POSSESSION AND OBSESSION

THE shocking case of a young woman who vanished on her way to work in Edinburgh ended in her former lover's arrest in connection with her murder.
Suzanne Pilley's body has not yet been found. But her ex, David Gilroy, was found guilty of killing her. During his High Court trial, disturbing evidence emerged of his actions in the days and weeks leading up to her disappearance.
This article appeared in the Edinburgh Evening News after a jury had returned their 'guilty' verdict.

 

THE REAL LIFE FATAL ATTRACTION

IT WAS supposed to be all over. When Suzanne Pilley told David Gilroy their relationship had finally come to an end, it should have been time for both to just move on.

Of course, what happened then is now a tragic chapter in Edinburgh's criminal history.

In the month before she went missing, married Gilroy, 49, bombarded bookkeeper Ms Pilley with more than 400 text messages. He turned up unexpectedly at her flat. And at one point, a neighbour told the court how a man fitting Gilroy's description was prowling around outside her home.

Far from taking "no" for an answer, twisted Gilroy seemed to take rejection as an invitation to relentlessly stalk and hound his ex-lover.

Tragically, it was a real-life fatal attraction that would have the most heart-breaking conclusion imaginable.

Now behind bars for Ms Pilley's murder, Gilroy will be sentenced on April 18 - by sheer chance the same day Justice Secretary Kenny McAskill will officially launch National Stalking Awareness Day at the Scottish Parliament, an event aimed at promoting zero tolerance of stalking.

Of course, most break-ups do not end in anything like the tragedy that unfolded for Suzanne and her grieving family. Yet it's estimated that there are more than 120,000 stalking incidents in the UK each year.

The Network for Surviving Stalking (NSS) believes ex-partner harassment - perpetrated by the likes of Gilroy - is the most prevalent type, in around 50 per cent of cases.
Clearly it's far from normal behaviour.

So what exactly is the root of the problem? What goes on in the minds of some that prevents them from simply accepting that a relationship is over? And why do they then resort to desperate - sometimes violent - measures to try and win their partner back?

According to Beverley Stone, a relationship psychologist and author of Stay or Leave? Six Steps to Resolving Your Relationship Indecision, it is love that is to blame. "It's simply because they're still in love. They can't understand their partner's feelings have changed and they're convinced they can change their mind," she says.

Pleading phone calls can follow, and "accidentally" turning up at the same places can start. They might even try and involve other parties. "Getting friends to talk to you and try to persuade you to change your mind isn't uncommon," warns Stone, adding that they're working on the theory your friends will make you realise that breaking up was a mistake.

Endless texts and phone calls, not necessarily containing obvious threats - Gilroy's apparent mode of attack - are another typical warning sign of an ex-partner who's failed to cope with romantic rejection.

While it's a giant leap between annoying, clingy behaviour to outright violence, according to psychologist Ann Moulds, who founded Action Scotland Against Stalking after being hounded by a stalker who'd send her vile, sexually explicit material through the post, ignoring their behaviour could be fatal.

"Some of the most dangerous stalkers never actually issue an overt threat," she says. "You can imagine them saying 'but all I did was send her flowers or a letter, there was nothing threatening', but this can be someone who has a total fixation on another.

"It's gender-based violence, it's cultural attitudes towards women. Think of fathers giving their daughter away to another man - possession," she adds."But there are also cases where it's a personality disorder. People who simply can't take rejection, there's jealousy and they need to have power."

Hoping they will just give up and go away can be a fatal mistake. Lynsey Methven, 31, was hounded by her ex, 43-year-old builder Frank Moore, after she ended their relationship in December 2010. Some phone messages were threatening, others desperate protestations of love.

Ms Methven and her new boyfriend, chef Stewart Taylor, 33, did not report his behaviour to the police. Instead, they hoped he'd eventually just go away.

But Moore didn't go away. He returned to Ms Methven's flat in the Grange in January last year, beat Mr Taylor, leaving him dead, and torched the property, leaving his ex-girlfriend badly injured.

According to Edinburgh-based chartered psychologist Ben Williams, there are certain characteristic traits that can have links to "stalking" behaviour. "First of all there's this egocentricity of certain people. Their rules seem to be 'I am right, you said you loved me'. They are not ready to change their minds.

"Others can't appreciate how other people feel, they are detached. They are not very empathetic to others. "Some people are prone to emotional fixations. They are so entangled with a boyfriend or girlfriend they can't let them go. They play the same records over and over again because it reminds them of when they first met. They go to the same places they used to go together, the same holidays.

"Even when they move on into a new relationship or even marriage, they will hear a record and go into a depressed state because it reminds them of that person."

A broken relationship sparks a kind of mourning process, he adds. "There is shock,
disbelief, rage and perhaps thoughts of revenge, fantasy - 'they'll come back to me' stage - depression, guilt and cold realisation that it's over.

"The problem is when some people get fixed at a point in that process - and if it's the rage stage, it can be when things turn bad."

Most recent Scottish stalking and harassment statistics available, from last year, show that five per cent of men and six per cent of women have experienced stalking and harassment. The report from Scotland's chief statistician also showed younger age groups are more likely than older to be victims - 11 per cent of 16 to 24 year olds reported at least one form of stalking and harassment in the previous 12 months, compared with two per cent of those aged 60 and over.

The majority - 62 per cent - of those who experienced stalking and harassment knew the offender, 12 per cent had seen them before but did not know them, while 23 per cent did not know them at all.

Scotland is ahead of England in dealing with stalking and harassment cases. A specific offence of stalking was created in December 2010, punishable by up to five years in jail.

More than 400 people were prosecuted in the first year.

Earlier this month, the sheriff court in Lithlithgow heard how stalker Lavakumar Ramathasan, 29, terrorised his ex-girlfriend, Simmy Panesar. Every day he waited for her at Linlithgow train station, sitting next to her and constantly pestering her as she travelled to Stirling University.

He also bombarded her with telephone calls on a daily basis. Ms Panesar eventually
called police and Ramathasan, who now lives in London, was arrested.
He appeared in court after earlier having pleaded guilty to engaging in a course of conduct which caused her fear and alarm.

However, according to Ann Moulds, it's virtually impossible to assess the full extent of stalking and harassment as many cases go unreported. "It can be very difficult to go to the police about someone who you've had a relationship with or, in Suzanne Pilley's case, who you work beside.

"Stalkers display obsessive, fixated or jealous behaviour and it's important to act because you don't know where it could lead - perhaps to violence, rape or murder," she adds.

"We know people still don't recognise stalking behaviour even when it's happening to them," says Network for Surviving Stalking chief executive Alexis Bowater. "Even though we may feel uncomfortable with someone's obsessive behaviour - all too often we put up with it.

"We think stalkers are sinister figures - like in films. In reality, stalkers can be ex-partners, friends or people you know."

She says more than one million women and 900,000 men report being stalked in the UK every year. But 77 per cent of stalking victims don't report the situation until more than 100 incidents have occurred - which could put lives at risk.

She advises erring on the side of caution and listening to our own alarm bells: "So often we don't trust our own instinct," she adds. "People make us feel uncomfortable but we've been conditioned to ignore it - laugh it off, hope the problem goes away."

*Picture posed by models.

Legal stance

Scotland has legislation in place to help take criminal action against stalkers and harassing behaviour. And civil courts can also provide support for victims. "You can go to court and get an interim interdict to prevent wrongful contact," says Steven Goldie of Brodie's solicitors. "And by attaching a 'power of arrest', should the person breach the interim interdict, they can be arrested."

The Scotsman Publications Limited Appeared Edinburgh Evening News, www.edinburghnews.com. 23 March 2012

WHAT WOULD YOU DO IN A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH?

Every day medical science seems to push the boundaries further and further. Mother Nature is now tinkered with and tweaked, usually it's to our vast benefit, but sometimes questions may arise that make us wonder just whether we're pushing the limits that shade too far.
This interview with medical ethics expert and author Hazel McHaffie revealed the very personal story behind her own interest in a fascinating subject.

 

A LIFE OR DEATH DILEMMA

THE tiny bundle tucked safely in his cot was just three weeks old. Fragile, new, absolutely perfect, and proud new mum Hazel McHaffie couldn't resist a quick peek at her baby son as she got ready for her first outing to the shops since his birth.

It was 40 years ago. No wonder, though, that Hazel can't forget it. For there, lying before her was her perfect son, life seeping from his tiny frame.

"I found him moribund in his cot," she says, recalling events as if they happened yesterday. "He was in the process of dying."

A nurse and midwife, she was acutely aware that time was rapidly running out. So she bundled her tiny son into the family car and screeched, heart thumping, to the nearest hospital paediatric ward, swiftly bypassing accident and emergency where she knew her little boy stood no chance of surviving the delay.

There, Hazel watched a frantic attempt to find a vein in her baby's tiny arm before desperate staff gave up and sliced open his leg, a last chance bid to feed him vital antibiotics. "Staff went into overdrive," she recalls.

Of course, Hazel had far more knowledge than most of what was happening. And, in hindsight, perhaps that might not have been for the best.

For as baby Jonathan's young life tottered precariously on a knife edge, Hazel wondered whether the uphill battle to try to keep him alive might come with too high a cost.

Perhaps a more loving and kinder act would be to simply allow him to die.

Hazel now regularly recalls that dreadful dilemma as she delves into the kind of medical quandaries and life-or-death decisions that confront doctors, nurses and medical science every day.

For what happened to Jonathan in 1971 drove her to switch her career from the medical front line to become one of the country's most respected voices on issues of medical ethics. She would go on to write a BMA award-winning book which debated parents' involvement in medical decisions concerning their children's life prospects - today it's regarded as a bible among healthcare professionals - and became deputy director of Edinburgh University's Research Institute of Medical Ethics.

But while the issues surrounding medical ethics and so-called Frankenstein science are rarely out of the headlines - from questions over fertility treatments which discard dozens of healthy embryos on the road to creating one live birth to the sci-fi like possibilities of cloning and "designer" babies that await in the future - she discovered they had the greatest impact when she was able to move them from the laboratory and into real-life scenarios. Just like her own . . .

"People tend to switch off when listening to the theory behind it all," says Hazel, now retired and who has just published her second novel themed around the controversial issues of contemporary medical ethics.

