Author Archives

Award-winning journalist and digital history specialist - creating historical content for the web.

• Call the Midwife Christmas Special (2)

  By chris holme on December 20, 2019 • ( 1 )

  

  Part one of this quiz was about nurses.  This is part two aimed more at film and TV buffs. CtM was really well filmed – something new for the Hebrides? Nope. Two of the greatest cinematographers cut the their teeth… Read More ›

• Call the Midwife Christmas special

  By chris holme on December 20, 2019 • ( 4 )

  

  Tens of millions around the world will tune in to the Call the Midwife special on Christmas Day. It’s set in the Outer Hebrides in late 1964. Here’s part one of a wee quiz to tease out the history. Part… Read More ›

• Surviving Father’s Day

  By chris holme on May 28, 2019 • ( 0 )

  

  Fathers Day looms – June 16 so time for reflection on contributions dads make. OK, so maybe they don’t get things right that often. But sometimes they do. Germany celebrates earlier – May 30 with Vatertag. This set me thinking…. Read More ›

• Flight of the Condor over the Forth

  By chris holme on May 12, 2019 • ( 2 )

  

  It was the moment the Spanish Civil War came to Scotland – eight months after it had ended in Spain. October 16, 1939 saw the first Nazi air raid over Britain to bomb ships in the Firth of Forth. Many… Read More ›

• Fags, footie and Fergie

  By chris holme on July 1, 2018 • ( 1 )

  

  Everyone comes to the history of the NHS from their own perspective. Thus, if you’re over 40 you’re likely to be clueless about Dr Finlay’s Casebook although it was the first peak time BBC original TV drama in the 1960s. And… Read More ›

• Making a drama out of a crisis

  By chris holme on June 25, 2018 • ( 2 )

  

  When all else fails after 90 years it’s time to throw the kids into battle. Which is why Gullane Primary youngsters were the stars of a new musical premiered this month at the National Museum of Scotland. Next week Hitherfield Primary… Read More ›

• The night the world ended

  By chris holme on April 26, 2017 • ( 2 )

  Few reporters make the ranks of poets.  My namesake Hugh Christopher Holme was one of them.  As a Reuters correspondent he brought the horror of the bombing of Gernika (Guernica) to the world’s attention. His dispatches triggered an enormous international response, immortalised in… Read More ›

• Every picture tells a history

  By chris holme on April 5, 2017 • ( 2 )

  

  I’ve always thought this is the best photograph of a nurse I’d ever seen. The sheer joy in the midwife’s face is utterly captivating. I first came across it as postcard in the Florence Nightingale Museum at St Thomas’s, as… Read More ›

• EU Anthem shock

  By chris holme on October 28, 2016 • ( 0 )

  

  Shock news – if Scotland is dragged out of the European Union, it could take the best line from the EU anthem with it. Friedrich Schiller changed two lines in his original Ode to Joy poem published in 1785. One… Read More ›

• Life saving archives

  By chris holme on September 12, 2016 • ( 0 )

  

  We don’t hear much about the capacity of archives to prolong or even save life. Left gathering decades of dust, we tend to think of them as a health hazard rather than their potential for improving health and wellbeing. A… Read More ›