The History Company

Recent Posts

• Women’s golf 125 years ago

  By chris holme on August 5, 2022 • ( 0 )

  

  Gullane is currently hosting the 2022 Women’s Open. These are the competitors for the Ladies Open in 1897. They’re gathered outside the Old Clubhouse – since extended and now a very fine pub. Women’s golf was in the ascendancy then… Read More ›

• Flight of the Condor over the Forth

  By chris holme on May 12, 2019 • ( 3 )

  

  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 ›

• Dundee’s Pioneering Female Journalists

  By chris holme on January 14, 2025 • ( 1 )

  

  Not for nothing is it called the City of Discovery. Dundee was one of the earliest supporters of journalists reporting from overseas which gained prominence after William Russell made his name in 1854 with his Times despatches from the Crimean… Read More ›

• When a Great Dane was Top Dog

  By chris holme on October 23, 2024 • ( 0 )

  As the Second World War was reaching is destructive climax, the holy grail of medical research was finally found – in Gothenburg. Tuberculosis (TB) had wreaked havoc on humankind for millennia. Huge efforts were made to find a cure after… Read More ›

• Carnage at Paris Olympics (in 1924)

  By chris holme on August 8, 2024 • ( 0 )

  Rammies at rugby matches are relatively rare but the level of crowd violence for the Olympic Games final in Paris in 1924 effectively killed off rugby as an Olympic sport. The match at Colombes stadium ended in carnage with the… Read More ›

• Women and Edinburgh banks – a New Town daunder

  By chris holme on June 6, 2024 • ( 0 )

  

  You wouldn’t really know it was there. But it’s worth seeking out. Walk in to the RBS West End branch at 142 Princes Street and take a look at the two display panels on the right. They chronicle its launch… Read More ›

• Old Bill, Black Angels and Gertie and Jamini

  By chris holme on January 28, 2024 • ( 1 )

  

  Welcome to my first newsletter of 2024… it takes the theme of unheard voices and unsung heroes…. Old Bill Old Bill (left) and Thomas Rafferty (right) He was one of  the best-known British characters from World War One. Artist Bruce… Read More ›

• The prisoners of war who made it back home

  By chris holme on January 3, 2023 • ( 0 )

  

  Think twice about throwing out that old book – the one you picked up yonks ago in a library sale. It can have its uses….in this case shedding light on the leader of the first Luftwaffe raid over Britain. The… Read More ›

• In search of the real Margaret Fairlie

  By chris holme on November 8, 2022 • ( 5 )

  

  Fresh research has cast new light on the identity of Margaret Fairlie, an orderly in the original Scottish Women’s Hospitals group which established a hospital at Royaumont Abbey in northern France in 1914. Like others, I had assumed this was… Read More ›

• The last impeachment… Henry Dundas

  By chris holme on February 11, 2022 • ( 0 )

  

  A wave of scandals at the heart of government, strenuous denials, blaming others, flagrant misuse of public funds, and insouciance bordering on contempt. Sounds familiar? It happened more than 200 years ago, and ended with the last impeachment in Parliament… Read More ›

• History Company newsletter (3)

  By chris holme on October 21, 2021 • ( 0 )

  

  TB sources This is a special edition of the newsletter with a few short films and other source material on tuberculosis. I prepared this for a talk before Gullane and Dirleton History Society – a terrific group (annual membership is… Read More ›

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