"We're all much better at listening to real stories of people. But they are bound by the truth. So I thought a better way to get people to think about the issues that can affect us all, was to make them fictional."

Her latest in a series of medical ethics novels is Saving Sebastian, set in a fictional fertility clinic in Edinburgh, where the nightmare of a possible embryo mix-up has led to a couple becoming birth parents to someone else's child. While that issue threatens to tear staff and patients' lives apart, the tension is fuelled by another patient's plea for a "saviour sibling" baby, created from a specially selected embryo in order to help save the life of its desperately ill older brother.

Both are, says Hazel, very modern dilemmas which simply weren't around in 1971, while she stood by baby Jonathan's hospital bed and debated her own dilemma - whether death would be a blessed release from the nightmare life he might be facing.

"The consultant paediatrician came to see us," says Hazel, who lives in Loanhead with her husband David, a retired Telford College lecturer. "He said he was really sorry but we had to prepare for the worst.

"But, against the odds, Jonathan did survive for a few days."

But there was the underlying fear that such a fragile little life could hardly be expected to emerge from such a trauma unscathed.

"After three days the consultant showed me all the test results. He said 'Look, there is no chance he will be normal, he will be mentally or physically impaired'.

"I went home on the bus praying that if that was the case, he'd be better just dying. I didn't want that kind of life for him."

Against outrageous odds, Jonathan grew stronger. He was physically and mentally perfect, later he went on to go to university to gain a first-class honours degree and a PhD. Today he works in finance, is married and has a family of his own.

Hazel concedes that changes in practice - ironically largely due to her own research that has helped ensure parents' voices are heard at vital points in their children's care - means if it happened today, the outcome might have been different for her son.

"At that time, doctors did what they thought was right. If it had been later and I'd been consulted on my wishes, I'd have said 'don't continue with treatment, let's love him and wrap his short life up in love and care and give him the best life we can give him, but let him die'.

"And I would have deprived that child of a fantastic life and our family of a fantastic person."

The experience hovers in the background of every ethical issue she looks at, acutely aware that the decision-making process is so finely balanced, so fraught and so complex and the results, sadly, can sometimes be fatal.

"We are all very fallible in decision making," she agrees. "Doctors can be wrong. And I was wrong. Jonathan's a very mature thinking person. He understands that it was what I felt was right at the time."

But while that experience drove her to switch to researching medical ethics, even Hazel couldn't have imagined the scale of scientific developments that would eventually further blur the boundaries between nature and science.

Cloning in the 1970s was the stuff of science fiction, genetically engineered embryos and face transplants more likely to be the subject of Hollywood fantasy than real-life dilemma.

But today the ethics debate stretches across all areas of medicine, from the creation of embryos to assisted death, from the Frankenstein idea of head transplants - an issue already raised by one American surgeon - to the notion that one day we will be able to re-grow body parts.

"Society's expectations are very high. People have come to expect that everything will be done to save their loved one's life without fully appreciating all the consequences," Hazel points out. "People think 'Oh, they can do amazing things these days' and there's this sense of high expectation that has changed how we make decisions.

"And there's tremendous pressure on people's rights. People have a right to have children . . . Well, have they? Who says?" she continues. "There's an emphasis on equality, we have the right to have the latest things, the latest wonder drug, irrespective of costs and consequences.

"Take face transplants - how would you feel having someone close to you with someone else's face? If you can transplant a face, what about a head? Or a brain?

"All that is fuelling the changes we are seeing today."

There are, she says, endless ethical dilemmas and questions. The answers, however, are harder to find.

"The thing is, there's really very few definitive answers," she points out.

"It's about all of us looking at our own values, systems, beliefs, history and deciding ourselves where to draw the line."

n Saving Sebastian by Hazel McHaffie is published by Luath Press, GBP9.99. The book is being launched at Blackwell Bookshop, South Bridge, tonight at 6.30pm. For tickets, contact events@luath.co.uk.

Giving birth to ever more difficult debate

From the first time someone used a herb or a concoction to save another's life, medicine has been interfering with the nature's course. But pushing the boundaries of medicine can throw up a whole raft of ethical dilemmas.

Just yesterday it emerged that scientists have found stem cells in human ovaries from which it may one day be possible to produce an "unlimited" supply of eggs, raising the possibility of life-long fertility.

But while fertility programmes bring baby joy for millions, a report last year revealed more than 30 human embryos are created for every successful IVF birth. Hundreds of thousands have been destroyed in the name of research over the past 20 years.

The debate over "designer babies" selected for their sex, health and for potential to save siblings' lives - the theme of Saving Sebastian - rages on.

Cloning has dominated medical ethics debates since Dolly the sheep was cloned at Roslin Institute in 1996. And transplant advances are also fuelling the debate. In 2001 Professor Robert White from Ohio announced he had transplanted the whole head of a monkey on to a different body.

www.edinburghnews.com 28 Feb.2012

Sharing the tricks of the trade has me all fired up

THE boardroom - 16 candidates, each desperate to be chosen. There's the tension and the bitchiness, the caustic comment and a roll of the eyes from Nick. Lord Alan Sugar's damning forefinger. The shame accompanying those dreaded words, "You're fired."

At one point, Sharon McAllister yearned to be The Apprentice, selected by the then Sir Alan as the pick of the second series, and handed the opportunity to leave Scotland and work with him in the glamour and excitement of London.

A few years later, however, as she lay on a hospital bed, her unborn baby's life and hers dangling by a thread, the most important thing in the world wasn't a television reality show.

It wasn't the challenges and adrenaline kick of running her own thriving business.

It was simply surviving.

"I nearly died," she reveals. "It was a few days before I had my second son, Carter. I had septicemia and Bell's Palsy. At one point my parents were asked to come to hospital because the medics didn't think both me and my baby would survive. Or even if one of us would live.

"A couple of days later Carter was born - my wee miracle." The horror of staring death in the face and the nightmare of wondering what might become of her baby and her 11-year-old son Reece if anything did happen to her, a single mum, made her reassess life.

At one point fiercely ambitious - she once tried to persuade Madonna to endorse her baby clothes firm - she stepped back and took a year out to recover.

Paralysed in her face and arm for six months, there was little choice but to sell her interests in the internet television firm she ran and concentrate on just getting better.

Perhaps that experience of what matters most could serve as a lesson in real life for the next breed of eager, attention-seeking apprentices who last night strutted on to the nation's television screens.

The candidates, Team Sterling for the girls, Team Phoenix for the boys, set about splashing GBP500 of the boss' cash on blank mouse mats and mugs, teddies and bags to be printed with money- spinning motifs and slogans aimed at making some cash.

There was long and ill-informed debate among the boys over profit margins, which took priority over design. The girls squabbled over motifs at the expense of thinking through margins. There were poor quality products, toe-curling declarations of personal ability, some selling and one very public sacking.

Sitting at home, Sharon was among the eight million or so viewers who tuned in. As head of the Centre for Enterprise and Entrepreneurship at Jewel and Esk Valley College, she has more than a passing interest in what the young business minds of today are thinking, even if it is whether to opt for a Union Flag design on a teddy or a red London bus on the front of a mug.

And she appreciates better than most that what we see on The Apprentice may not be the whole story. "

To be honest, last year's series was the first one I'd watched for a while," says Sharon, 35, who appeared in the 2006 series.

"I actually really enjoyed watching it. But things aren't always as they seem. In day-to-day life you'd go on the internet to search for something to help you. But on The Apprentice we didn't have access to that.

"In one task, we made calendars to sell for Great Ormond Street Hospital. Naturally, you'd want them to feature children, but Sir Alan decided the boys would get the babies to work with - no doubt for obvious reasons - and we'd get a lot of random things not necessarily connected with a children's hospital.

"On television, it looked like we were picking stupid things for our calendars, like we didn't have a clue what we were doing. Which, of course, made better television."

Sharon, who left a job with Forth Valley College to take part in the series, made it to week eight before getting the proverbial "finger".

It didn't particularly worry her. Instead, she drew on the positives of what she'd learned and enjoyed a string of lucrative opportunities - from public speaking appointments to giving business advice and, in 2007, launching a visionary Edinburgh-based internet television company.

It was while she was driving that forward that, in 2009 and heavily pregnant, life took a dramatic twist. "I was really very poorly," she recalls. "I was paralysed for six months. It was a miracle that we both survived."

As she recovered Sharon occupied herself taking a Masters in psychology. When she did venture back to work, it wasn't in the hothouse of the business world, but a civil service position with Health Scotland analysing addictive behaviour.

But while that was fulfilling, her real passion has always been education. And now, it appears, she's straddling the worlds of business and education, helping to mould the next generation of business minds.

Far from creating apprentices, what she has in mind is equipping business students with the vital skills to think for themselves, to launch their own businesses and push the Scottish economy into some kind of optimistic future.

Recently she unveiled the college's Nuclei business support unit, a base for up to ten new student companies, where those studying the vital components of running a firm can also have hands-on experience of actually doing it. Dubbed the "incubator", it provides office equipment and the support of the college's business lecturers.

Alongside that ground-breaking idea is her other pet project, a six-month course for 12 students, aged between 16 and 19, selected for a new style of learning which takes them out of the lecture theatre and into real-life business meetings and contact-building environments. The incubator is one way for people who want to start up a business in a safe environment, with experts around them to help," she says. "And I'm trying to set up courses so people have a business running from day one, so it's not all lectures and sitting in class.

"I want to promote enterprise and entrepreneurship," she adds. "So when people do leave the college they will have the ability to be agile and to problem solve and respond quickly - all key to working in industry."

She stuck her head above the parapet in 2006 to enter The Apprentice. And today she'd like to see more young people follow the lead - not necessarily on TV, but prepared to wear with pride their determination. "I'd like to see more ambition and more hunger in young people. They are at an exciting stage in their lives, there needs to be more ambition."

As for The Apprentice, she'll watch with the rest of us, grateful to have been among the select few who did it, and slightly envious of the next 16 to be put through their paces. "I'm glad I did it," she says. "I learned a lot about myself. I look back and I'm chuffed. It was all good. And, yes, I'd do it again."

The Apprentice, BBC One, Wednesdays at 9pm
Appeared Edinburgh Evening News, 21 March 2012
www.edinburghnews.com

It don't mean a thing..it's no more than a casual fling

SHE doesn't sound like some kind of scarlet woman. She doesn't purr or pout and drop saucy lines into the conversation. In fact, she could be the woman next door.

