots mate Bobby Wellins on sax.

There are home-grown jazz luminaries a-plenty, often playing or sharing the bill with visitors: pianist Brian Kellock with his Copenhagen Trio, Konrad Wiszniewski and Euan Stevenson re-visiting their New Focus triumph with the Vilnius Quartet, while Sue McKenzie of the Scottish Saxophone Ensemble introduces her new chamber jazz ensemble, Dark Grooves, with Canadian cellist Lucio Amanti.

The progressive jazz-folk duo of Graeme Stephen and Fraser Fifield appears with similarly folk-inclined Sizhukong from Taiwan, Ken Mathieson’s Classic Jazz Orchestra gets back to jazz roots with star New Orleans clarinettist Evan Christopher, while saxophonist Phil Bancroft and legendary free-jazz crusader Pharaoh Sanders appear together with their respective quartets.

Duke Ellington’s Sacred Concert is at Dunfermline Abbey on 23 July and at the Queen’s Hall on 24 July. www.edinburghjazzfestival.com

Up until now, Scots opera star Iain Paterson has only been singing the big-time Wagnerian role of Wotan in the comfort of his own home.

“What you do in the privacy of your own house doesn’t bother anyone,” he says, with less than two weeks to go before he sings it publicly for the first time with the Berlin Staatskapelle, under the baton of Daniel Barenboim, in a Royal Albert Hall concert performance of Das Rheingold at the BBC Proms.

This year’s opera-strong Proms season includes a complete performance over four nights of Wagner’s Ring cycle, not just Rheingold, and Paterson isn’t underestimating the importance of the event. In truth he has been preparing himself to sing Wotan for some years now; not specifically for this occasion, but for next year’s new Ring production by Houston Opera.

The fact is there have been other Wagnerian priorities recently for the 40-year-old Drumchapel-born Glaswegian, who studied at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama (now the RCS), sang in the chorus of Opera North, but whose career really took off when English National Opera made him a contract principal, giving him the hands-on opportunity to develop the important roles.

He never quite expected to go the Wagner route. “When I started as a bass baritone I imagined I’d do the usual Mozartian stuff – Figaro and Leporello. But never in a month of Sundays did I expect to be doing Fasolt or Günter, and to be doing it at the Met.” That was in 2009 for the New York Met’s final revival of Otto Schenk’s magisterial Ring production.

There was more Wagner in February when he debuted as Hans Sachs in a concert performance with the Halle Orchestra of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. And he was already signed up by the 2013 Proms to sing Amfortas in Parsifal (25 August), also with the Halle under Sir Mark Elder, when the Wotan call came.

That was directly down to his success as the giant Fasolt in Barenboim’s Ring Cycle at the Berlin Staatsoper, which also went to La Scala Milan in March. “Barenboim pulled me aside one day and said: ‘you’re doing the Proms, aren’t you? Would you sing Wotan?’ I told him I’d only learnt the first part, but he said he only needed me for Rheingold, and that he could get a Fasolt anywhere.”

The answer was an instant yes, and a realisation that the words of advice spoken to Paterson several years ago by one of his Wagnerian heroes, veteran bass John Tomlinson, had been wise ones.

“I was singing alongside John as Amfortas, when he said to me one day that he heard shades of Wotan in my voice. So I started looking at it.”

Paterson has been working steadily on it since then, but only really concentrating on it in the past six months, when it became clear to him just how manageable a role it would be for him.

“It’s one of these roles you only grow into once you start singing it,” he says.

“The first thing, at a basic level, is the number of notes. If you take all that Wotan sings over three nights, it’s not in total much more than what Hans Sachs does in one evening of Meistersingers. Over the course, it’s actually well-paced, although the difficulty with Rheingold is that you are on for a couple of hours, playing off other characters, but never really getting going on your own.

“The second thing is the massive orchestra, which can easily overwhelm you when you’re already giving it all you’ve got,” he adds.

The opportunity to be part of such a top-calibre Rheingold (others in this star-studded Proms cast includes Ekatarine Gubanova as Fricka and Stephan Rügamer as Loge, with the fantastic Nina Stemme embracing Brünnhilde in the subsequent operas) is the highest compliment for a Scot who has risen quickly through the operatic ranks to become one of the hottest properties around.

And to be doing it with Barenboim adds a certain poignancy.

“I blew my first ever week’s wages at Opera North on the recording of Barenboim’s Ring. It’s the one I grew up with.”

Das Rheingold will be performed on 22 July at 7pm at the Royal Albert Hall, London and on BBC Radio 3

Scots at The Proms

26 July Iain Paterson sings Wotan in the Berlin Staatskapelle’s Das Rhinegold

2 August The RSNO premiere’s Naresh Sohal’s The Cosmic Dance

3 August The BBC SSO perform James MacMillan’s Violin Concerto.

4 August The BBC SSO and Deutsche Oper Berlin chorus perform Wagner’s Tannhäuser under Donald Runnicles.

11 August Soprano Lisa Milne stars in the annual Proms performance of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony

19 August the SCO and BBC SSO give early and late performances

25 August Iain Paterson sings more Wagner, in the Halle Orchestra’s Parsifal

All Proms concerts are broadcast live on Radio 3 www.bbc.co.uk/proms