It's entirely possible that she be could your wife. Or, perhaps, it's your husband she's sleeping with. "Am I a mistress?," Christine* ponders the question for a second. Being labelled as someone's "bit on the side" doesn't fit her quite middle-of-the-road image. After all she's a mother in her mid-forties, married for ten years, in a professional, demanding job. Well-educated, politely spoken and, she insists, absolutely in control.

"A mistress in my mind - that's got financial and material benefits, it's a bit one-sided. So no, I definitely don't see myself as a mistress, more of a," she pauses, then adds: "a 'special' friend."

Perhaps even more at odds with the image of the "other woman", is the key element to what is motivating this middle-class mum from East Lothian to leap into bed with an equally married lover.

It is, she points out without a trace of irony, all about keeping her own wounded marriage alive.

"I was so fed-up with my husband neglecting me," she confesses.

"The sexual relationship died and we became more like friends. Now there are lies and deceit, that's true. But now I have more self-confidence and taking action and control of my life makes me feel good. It gives me optimism to go on with my marriage."

The notion that a marriage might actually be saved by an affair is an unlikely theory. But Christine maintains she's far from the only wife - or husband for that matter - in Lothian who's adopted drastic tactics to keep a wobbly relationship glued together.

"It's certainly not uncommon," she quickly points out. "There's a lot of it going on."

Since taking the plunge and logging on to a website that specialises in bringing unhappy spouses together for extra-marital flings, she's encountered quite a few married men who, just like her, have taken drastic action to boost an unhappy married life.

But can the theory that fractured marriages might not only survive but actually thrive with a third party in the background, really stand up to scrutiny? Or is an affair of the heart almost certainly the kiss of death for wedded bliss?

There's plenty of scope for a rescue plan to aid flailing modern marriages. January is, after all, prime-time for couples to head to the divorce lawyer.

This week's headlines confirm celebrities aren't immune - television presenter Andrea McLean and singer Seal and wife Heidi Klum have kicked off 2012 with news that married life has fallen by the wayside.

There's no suggestion that anyone else is involved in any of their relationships. But if Christine's theory is right, perhaps there should be.

"I amazed myself when I took the first step into doing this," she recalls.

"I thought 'hold on, what I have got with my husband is far too good to mess up'. I didn't want to break up the relationship, so this actually supplies that female need and in a lot of ways makes my marriage more stable."

According to a new survey for the internet dating site she joined, www.illicitencounters.com, cheating is more common than some might think: 17 per cent of married Scots say they've cheated at least once, while 21.41 per cent say they would if they were certain not to get caught out.

Of course, Christine's not suggesting having a fling can save every marriage. Indeed, perhaps vital to her relationship continuing may well be the fact that her husband is oblivious to what's going on behind his back.

"He doesn't know but even if he did, it wouldn't be in his nature to discuss it anyway," shrugs Christine. "I was annoyed at one point that he paid so little attention he didn't even notice, but now it actually makes my life a lot easier because I don't have to tell so many lies."

Modern working life of long hours and late meetings means it's easy for Christine to hide her secret dates with the lover she met via the website. "I work away from home, I generally don't have a regular time that I'm in at night. But there have been close calls," she adds. "I met one lovely man who turned out to stay on the same street as me. I said 'hold on, this isn't on', it was just too close to home."

Cheating isn't in her nature, says Christine, 47. Indeed it took an unusual chain of events to set her on course of sleeping with another man after ten years of marriage. "He discovered that his ex-wife had moved on into a lesbian civil partnership and the sexual side of our relationship died.

"He kept saying he would go for counselling, but didn't. Then while he was making excuses, I found out he was seeing another woman."

Stung but aware his betrayal resulted from his feelings of confusion, Christine asked herself what she wanted. She didn't want to split up, so the alternative, she says, was to have an affair. Now she has a relationship with a married man which, she says, isn't love but is "friends with benefits".

There is, of course, the not insignificant issue of his wife. Quite probably at home, juggling kids and housework, unaware of just what her cheating hubby is up to.

"The men I've met tend to be very genuine men," insists Christine. "Quite often their wives are involved in full-blown affairs.

"But I don't want to break up any relationship, which is why there's an understanding at the outset that we both have something to lose if we're not careful. Neither is calling the shots."

n *Names have been changed.


'The passion fizzled out. Sex became non-existant'

SO can a fractured marriage be saved from complete collapse by having an affair?

Like Christine, Peter*, 40, found himself in a sexless marriage but with no appetite to actually end it.

"I'm great friends with my wife, we get on really well, but there's a need that isn't fulfilled," he says.

"But I don't want to go through a divorce and hurt my family. Some might say it's a bit selfish, but in my own way I'm thinking of my partner and children and what impact breaking up would have."

His first affair last year lasted five months. Today he's in the unusual situation of being married but definitely "looking".

"I've been married for nearly 20 years," adds Peter, an architect. "We married young, the wee one came along, my partner went through an early menopause and sex became non-existent.

"We went for counselling but it hasn't helped. The passion in our marriage just fizzled out.

"This hasn't been an easy decision and it's very dangerous territory. But I thought, I'm still young, I still need a bit of excitement. Yes it's a big risk but I think a lot of people are going through the same thing."

According to Rosie Freeman-Jones, spokeswoman for dating site Illicit Encounters, people seek extra-marital flings for myriad reasons. "Many feel bored, which may not be any reflection on their partner. Most people who join us tend to have been married an average of eight years.

"I think a lot of them miss the sparky bits at the start of a relationship, meeting people and exploring sexuality. They miss having some fun without having to worry about the nitty-gritty of life."

Many have similar stories to Christine and Peter - that their own sex lives have dwindled but don't particularly want their marriage to fail, she adds.

"If people are genuinely unhappy in a relationship, then they'll leave because there's no stigma to divorce these days. It's more common that there's an element of relationship missing but they don't consider it a complete 'deal breaker'."

Tim McConville, practice manager of Couple Counselling Lothian, cautions against thinking an affair is "good" for a marriage: "People have to ask what would happen if their partner was doing the same. Is everyone playing by the same rules and if they are, then why not talk it through?

"And if they're not prepared to talk, then they might have to ask what are their feelings for their partner."

There can be devastating implications, he adds. "When a partner comes across an affair it's a time of devastation for them, there can be immense grief and it feels like something has died.

"Sometimes it forces them to look at the relationship anew and they might well stay with their partner but both agree to see other people. At least that means everyone's playing by the same rules."

Contact Couples Counselling Lothian at www.cclothian.org.uk or call 0131-556 1527

Appeared Edinburgh Evening News January 2012
www.edinburghnews.com

I'm proud to have put us back in the frame

THE cafe door at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery swings open and the noise is quite unexpected for a sprawling Victorian building in the middle of a weekday afternoon.

There's a clatter of coffee cups and a constant buzz of chatter. Young mums are negotiating buggies through packed tables and there, in the middle of it all, gallery director James Holloway is laughing, hands gesturing flamboyantly, dapper in three-piece tweed suit, nattering with a couple of female visitors.

The racket might not be quite at the same decibel level that Holloway is about to experience as he - surprisingly for a man more acquainted with the genteel world of art - roars off towards retirement on the back of a 1000cc Ducati motorbike, leaving behind the gallery he's just helped steer through a GBP17.6 million revamp. But, like the growl of that gleaming motorbike, the sound of a busy portrait gallery is one that Holloway can't get enough of.

"Isn't it great?," he grins, striding through the cafe where perhaps one of the gallery's oddest portraits of all - a curious figure clutching a Brussels sprout plant with a candle sticking out the top - stares down on mums struggling with toddlers, the pensioners, the students and those drawn to see just what all that money buys you in terms of a refurbishment.

That particular Richard Waitte painting, he says, remains one of his favourites in the entire gallery. It is, he explains, about role reversal. The man holding the sprout plant with the candle is the Earl of Cromarty in the role of his fool - a lesson that behind every image is a much deeper, more complex story.

Perhaps it's particularly apt, then, that it's this portrait that tickles Holloway most of all. Delve deeper and you'll find there's much more to this gallery boss than initially meets the eye.

For a start, there's the lifelong love of daredevil speed and motorbikes - soon the 63-year-old will leave the decorous art world behind for an epic journey on his Ducati through Europe to the Italian Dolomites.

But if leather-clad biker is diametrically opposed to the traditional image of staid gallery boss, then what of Holloway's gleeful recollection of his time in the wrestling ring, when he swapped the National Gallery on the Mound for smack downs in front of roaring crowds of burly blokes in grim industrial towns?

"It was an antidote to galleries," he says with a broad grin. "It's easy to work in a gallery, and it can be a bit 'precious'. Yet here was this other world out there that was interesting and engaging and I saw there was more to life."

One anecdote that perhaps best sums up how at odds this image of art expert turned grappler is could be this - it was 1972 and Sussex-born Holloway, 23, with his cut-glass accent, and fresh from the Court- auld Institute of Art in London, had just arrived to work as a research assistant at the National Gallery, "ignorant as a swan" about Scotland and her art.

Keen to keep fit, he went to Meadowbank and spotted some lads wearing tracksuits.

"They all had Milton written on their tracksuits. I liked that. I thought 'Oh! Paradise Lost by Milton!'" It's fair to say 17th-century poets were not on the minds of the young chaps he'd encountered. Soon he discovered that, of course, "Milton" actually referred to Milton Road West, where their wrestling club was based.

Holloway, spry and lean, joined their ranks. His fellow wrestlers figured he was simply an attendant working at the National Gallery.

"To most of them, Goya was perfume and Rembrandt a cigar, they didn't care what I did," Holloway reflects. Besides, the gap in social backgrounds would soon be overcome after his first bout. "It was at Garscadden Town Hall, in the seventies, it was pretty rough. Everyone was shouting 'Come on, Jimmy, kill him! Kill him!' I won and was quite pleased," he says. "Then I realised the guy I'd been wrestling was called Jimmy too. It wasn't me they were shouting for, it was him. So, yes, we did get out of there pretty quickly."

He was good enough to wrestle at national level. But, by 30, the demands of training four nights a week plus a move to work at the National Museum Wales put an end to wrestling.

However, Holloway already had another outlet for the pent-up energy that working behind the scenes in the world of art couldn't quite burn off.

He had loved motorbikes since his youth when he acquired a BSA Bantam 250cc, which "broke down every weekend, I thought that was what bikes did". In Edinburgh he encountered bike dealer Ernie Page, who introduced him to a 350cc Ducati, the start of a love affair spanning decades and thousands of miles, with the odd bump and bruise thrown in.

"Oh yes, I've had a few falls, nothing terminal though," he smiles. "I came off around two and half years ago. Hit a bird at about 60mph. It hit my hand and knocked me sideways.

"I remember sliding under the bike, going along the road and then along the verge and thinking that any second now my leg will break. Then suddenly the bike slipped into a gully below and I walked away."

There were two casualties, however. "As I skidded along the grass, I ripped my boots and trousers completely off. So there I was, totally bare!"

Hopefully there will be no similar dramas during his epic European bike tour. And at least he'll have expert company. Former police motorcyclist, Alistair McLean, from Gorebridge - who he met during a Scottish National Portrait Gallery project which looked at the police in Scotland - will be by his side. Prior to that, Holloway heads to India for a catch-up with friends and to Canberra in Australia for a lecture.

In between, he'll find time to play French horn with the Colinton Orchestra, attempt to conquer his inability to garden and plot some kind of vision for how he'll spend the rest of his retirement.

The fact that he's retiring right after the gallery's triumphant reopening - and being awarded a CBE in the New Year Honours List for services to the arts - is, he insists, entirely logical.

"I have always wanted to get the portrait gallery up and running and firing on all cylinders - to use a motorbike analogy. I was in charge for 14 years, I didn't want to coast," he adds. "I wanted to go out, if possible, on a high, feeling I've achieved something."

Visitor figures confirm the gallery is, indeed, on a high. There were 52,000 visitors in December - roaring towards achieving the 300,000 visitors per annum the gallery has set its sights on.

Still, Holloway concedes that he goes with mixed feelings. Sadness to be leaving hardworking staff and friends but delight to depart at the start of a revitalised era with his number two, Nicola Kalinsky, in his place as director. "In the early Seventies, this place was out of fashion, people disliked the Victorian architecture, and portrait was seen as terribly outdated," he points out.

"Now the whole thing is completely changed, it's one of the city's favourite buildings. Portraits, from being downtrodden and portrayed as a joke are now fashionable.

"At last the gallery is getting the appreciation that it deserves," he adds.

"It has a fantastic collection, brilliant staff. It's nice to go feeling it's finally going to be firmly placed on the cultural map."

Face to face

James Holloway retires after 14 years as director of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery.

In that time he's overseen the building's refurbishment as well as placed commissions for new work, organised groundbreaking exhibitions and acquired coveted works of art.

But while the purchase of an Allan Ramsay portrait of philosopher David Hume is among his fondest memories, the loss of one painting still grieves him.

"We had a painting which had been with us for about 50 years," he says. "It was a portrait of an Arab princess and her African Negress slave painted in 1740 by Walter Frier.

"The story behind it was that John Henderson of Fordell in Fife was shipwrecked by pirates and rescued by this princess. He married her and brought her back to Scotland with her slave.

"I actually thought [the painting] belonged to us. Then suddenly out of the blue came a letter from the owner saying it would be removed as he was going to sell it.

"We tried to raise the money but couldn't. I don't know where it is now, possibly in the Middle East. I still kick myself over it."


Evening News 31 Jan 2012

You're left to wonder why, but the only one who knows is gone

FOR a long, long time Jacqui Walton craved answers. Torment gnawed at her, one word haunted her thoughts: Why? Questions niggled every waking moment. Was there something she should have done? Could she have stopped it, did she do something wrong?

What had happened was painfully real: her husband had killed himself. A harsh, horrible, agonising fact that plunged her into the deepest of grief and the darkest of places.

But with his death and the pain of mourning came endless questions. None of which, Jacqui eventually realised, could ever be fully answered.

"I wanted to find the answer to why he did what he did," she says softly, recalling the anguished hours she spent trawling websites about mental health issues and suicide and reading heartbreaking posts on grieving widows' forums. "But now I know that there is no answer. The only person that can answer that question is gone."

Today she still grieves quietly for her husband but time has made the 50-year-old mum-of-two stronger. She's come to understand that what drove Mike to take his life at the age of 44, was a complex jigsaw of events and thoughts. None of them terribly significant to most people, perhaps, but for Mike, utterly devastating.

Unravelling the reasons why someone might suddenly tip into the darkest of places where the only release from their misery is the most drastic of acts, borders on the impossible.

Yesterday heartbreaking images of Gary Speed's widow Louise following an inquest into his death in November - which was unable to conclude if his death was accidental or intentional - revealed the strain of her grief. Her long blonde hair curtained her face as she fought to retain composure after giving harrowing evidence in which she spoke of their final row.

The Wales boss, who hours earlier had appeared relaxed and jovial on a TV sports programme, had joined her at a party. It had ended with him being pushed into a pool fully clothed, but, according to Mrs Speed was "all good fun".

At home the couple rowed over something trivial - so slight that now she can't even remember what. She ended up locked out of the house, slept in the car and next day discovered her husband dead.

Sadly, the inquest coincided with news of another high-profile suspected suicide - that of The Bill actor Colin Tarrant, 59.

Today Jacqui, sadly, can appreciate what both men's families are enduring. Like Louise Speed, she too found her husband's lifeless body. There was the nightmare of breaking the news to their two children and family, official inquiries, paperwork and then long nights alone wondering why.

Mike, shy, quiet - "he kept his thoughts to himself," recalls Jacqui - had been diagnosed with generalised anxiety disorder and depression years earlier. He'd attempted to take his life back then, and the risk he might try again had cast a shadow over them.

Still, it didn't prepare her for the horror she was about to face.

"I couldn't make any sense at all," she recalls. "Mike had depression and also anxiety. We all get anxious from time to time. But for Mike, what seemed small to other people would be quite significant to him."

His depression was diagnosed in the early 90s. Mike, quiet and uncomfortable about making a fuss, was not the kind to "bother the GP".

"In some ways he was really laid back about things. But in others he got very caught up. I'd think 'what are you getting so upset about that for?'," recalls Jacqui, who lives in south Edinburgh.

"It came to a head when he had two attempts the same year. I got into a panic. You question yourself and wonder if you have done something to cause this. You try to keep focused and try to keep the children occupied as much as possible to let him have some peace and quiet."

Mike, a software engineer, was prescribed anti-depressants and treated at the Royal Edinburgh. He seemed to recover, but for the next 13 years Jacqui lived with the constant fear that one day she'd return home and who knew what she might find. . . "There were times when you just got on with life," she adds. "But you'd always be thinking ahead of yourself, trying to decide if I do this will he be OK or I wonder how he will feel about that? When you love someone, you put up with the ups and the downs."

It was 2006. A family bereavement and Mike's new job had brought stress and more responsibility - factors that may well have tipped him over the edge. This time, his suicide was complete.

Jacqui sought support from friends only to realise none could fully appreciate what she was going through. "I was aware that friends had their own families and I didn't want to be a burden on them," she adds.

So she shared her feelings with other widows in online support groups but found no mention of suicide or mental health as a cause of death. Jacqui sent out messages asking if any had experienced loss through suicide and replies slowly came in. A new support group began to take root.

She now runs Widowed by Suicide, a website that is helping more than 100 widows from across the globe through their grief.

She also shared her experiences through the Scottish Government's See Me campaign, which fights to end stigma surrounding mental illness and has started working in administration for local mental health charity, Penumbra.

"I feel as though I'm doing some good in the background," she explains. "I often find when I talk about Mike's suicide, the person I'm talking to usually knows someone who's completed suicide, attempted or is on medication for a mental health problem."

She points out that the only guarantee depression and, sadly, suicide, brings is that anyone, anywhere can be affected. "Sometimes the person will seem to have everything to live for: loving family, profession, financial security," adds Jacqui. "And it can take something terrible like that to happen to someone like Gary Speed for others to become more aware of these things."

For help dealing with the loss through suicide of a partner, go to www.widowedbysuicide.org.uk

Help at hand before sense of despair loses control

An estimated one in five of the Scottish population will experience depression at some point in their lives.

And each year around 300,000 Scots consult a doctor for help with feelings of depression.

Meanwhile, around one in ten suffers from anxiety or some kind of phobia, which can also lead to depression.

According to the Scottish Government's See Me campaign - which aims to end stigma and misunderstandings surrounding mental illness - one in four of us (28 per cent) will experience some kind of mental health problem at some point in our lives.

The campaign (www.seemescotland.org) adds that despite mental health problems being relatively common, many who have experienced them claim to have been confronted by physical abuse, discrimination, harassment and feelings of being stigmatised.

While the incidence of depression and anxiety is higher amongst women than men, Scottish statistics show that men are more likely to be driven to take their own lives.

There were 781 deaths by suicide in Scotland in 2010. The suicide rate for males that year was almost three times that of women.

According to Norman Craig, chair of support organisation the Samaritans in Scotland, people can be driven to desperate acts by many combinations of various events and feelings.

"Quite often it's a sense of despair in a situation which they feel that can't get out of," he says.

"Mental illness is a major factor in many of the calls we receive. Financial issues, relationships, childhood issues, abuse through relationships too.

"What's important is that people talk them through."

Samaritans in Edinburgh handles up to 60 calls every day from people struggling with suicidal thoughts. The organisation can be contacted on 087457 909090 or e-mail jo@samaritans.org. For more details, go to www.samaritans.org.

Meanwhile, today has been declared "Well Wednesday" by help organisation Breathing Space, which provides an online and telephone help service for people experiencing depression and anxiety issues.

It is aimed at anyone experiencing difficulties and unhappiness in their lives and their families.

Breathing Space can be contacted on 0800 83 85 87 or through www.breathingspacescotland.co.uk.
Appeared Edinburgh Evening News 1 Feb 2012
*picture posed by model

'My disability doesn't stop me being a thrill-seeker'

The pure white snow was crisp and the cool breeze which blew in Andrew Giffin's face as he careered down the challenging black ski run was fresh and clean.

Around him was breathtaking Austrian mountain scenery. And beneath him the crunch of virgin snow as his skis left snaking parallel curves on the pristine piste.

He was racing down the slope at around 40mph. Just the skis, the speed, and the skier in front, leading Andrew on one of the most thrilling ski runs of his life.

But the black run dash - the kind of adrenalin-fuelled run that would leave any experienced skier gasping for breath - was for Andrew just another action-packed episode in an impressively action-packed life lived, not with debilitating disability, but almost in spite of it.

For while cerebral palsy might have placed the strapping young man in the confines of his motorised wheelchair, what it hasn't done is prevent him embracing an action man, high-octane lifestyle of speed, danger and thrills.

His list of adventurous activities is exhausting: skiing, diving, hot air ballooning, even gliding. And it couldn't be further removed from the life of the young soldier, just a year older than Robin, whose ultimate sacrifice on a foreign field 70 years ago, has helped make Andrew's remarkable achievements possible . . .

"Andrew is amazing," nods his carer Audrey Taylor, a mum-of-three who works for support organisation the Thistle Foundation and has spent the past eight months working with Andrew, being regularly surprised by the 24-year-old as she tends to his needs at his home in Inverleith.

"It is incredible to see him on his bi-ski. He goes off-piste and does the black runs. His bi-ski is attached to another skier but he has to work at it as well. And the speed he gets to is incredible. There's no fear."

She saw it for herself when she accompanied Andrew on a thrilling week in picture pretty Niederau in Austria's Wildschonau Valley, set between the Kitzbuheler Alps and the Wilder Kaiser Mountains. There Andrew sped down black runs, savoured powdery snow off-piste and then, apres-ski, partied just like all the other skiers and snowboarders at the resort's nightclubs.

Desperate to enjoy more downhill thrills, he followed that up with a trip north to the Cairngorms to catch the last of the snow there, hooking up his bi-ski once again and embarking on run after run, manoeuvring his head and shoulders the way skiers flex ankles, knees and feet, as he expertly carved his way down the mountainside.

The pictures hanging on the walls of his comfortable ground-floor flat in Kinnear Road reveal skiing - challenging enough as that is - is far from Andrew's only experience of breathtaking adventure sports.

He may need round-the-clock care and support to help cope with the very basics of day-to-day life, but when it comes to thrill-seeking adrenalin kicks, nothing, it seems, is impossible. One photograph shows him soaring 6500ft above the African savannah in the wicker basket of a hot air balloon. Another has him sailing in the Forth in a two-man canoe.

Under the water, he's enjoyed snorkelling and, back on dry land, whizzed around Knockhill race track near Dunfermline in a Porsche. Soon he'll take to the skies again, this time taking off from Edinburgh Airport learning how to fly a glider.

And when he wants to unwind, he steers his motorised wheelchair to his favourite club, Mood, at Greenside Place, relaxes at nearby Walkabout or nips along to the cinema or a pop concert. Of course for any typical 24-year-old, none of that would be terribly remarkable. But for Andrew, whose brain and nervous system have been affected since birth by his condition, every day poses challenges that require constant help and endless support.

And it's support which is rooted in an organisation which evolved around the tragic fate of another young man, only a year older than Andrew.

The Thistle Foundation was launched in 1944 by Sir Francis Tudsbery and his wife Lady Isabella who had set up home at Champfleurie House and estate near Linlithgow, back when their son, Robin, was just a toddler.

The family had watched First World War servicemen returning from the front, battle-weary, injured and often in dire circumstances, and pledged to try to help. As they waved Robin off to do his own war duty, the couple busied themselves planning what would become the Thistle Foundation.

But while Britain celebrated the ceasefire in May 1945, terrible news arrived at Champfleurie - confirmation that Robin, 25, had been killed, one of the war's last victims, when his armoured car was blown up crossing a bridge in north-east Germany.

The grieving couple pushed on with their plans and created homes for ex-servicemen in a 22-acre site in Craigmillar. At its heart was a stunning memorial to their son, Robin Chapel. Every detail is a reminder of his brief life - down to candlesticks and the cross on the altar cast from melted silver taken from his personal possessions to the carvings of animals and birds reflecting his love of nature. Today it is a war memorial and a listed building.

But while the chapel is a touching reminder of a life cut short, Andrew, as he careers down the ski slope or sails high into the sky in a hot air balloon is a poignant modern example of how to live life - whatever hand it deals - to the full.

"He loves to be out in the fresh air," adds Audrey, who works for the Thistle Foundation. "Andrew does so many sports you lose track. When he's not busy doing all that, he's at the cinema or off socialising. I struggle to keep up with him. He's a lovely person and he's proof that having a disability doesn't mean you can't do what you want to do."

Audrey spends three days and two nights a week looking after Andrew as part of the Edinburgh-based charity's supported living service, which provides round-the-clock care.

When he's not seeking action-packed thrills, he's to be found in the much calmer surroundings of Drylaw Parish Church where raised beds in the grounds have been provided to enable wheelchair users to enjoy a spot of gardening. Or he'll be at Garvald Centre in Montpelier Terrace, which provides art and craft facilities, where Andrew has revealed a flair for creating quirky pottery penguins so impressive he's had people ask if he'll take orders for more.

According to Thistle Foundation spokesman Lawson Auden, Andrew is a striking example of how the organisation ensures even those with severe disabilities can lead fulfilling and often exciting lives.

"The ethos of the organisation has remained the same since it was founded. At that time it was very forward-thinking - the idea that injured veterans could live in their own home with their families while receiving medical support was quite unheard of.

"We have carried that forward and today we support people in their own homes. We still provide support for veterans, helping them make the transition from army to civilian life, but we now also support people like Andrew."

For action man Andrew, it means careering down an Austrian black run tucked into his bi-ski, a skill learned on the dry slope at Hillend.

"I love it," says Andrew, a huge grin spreading across his face. "I like going fast. I liked going up in the balloon too. It was amazing. I could see all the animals below me.

"I was very brave," he nods, "very brave".

For more details about the Thistle Foundation's work, go to www.thistle.org.uk

The facts

Cerebral palsy is caused by injury or abnormality in the brain, usually while the unborn baby is still developing in the womb.

The term covers a group of motor conditions which cause physical disability. Symptoms can range from very mild to more severe, as in Andrew's case.

In years gone by he could have faced life in an institution, but modern support and care meant Andrew was able to leave home like any other young man and live independently in his own surroundings, supported by Thistle Foundation live-in carers.

LEADING THE WAY

The Thistle Foundation was launched in 1944 and was visionary for its age in its determination to help provide accessible housing and medical support to enable disabled veterans to live in their own homes with their families.

Over the decades, the organisation has evolved and expanded to offer support to a wider population of people with disabilities and health conditions, through its supported living programme and health services.

It also runs a lifestyle management course for veterans to help ex-military personnel adapt to civilian life. It supports about 100 people between its Edinburgh and Renfrew bases.
Evening News 21 Mar 2012

WRITING is ON WALL FOR CITY'S BOOK OF KNOWLEDGE

EVERY page was stuffed with words of wisdom, fascinating facts and illustrations of curious creatures, sharing space with advice on how to make a life-saving potion and how many children a marriage might bring.

The Encyclopaedia Britannica was vital, if weighty, reading for anyone with a thirst for knowledge, who simply had to find out how to make a remedy from millipedes to help cure their urethral blockages, or felt the need to gaze upon an illustration of a giraffe which, unfortunately, looked more like a deformed deer.

In the mid-18th century, the Edinburgh-based publication was precisely what every learned gentleman and scholar required as pride of place in their ever-growing library.

Even though large chunks of some volumes would be penned by a poverty-stricken man as he leaned over the top of his landlady's washtub - and who, incidentally, would eventually take to the skies in one of Europe's most bizarre flying expeditions - the Encyclopaedia Britannica became an essential weapon in the armoury of the great minds of the Scottish Enlightenment.

Of course, the days of groundbreaking discoveries and world-changing ideas thrashed out in New Town drawing rooms were consigned to the history books long ago. And now, it has just been announced, so has the book of knowledge itself.

The US-based publisher of the modern Encyclopaedia Britannica confirmed yesterday it will no longer produce printed versions of the weighty tome. Instead, our love affair with apps and tablets, smartphones and websites, means the final chapter has been written in nearly 250 years of reference book history.

The modern 32-volume print edition, which originated in a small Edinburgh printing house, will be replaced by an expanded digital version aimed at taking on Wikipedia.

It's a fate that surely none of the visionary and, it must be said, slightly eccentric characters behind those first editions could have dreamed of as they ploughed a challenging furrow through the world of knowledge, in an age when finding something out involved more than logging on to Google.

And if they had done, it's likely that diminutive engraver and printer Andrew Bell would have made his feelings about the matter known. A mere 4ft 6in tall, he could easily have been overlooked by the great and good of Edinburgh, as he set about delivering knowledge right under their learned noses.

Alongside bookseller and printer Colin Macfarquhar, and driven by a determination to produce a book of knowledge unlike anything ever seen before, Bell set about creating the first ever Encyclopaedia Britannica from a printing office in Nicolson Street - setting in chain a sequence of events that would help educate millions across the world.

Quite how or why the pair became founders of one of the world's best-known reference books, not even the Encyclopaedia Britannica can explain. For a start Bell, born in 1726, was the son of a baker with little formal education.

He was certainly striking. He made up for his lack of stature by ensuring he always rode the tallest horse available in Edinburgh, dismounting by the means of a ladder, a feat often accompanied by loud cheers from bemused onlookers.

Up close, he was remarkable too. He had crooked legs and an enormous nose which, bizarrely, he would sometimes draw even more attention to by augmenting it with an odd looking paper-mache version.

Bell served his apprenticeship as an engraver and would go on to produce almost all the copperplate engravings for the first to fourth editions of the encyclopaedia, among them graphic depictions of dissected female pelvises and foetuses for articles on midwifery that enraged King George III so much that he ordered the offending pages be ripped from every copy.

But Bell and Macfarquhar needed someone to produce the actual words for their book of knowledge.

William Smellie was a master printer who'd left school aged 12. In 1765, he received a letter from Bell asking him to take on the formidable task "to prepare the whole work for the press". They formed the Society of Gentlemen, three- strong, with a vision to create a definitive dictionary of arts and sciences. The first edition of the Britannica was published in instalments between 1768 and 1771, an age when the dodo was still in existence, trial by water could condemn you to death and measles was a killer.

Its pages faithfully recorded that baldness was cured with freshly-cut onions, California was a large country in the West Indies and woman was "female of man".

Bought by 3000 people, it was successful enough to warrant an updated second edition, but a row between Smellie and the Duke of Buccleuch - a major subscriber - over the inclusion of biographical information led to his resignation.

His place was taken by one of the city's most colourful characters of the times, aviation fanatic James Tytler, the first man to successfully fly a hot air balloon in Great Britain.

He had left university at 15 and his fortunes had already swung from whaling ship surgeon to the debtors' prison. As editor, he penned 9000 pages - increasing it from three volumes to nine - while hunched over his washerwoman landlady's upturned washtub.

Tytler was paid a pittance for his efforts and supplemented his meagre income by working with Robert Burns writing lyrics for Scottish ballads and, bizarrely, writing a guide to Edinburgh's prostitutes which rated their performance, looks and condition of their teeth.

It was while researching the encyclopaedia that he became fascinated with flight. And by 1784 he had made aviation history in his pioneering Grand Edinburgh Fire Balloon, launching himself upwards from a spot at Abbeyhill and soaring to around 40ft before settling, rather unfortunately, in a dung pile in Restalrig.

The encyclopaedia's fortunes were even more uplifting. By 1830 it was into its seventh edition and had gained wide credibility. There were eminent contributors such as Sir Walter Scott writing about chivalry, drama and romance; George Bernard Shaw on socialism; Leon Trotsky on Lenin. Harry Houdini expounded on the subject of conjuring, Albert Einstein on time and space and Marie Curie on radium.

Unlike the dodo it survived, eventually switching its headquarters to London and then the US where travelling salesmen sold thousands of copies to families who saw it as a middle class status symbol.

The decision to end its print version, however, is no surprise to second-hand book dealer William Lytle, of Edinburgh Books in West Port.

"It's been impossible to sell for years," he says. "I'd have thought the writing was on the wall for a long time, that it would stop publishing.

"I am sometimes offered later editions but to be honest I'm more likely to rip out the illustrations and throw away the rest of the book.

"They were beautifully illustrated," he adds. "And they had the top guys of the day writing for them, the likes of James Clerk Maxwell was science editor, for example. Volumes one and three of the first edition alone are priced at around GBP6000, later editions don't sell."


Weighing in at 129lb

ENCYCLOPAEDIA Britannica is the world's oldest English language encyclopaedia. However, the 2010 edition, comprising 32 volumes and weighing in at 129lb, will be the last printed version.

At one time the encyclopaedia was sold door to door by travelling salesmen to families who regarded its ownership as a vital status symbol akin to a new car or latest model of television set.

Over the years Britannica's authors have included experts such as Albert Einstein, Marie Curie and Leon Trotsky.

Explorer Ernest Shackleton took a volume of the encyclopaedia on his ill-fated Antarctic expedition. He and his crew amused themselves by reading and debating items from its pages before finally burning it, page by page, in a bid to keep warm.

Its Edinburgh roots were cut when it moved its headquarters to London at the turn of the last century. Its main base is now in Chicago.

Encyclopaedia Britannica Inc president Jorge Cauz said the decision to axe printed editions was "nothing to do with Wikipedia or Google".

"This has to do with the fact that now Britannica sells its digital products to a large number of people.

"The sales of printed encyclopaedias have been negligible for several years," Mr Cauz said. "We knew this was going to come."

Edinburgh Evening News 15 March 2012

Kicking soccer into something more familiar

THEY call it the beautiful game, but these days fans of Scottish football may well be struggling to see the beauty in cash-strapped clubs, rows over sectarian songs and half-empty stadia on grey, windswept Saturday afternoons.

But never mind, because thousands of miles away on a football pitch in a small, sun-baked Californian "Gold Rush" town, the Corte Madera branch of the Tartan Army - youth division, clearly - is being put through its paces.

With a flash of tartan, small heads sweating under 'See You Jimmy' bunnets and an encouraging Scottish accent ringing in their ears, young Americans are embracing Scottish football and learning the fine art of taking a decent shy, the names of SPL top teams and - perhaps a tall order these days - just who our best-known players might be.

And the sad fact that Scottish teams may have some way to go before we can boast of having a home-grown Lionel Messi in our midst is of little consequence when the 'clan' swings into play and, for a short while at least, Scottish 'fitba' is once more an international player . . .

The Scottish-themed soccer camps have been organised by two former Edinburgh University students who hit on the idea after visiting America's west coast and seeing for themselves the enthusiasm there for Scottish culture and, of course, our soccer skills.

Inspired by the thought of combining both elements under the umbrella of a single Scottish-themed sports camp, Edinburgh City midfielder Scott Macfarlane, 23, and East Fife defender Andy Cook, 25, launched Trans-Atlantic Soccer last year.

The first tartan clad camps, Coaches in Kilts, kicked off last year at Corte Madera on the edge of San Francisco Bay and Saratoga, in the heart of California wine country and on the fringes of Silicon Valley.

There, youngsters received a tartan trimmed taste of silky Scottish football skills - playing as part of a 'clan' with Saltires fluttering around the pitch and Scottish qualified coaches, appropriately attired in kilts, flown out to California in order to pass on their knowledge of the game.

Once the American youngsters had exhausted small legs on the soccer pitch, attention was turned to learning more about Scotland's culture and sports, in a series of Highland Games challenges that, among other activities with a Scottish flavour, saw them tossing the caber and doing the Highland fling.

"It's almost taken for granted that because we're Scottish, we're experts at soccer," explains Scott, a former Balerno High School pupil who now lives in Polwarth.

"The kids that come to our camps might not be fantastic footballers - they are really just beginning the sport and usually their coaches are parents who don't really know much about the game themselves.

"For example, they call shooting a 'power kick' and I've heard them telling the kids to kick and run more rather than trying to pass the ball.

"However, the kids are hugely enthusiastic. They want to learn to play and they want to learn about Scotland."

He adds: "So much of the population there claims to be part Scottish - it felt like every time I spoke to someone they'd ask where I was from and did I know so and so.

"And we felt that if we could provide a football camp that also had a real Scottish twist, then they'd really go for it."

Scott, who studied sports management and now handles sports sponsorship deals at marketing firm Material, and Andy, of Dalry, a PE teacher at Forrester High, took the plunge to launch the unique camps after graduating and finding job opportunities were as scarce as a Scottish Cup in a Hibs trophy cabinet.

Along with fellow Edinburgh University graduate James Hair, 26, who now works with accountancy firm Ernst & Young, they received financial backing from the Princes Scotland Youth Business Trust.

But it was a call out of the blue from one of the best-known names in Scottish football that gave them the final push to launch their camps Stateside.

"Gordon Smith had just left his role as chief executive of the SFA and it turned out he'd heard about what we were trying to do," recalls Scott.

"He called up and said he'd like to meet us. He said he could identify with what we wanted to do because he's spent time in America.

"He agreed to be our honorary president so we could get things off the ground."

Their soccer business has also branched out further, and also runs tours for youngsters from Scotland and around the world, bringing them on custom-made excursions to the UK's top Premier League and SPL stadia. There, they tour trophy rooms of big name clubs including Manchester United and Manchester City, learn about the importance of health and fitness from top-level coaches and take inspiration from visiting some of the biggest-name venues in football.

Meanwhile, this summer the Coaches in Kilts courses will expand further, doubling in size with camps run in the San Francisco Bay and Silicon Valley areas of California, with around 120 young Americans expected to take part.

Eventually, the aim is to branch out even more, running camps during autumn as well as summer and with a programme of Coaches in Kilts in southern California too.

It's the unique combination of football and Scotland that has touched a nerve with the Californian children and families, agrees East Fife defender Andy.

"They just seem to have a kind of affiliation with the Scottish people. Everyone over there is either a quarter Scottish or an eighth Irish, so everyone relates to us.

"And because they are over on the west coast and so far away, they actually see Scotland as quite an exotic place - funny, I know - but they love the accent and everything about Scotland."

Thankfully, awkward questions about who our most famous players might be and whether Scotland has ever won the World Cup don't pose too many problems, he jokes.

"Okay, there's not much mention of East Fife, admittedly, but they talk about Celtic and Rangers and want to know which side of the Old Firm you're on.

"They do seem to think they are the only two teams in Scotland, so you find yourself just nodding along.

"I tend to skip over the famous players question and refer them to all the Scottish managers and coaches like Sir Alex Ferguson and the other Scottish managers of Premiership clubs.

"I say that okay, we might not have that many great players just now," he jokes, "but just look at the great coaches we produce!"

n For information about Trans-Atlantic Soccer's matchday and weekend English Premiership tours for school groups and youth teams, go to http://www.transatlanticsoccer.com/english-premier-league-tours

Earning Stripes

Scottish football is suffering from a downturn, so could America be the answer?

After all, some Scottish players have found success across the Atlantic.

Former Rangers player John Spencer is head coach of Major League Soccer (MLS) team Portland Timbers. Last week, he signed Scotland international and fellow ex-Ger Kris Boyd.

One-time Celtic and Aberdeen player Jamie Smith appears for Colorado Rapids in MLS, while former Hibs man Tam McManus was there in 2008-9.

Scot Steve Nicol, who played with Liverpool, was coach of New England Revolution, and became the longest-tenured head coach to lead a single MLS club.

Former Dunfermline and Hibs player Stephen Glass played with Carolina Railhawks in the professional North American Soccer League until he joined Shamrock Rovers earlier this year as assistant manager.

Ex-Old Firm player Maurice Johnston joined MLS's Kansas City Wizards in 1996 and was director of soccer for Canadian side Toronto FC until last year.

Appeared Edinburgh Evening News, 3rd Feb 2012

HOW GOEBBELS GAVE TITANIC A NAZI TWIST

THE band played on as the sumptuous passenger liner sailed serenely through the icy waters, a spectacular vision just moments from tragedy.

Everyone, of course, knows what happened next. The Titanic, the jewel of the White Star Line, was doomed to a watery grave, 1517 souls lost, and the tragedy that befell the fastest and most impressive of vessels on her ill-fated maiden voyage 100 years ago would endure.

The story of the Titanic was so overwhelming that it would be told time and time again, sometimes less accurately than others. Yet who would have thought that years later, as Hitler's Germany brought terror to Europe, it would be this most awful of seafaring tragedies which would receive star billing?

And that the Titanic would, along with Mary, Queen of Scots and the victims of the Second Boer War, be recruited by the Nazis in their bid to storm their way to victory?

"It's actually hard to see how anyone could make what happened to the Titanic any more tragic, but the Nazis did," says Edinburgh-based film historian Ian Garden, who yesterday launched his book, The Third Reich's Celluloid War, which lifts the lid on the way the Germans portrayed their enemies in lavish wartime propaganda films.

"What's interesting is how they actually turned what happened to the Titanic into an anti-British film. The film's storyline went that the White Star Line's share price had been falling and the only way to get it back up was to go to New York ahead of schedule, regardless of the safety of passengers or icebergs. None of that mattered, according to the film.

"Then they introduced five German characters who had never existed in real life. One said things like 'Watch out!' and 'What about the icebergs?' and so on. Of course, he survived the sinking and went on to give evidence at a trial afterwards - all fiction."

The story behind the Nazi's Titanic movie features in his book and, by coincidence, will be explored on Channel 5 tonight in Nazi Titanic Revealed, a documentary which looks at how the film was used as part of Reich propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels' machine.

However, it was just one of hundreds of German wartime movies - many banned after the war - released in an effort to help maintain German morale and portray the British in an unflattering light.

For just as British audiences sat down to boo and hiss at typically blonde, blue-eyed and callous Aryan Nazis in movies like Casablanca, Went the Day Well? and In Which We Serve, cinema fans in Germany were gripped by films which portrayed British exploits through history as anything but honourable.

The Third Reich's hope, says retired bank executive Ian, 55, of Rocheid Park, Fettes, was to leave German movie fans convinced that Hitler was doing the world a favour by attempting to crush imperialistic and brutal Britain.

"The British were bringing out their own movies, of course, which were also fiction, set in the war, and all very effective," says Ian, who was inspired to research Third Reich films after watching British films of the era.

"The German films were set in the historical past of their enemies - usually the British past. Some were anti-Jewish based on Jewish characters who did terrible things. Goebbels felt that for propaganda to be effective, it had to be based on truth."

Among the most brutal, he recalls, is a 1941 German movie, Ohm Krüger - Uncle Kruger - based on the British actions in South Africa during the Second Boer War between the autumn of 1899 and the spring of 1902.

"Germany wanted to say that British invented the concentration camp," adds Ian. "These were actually internment camps for looking after women and children of guerilla fighters and we weren't going out of our way to massacre people. Indeed, people died because of the poor conditions and dysentery and almost as many British soldiers died in the camps as women and children.

"But that didn't come out in the film. Instead, it has a go at us for being murderers."

One of the characters in the film, a concentration camp commander responsible for the deaths of women, was portly and bald and bore a resemblance to Winston Churchill, while Queen Victoria was portrayed as a drunkard.

However, the movie later backfired on the Germans. For as their cities were flattened by Allied bombing, the scenes of Boer War refugees' destroyed homes in the film were judged too provocative and the movie was banned in 1945.

But it was just one of some 1300 feature films produced between 1933 and 1945 deemed crucial to helping build morale in the country, to develop anti-Allied feelings and hammer home the pro-Nazi message.

"Ninety per cent were entertainment films," adds Ian, who will give a talk on his research at Oxgangs Library tonight. "They were comedies and musicals, detective stories and the like, intended to entertain. The other ten per cent - probably around 100 films in all - were politically orientated.

"But I'd argue that any film of the era had a degree of propaganda associated with it before it could be released."

The English, he adds, are singled out by the Nazi filmmakers and some movies portray Scots and Irish as their victims.

"One film, The Heart of The Queen, about Mary, Queen of Scots, was largely true but was seen by the Allies as having twisted history. It showed Elizabeth inviting Mary to come to England for refuge only to then have her head chopped off, which as we know, wasn't the case.

"There were pro-Irish films, too, which worked very well in Germany in that people identified England as a common enemy, but when they were shown in German-occupied countries like Czechoslovakia and Poland, the movie-goers there still saw the Nazis as being their enemy." Ian, whose role with the Bank of Scotland led to him setting up its first German branch, says the movies were one vital way for the Nazi regime to impose its beliefs on the German public.

"Once at the cinema, people would watch the newsreels and propaganda documentaries, too. A rule was imposed that meant that people couldn't just come in and watch the main feature film, they had to be in the cinema before that so they had to watch everything and they weren't allowed to leave until the end."

Some movies, he adds, had equally dramatic and sometimes even more astonishing real-life stories attached to them. Such as the graphic and shocking anti-Jewish film, Jud Süss, based on a true story about a Jew found guilty of murder, torture and the rape of a Christian woman who was eventually hanged for his crimes.

"As a result of the film, people went rushing out into the streets, attacking Jewish premises. The lead actor, Ferdinand Marian, knew it was controversial. So when he delivered his dialogue he tried to do it in such a way to destroy the effectiveness of what he was doing. He was made to do retake after retake. He died after a mysterious car crash in 1946.

"Even now the film is banned in Germany. In fact, when a movie was produced in 2010 about the film and Ferdinand Marian, people walked out of the cinemas very upset."

Perhaps, though, the most poignant of Nazi films was intended as a factual documentary which would explode the Allied "myths" surrounding their concentration camps.

"It was fairly late in the war," recalls Ian. "The Nazis were being condemned for their camps and they decided to give their camp at Theresienstadt, north of Prague, a facelift.

"There were shops and work units, there were places for people to relax, it was like a holiday camp.

"The International Red Cross gave it a clean bill of health. The Nazis decided to make a film of it, so they could say 'look at the lies they tell about our camps, here's what a typical camp'.

"They used a Jewish prisoner to direct the film. Of course, as soon as the film was made everyone, including the director, was shipped to Auschwitz and killed. But the Germans shot themselves in the foot. It took nine months to finish the whole film by which time it was 1945 and the British had seen camps like Belsen," he adds.

"Any propaganda advantage of that film was lost. People had seen the truth."

The Third Reich's Celluloid War by Ian Garden, History Press, £20.
Appeared: Evening News 06 Mar 2012

We've always gone out on a limb for victims of war

BATTLE raged all around, the fearsome roar of cannon fire mingling with the crack of musket shot, the sweet whiff of gunpowder and the frightened screams of wounded horses and dying men.

Henry Paget, the second Earl of Uxbridge, had already survived wave after wave of French cavalry attack that saw eight - some thought nine - horses shot dead from right underneath him.

Now the cavalry commander was lying wounded in the filthy, stinking mud as the Battle of Waterloo blazed all around, the sudden, shocking realisation of his awful injury gradually dawning on him.

"The story goes that he turned to the Duke of Wellington, who was nearby, and said 'By God, sir, I've lost my leg!' And the Duke replied, 'By God, sir, so you have!'"

The rusty grapeshot from a French cannon had, indeed, blasted away the earl's leg. And, as Tacye Phillipson, curator of a new exhibition examining how technology down the centuries helped restore the lives of amputees like him recalls, the stiff repartee between the two was nothing if not understated and stoic.

"They did things differently in those days," she agrees with a respectful nod. "His leg was amputated immediately. What's interesting, though, is that the prosthetic limb which he went on to wear remained in production for a whole century afterwards, becoming slightly refined and more affordable, but more or less the same until the First World War."

Of course the risk to life and, for many, limb, has been a prerequisite for any soldier going into battle since time began. From the age of King Tutankhamun's Egyptian army to modern fighting forces in the maelstrom of Afghanistan, the loss of an arm or leg, a hand or a foot, may not result in headline news but still brings devastating, lifelong consequences.

It's equally distressing for civilians who are caught up in the crossfire or become the innocent victims of landmines. For them, the impact of literally putting a foot wrong can leave broken bodies no longer fit to work, earn money and, ultimately, simply survive.

Now their plight and the efforts made down the years to help them regain vital mobility is to be explored in Reconstructing Lives, what promises to be a fascinating and at times moving exhibition at Edinburgh Castle's National War Museum. The exhibition looks at the impact of losing a limb in battle - for soldier or civilian - and the ever-evolving technology which has helped rebuild lives.

Exhibits range from basic wooden "peg" legs - the kinds found described in Roman literature - through to hi-tech 21st-century carbon-fibre running blades, the source of debate over whether users have an unfair advantage over other competitors on the running track.

There are also prosthetic hands and arms, from the armour-like iron hands developed in the 16th century to the split hook hand designed by American amputee DW Dorrance in 1912 and still in use 100 years later. Perhaps among the most fascinating is a modern i-limb hand, created by Livingston-based NHS spin-off company Touch Bionics, the first to have five individually powered fingers.

Absorbing as the exhibits are, they are merely pieces of metal, leather, plastic and computer chips without the poignant and moving stories of amputees on show alongside them, bringing powerful reminders of how conflict even today is robbing soldiers and civilians of mobility.

Of course, in the days of English Cavalry Commander Henry Paget and the Battle of Waterloo, there were far fewer choices available to soldiers who found themselves horrendously wounded on the field of battle and were lucky enough to survive.

While his amputated limb went on macabre display at the village of Waterloo, he was fitted with what became known as an Anglesey leg. Cutting-edge in its day, it's now primitive compared with another exhibit, a 2011 Orion knee, made by English firm Endolite and containing a micro-processor so clever it can deduce what the wearer is doing and adapt accordingly.

"The Anglesey leg was top class when the Marquess of Anglesey lost his leg," explains Tacye, who has included a variety of prosthetic hands and arms designed in Edinburgh in the exhibition. "It has basically got tendons from knee to ankle so when you bend your knee, the ankle moves appropriately.

"There has been tremendous progress through the years," she adds. "There are literary references to the Romans using prosthetic limbs such as 'peg legs'. Then iron was used because it survived better than wood and leather was used to create sockets.

"By the 19th century there were quite a few varieties of wood leg, some with knee joints which would link to the ankles - such as the Anglesey Leg."

Major conflicts such as the First World War unfolded alongside massive improvements in medical care and technological advances brought huge developments in the kinds of prosthetic limbs available, she adds.

"In this country there were around 41,000 amputees after the First World War, so there was this really strong social need to return these people home and do what could be done to pay back the country's debt.

"During and after the war there was such a manpower shortage that there was also a financial desire to return as many people as possible to being productive members of society and give them ways to earn a living and support a family.

"A lot of working arms were produced. You could unscrew the hand and screw on a hammer or a chisel or a special tool for holding a spade and then on Sundays, you could put on a hand."

The Second World War saw further advances in the kinds of prosthetic limbs available to wounded soldiers and civilians. But it was a medical scandal in the Sixties which led to a raft of advances in the kinds of false limbs available, many pioneered here in Edinburgh.

"The Thalidomide tragedy led to Edinburgh becoming one of the few centres throughout the country set up to pay society's debt to these children born with terrible congenital malformations," explains Tacye. "That, combined with the city's background in medical research, meant Edinburgh became very successful at developing new kinds of artificial limbs."

The result is a broad range of examples of prosthetics from the local NHS collection in the National War Museum exhibition. It also led to the creation of NHS arms-length firm Touch Bionics, whose life-changing "robotic" hands integrate with the nervous system to translate into precise finger movement.

But while the leap from wooden peg legs to computer chip technology is impressive, Tacye points out a key element to emerge from compiling the exhibition is how the highest spec prosthetic might not necessarily be the best for every amputee.

Indeed, the simple but effective Jaipur leg - fitted to tens of thousands of people each year in poorer parts of the world and just £30 compared with around £2000 for an average western prosthesis - is more effective for many amputees.

"In the display is a running leg, the iconic flexible 'J' shape which Chris Moon, a double amputee, wore to run the West Highland Way race, 135 miles continuous without a rest," she explains. "He says this was the toughest ultimate distance race he'd ever done because the legs are sprung, they bounce you up and along.

"They work well on flat surfaces but the West Highland Way is anything but flat, so he was bounced about at random angles the whole way.

"So here is this wonderful piece of engineering, yet most people don't run marathons. And for someone like a World War Two veteran, they need a stable walking leg, not a hi-tech running leg.

"Sometimes the more basic is actually the better."

Reconstructing Lives is at the National War Museum, Edinburgh Castle, from Friday, March 9, until February 2013. Entry free with admission to Edinburgh Castle.


Pioneers in ancient Egypt

The Egyptians were early pioneers of prosthesis, while Greek historian Herodotus told the tale of Hegesistratus, a Greek diviner who cut off his foot to escape his Spartan captors and replaced it with a wooden one.

As time progressed, metal prosthetic limbs and hands were introduced. Some included metal knee joints and articulated feet controlled using tendons made from catgut. Later, some were fitted with springs and metals such as lighter-weight aluminium were introduced.

Some famous military men eschewed the idea of a false limb - Lord Nelson preferred to tuck his sleeve into his jacket rather than use a prosthetic hand. Others became famous for their's - Douglas Bader lost both legs in an aircraft crash in 1931, yet went on to become a Second World War ace pilot.

More than 130 British soldiers in Afghanistan lost at least one limb between 2009 and 2010.
www.nms.ac.uk/our_museums/war_museum/reconstructing_lives.aspx
Appeared: Evening News 01 Mar 2012

Bishop: I was never good at keeping rules.

THERE is a remarkable painting on Richard Holloway's sitting room wall. Big and colourful, it was painted by a young woman who came for help in desperate circumstances, her way of saying thank you to the former Bishop of Edinburgh and his wife for their care and comfort at her time of need.

It shows the couple's three young children in a lush garden. Their son is swimming in a pond watched by a fat, rather hungry looking duck. The two daughters, captured in pretty dresses, are surrounded by colourful butterflies, vibrant fauna, pretty flowers and delicate birds.

"Did you see this?," asks the former bishop, pointing to a spot at the bottom of the painting, barely noticeable until you step up close for a more thorough look. "She's even painted in a little bit of bird shit."

And true enough, there's a little white and black avian dropping, a small splodge in a brilliantly dazzling scene, a tiny dollop of poop to jolt us back to the reality that not everything in the garden is always completely rosy.

It's also, some might argue, a symbolic reminder of the kind of messy bombs from above that the controversial churchman himself threw around as he wrestled with his own conscience, his sense of fairness and of humanity and what he regarded as the often entrenched, outmoded opinions of his church colleagues.

Indeed, it's fair to say that when Richard Holloway was the high-profile, outspoken Bishop of Edinburgh, the poo had a fairly regular habit of hitting the fan.

Today the 78-year-old is relaxing at his Merchiston home, well outside the constraints of his former bishop's status. He quit that role - one which he now concedes he should probably never even have accepted - more than a decade ago after a headline- grabbing series of run-ins with his fellow churchmen, compounded by an increasing personal discomfort with the notion that God might even exist.

And that, fairly obviously, tends to be something of a deal-breaker if you happen to be a bishop . . ."How would I describe myself today? I'm an agnostic Christian," he explains, settling into his armchair, surrounded by heaving bookshelves and with his excited terrier Daisy racing around his feet. She's his equal in dog years, he explains, yet three times a week the pair head off on ten-mile hikes in the Pentlands, neither clearly as yet content to settle into the quiet life.

In fact, the former bishop is anything but quiet. He has just published his memoirs, Leaving Alexandria, an emotional and provocative exploration of the hows and whys of his life now topping the bestseller charts. It begins with a poignant return to Kelham Hall, an Anglican monastic order in Nottinghamshire where he started his training as a priest, back further to his childhood poverty in Glasgow and, intriguingly and perhaps just as pertinent, the cinemas he loved to visit as a boy.

It was in those fleapit film houses that the young Holloway watched fascinated as heroic figures did wonderful, life-enhancing things. Actors such as dashing Gregory Peck in Keys of the Kingdom - he played a Scottish priest spreading the gospel in China - and Bing Crosby as Father Chuck O'Malley in Going My Way.

"I liked those heroic characters," he says with a fond smile. "I loved the stories and I liked to tell stories. I became a storyteller.

"I remember I used to read the cinema adverts in the Sunday paper and go to school next day where I told my friends I'd actually seen the film and this was the story. I felt bad about that and told my mother, she just said 'Don't worry Dick, you've just got a good imagination'. I was absolved."

Perhaps it was partly a childhood yearning to be just like those movie heroes along with the drama the rituals of the church offered, mixed with a love for the heavenly beauty of nature itself, which led him to become ordained into the priesthood in 1959.

What followed were years telling vivid stories of a religious kind in the grand "theatre" of the church. The trouble was, he now reflects, that too often Bible stories he regarded as grounds for moral guidance and debate - he describes the language of religion as "poetry rather than science" - were for so many others pure undiluted fact.

As time went on, his questioning mind and his deep sense of justice and fairness in particular towards women's and gay rights, would set him on a collision course with his church.

He questioned the virgin birth and God's very existence. The book of Genesis, he dared to suggest, took a miracle to believe. He spoke out in support of the ordination of women priests and, when no-one from the church was looking, he secretly married gays and held the hands of people dying from Aids.

Dubbed the "barmy bishop" by the tabloids, he crashed from controversy to headline. He thought he was instigating sensible debate, others reckoned he was simply stirring trouble.

"Maybe it was a mistake to become a bishop," he says, recalling his appointment in 1986 which was followed in 1992 with his election as Primus of the Scottish Episcopal Church. "One of the things I discovered fairly recently was that I'm not a person that is loyal to institutions.

"The people who are best at maintaining institutions are conservative-minded people. I lack that gene. I was never very good at keeping rules and I never had difficulty breaking them if I thought they were daft or getting in the way of human good.

"The trouble with being absolutely loyal to an institution is that you keep it unchallenged," he adds. "So maybe becoming a bishop wasn't a very wise move and I know that I upset a lot of people."

His turning point came after the Lambeth Conference in 1998 when Anglican bishops from around the globe debated gay rights - something that even now divides churches. He recalls it as the "most devastating experience of my life. It was the tone. It was a horrible debate".

"A lot of my memories were of gay priests," he adds. "I saw their pain and how hidden they had to be in the church and outside it.

"I had been marrying gay couples for a long time. I felt if two people came to me and wanted me to listen to their promise and give them a blessing, then I didn't think I had the right to say 'no you can't do that and that you are so cursed by nature you are excluded and have to live a lonely life'. I find that obnoxious.

"It was the cruelty and intransigence of it," he continues. "How can you debate with someone if they say it's not debateable because we know what God thinks? They've played the trump card, next item, move on."

The next year he wrote a book which finally blew the lid off his position as Bishop of Edinburgh. Godless Morality was supposed to encourage debate without talk of what "God" thought. Instead it enraged the Archbishop of Canterbury who, recalls Holloway, "denounced it and pronounced on it like the Pope, saying it was erroneous".

When his own clergy declared the post of Bishop of Edinburgh vacant, he knew that despite support from many other quarters, that it was time to move on.

"I was scunnered," he shrugs. "I'd been in so many fights and struggles. I have a big mouth and a lot of what I landed myself in was my own fault.

"I was an increasing target for the press, I was colourful, the 'barmy bishop'. I thought why not just take a break from this? So I did."

Since then he's faced accusations that he was simply a "professional priest" willing to merrily act the part - like Peck or Crosby - but without the true conviction. These days, and at further risk of being accused of hypocrisy, he's still a churchgoer.

"I'm still a follower of Jesus, but I no longer have to defend any official version of it. And that's nice," he insists.

"My big issue with the church wasn't so much God, it was more about the ethics, morality and social attitudes," he adds.

"What moved me out was what I perceived to be the ways church responded to social issues made it a cruel body.

"It is one thing to doubt the existence of God. But if you believe that God hates gay people or thinks women should be subordinate to men, your belief brings pain to other people.

"To listen to Cardinal O'Brien sounding off against gay marriage . . .," he halts, the words perhaps best left unsaid. "Society has moved on with these issues. Some people are frozen in a time warp," he concludes.

So was that the problem? Was Richard Holloway, once Bishop of Edinburgh, simply ahead of his time?

"I remember once being charged in the ecclesiastical court with bad language," he adds. "It was at the time when women had just been allowed to be ordained as priests. One approached me and said she was happy but that they had been told to keep it quiet, as if someone had died.

"She asked what I thought. I said, 'the miserable buggers. The mean-minded sods'. I was charged with using 'unepiscopal' language and was found guilty.

"Well," he adds with a rueful grin, "actually . . . I still think they are miserable old b*****s."

Leaving Alexandria by Richard Holloway is published by Canongate £17.99.
Appeared Edinburgh Evening News: 9 March 2012.