The mail order doctor

Sitting at his desk in his Edinburgh study, Dr James Cullen laboured intensely over every single response, carefully instructing his long-
distance patients on what to do – cold baths and travel were particular favourite remedies – meticulously logging each patient’s correspondence and then copying one of his replies for his records.

Sealed and stamped, letters between doctor and patient winged their way – or, as this was the 18th century, they trotted along in horse-drawn carriages and bobbed over sea by boat – to places as far distant as Elgin and Manchester, Antwerp, 
Berlin and Madeira.
After all, Dr James Cullen was the most famous medicine man of his era, a mail order medic whose knowledge, advice and flair for communicating the mysteries and marvels of his profession had turned him into a global superstar.
And one who, for some of his despairing patients, must have been their final, maybe their only hope.

At his peak and at a time long 
before modern communication, the Edinburgh doctor was known around the English speaking world. Eventually, however, his fame dwi
ndled to within the walls of the Royal College of Physicians, Edinburgh (RCPE), where he was once president and where his portraits hang and items he once used – such as his pestle and mortar – are currently on show.
Now his fame in a fascinating and at times bizarre role as global mail order medic is being revisited in a Fringe production, using letters drawn from his own collection which not only reveal in absorbing detail the myriad of medical woes that afflicted his patients but his own, sometimes quite surprising, recommended cures.
“He became known as ‘The Doctor’,” says Iain Milne, Sibbald Librarian at the RCPE, where Dr Cullen’s letters are kept. “He was probably the most famous doctor in the English speaking world, so well known that people would simply address their letters to him as Dr Cullen, 
Edinburgh.
“What’s remarkable is that he wasn’t famous because he discovered anything in particular, but because he had this remarkable reputation that spread across countries. “
Patients hundreds of miles away would hang on his every word, taking advice for remedies – perhaps much to their relief he did not favour old-fashioned prescriptions involving things like snails, cobwebs, vipers and powdered skull – and accepting suggestions that they exercise, take cold baths and travel.
Among the letters that arrived at his Edinburgh study were some from patients with what seem to be very modern troubles. For in an age before vaccinations and antibiotics, when it might be expected that people’s health troubles would focus on how to survive everyday illnesses, many instead dwelt on issues like weight gain, stress and stomach ache. “The problem was that 18th century doctors couldn’t do much about things like infections or curing many diseases, they didn’t have the knowledge,” adds Iain. “So they tended to prescribe for the patient rather than the disease.”



People wrote seeking advice over fevers, colic, tumours and scabs. Some wanted help with toothache and worms, others for troubles with itches, nauseas, deleriums and 
ravings.
Some of the letters, viewed through modern eyes, can be amusing, Iain adds, others devastatingly poignant, oozing the writer’s misery for the plight they find themselves having to endure.
“One,” he explains, “from a man in Dumfries is a brilliant description of depression,” he explains. “Another letter from Perth was from a man suffering from venereal disease – who pleads for discretion – who is given a very long and complicated 
prescription.
“Jane Webster from Yorkshire wrote to him very concerned about her weight,” adds Iain. “There’s one long letter from her wondering what her weight should be for her height, she says she is a ‘44-year-old with dark hair, dark complexion and warm temper’ but had begun to grow fat before she was 20.
“She talks of having a father who was also very ‘corpulent’, and tells how she was 18st 2lb but had reduced her weight,” he adds. “She writes to him to ask what she should do, and his reply is that she ‘persist in present measures’.
“He also suggests she take great bodily exercise and cold bathing.”
Indeed, cold bathing features in many replies, adds Mr Milne, who presents part of the Fringe show, in which a selection of letters and Dr Cullen’s responses are shared with the audience.
“He often suggests people travel because he thinks that is good for them and also so they can take the waters at various spas.
“He suggests travelling to Germany for some patients and cold bathing in Peterhead during winter for others.”
He meticulously detailed what his patients should do while travelling, even down to choice of clothing, vehicle, where to sit on the coach and which windows to open.
Letters arrived daily and Dr 
Cullen, having risen every morning at 6.45am, would spend around two hours composing his responses before visiting his Edinburgh patients.
Incredibly, he would copy out his response – word for word – to create a full medical record of his patients’ troubles, eventually in 1781 opting to use an early copy machine designed by his friend, James Watt.
“One patient’s letter was 12 pages long and describes everything about diet and environment, the weather – if it’s cold or windy – and wonders what impact it has on their health,” adds Iain.



“There were a lot of people who’d write with stomach pains. One from Aberdeen suffered from an excess of bile and writes to Cullen detailing all the things he’s taking for it – it’s an extraordinary letter – and Cullen writes back saying he’s worried about him taking too many medicines.”
In return, his patients would part with two guineas for each consultation – around £250 by today’s standards, not only making Dr Cullen a world famous doctor, but quite a wealthy one too.
His fame, explains Iain, was the result of his fine reputation as a medical lecturer, his status at the head of the RCPE in a city recognised globally as a centre of excellence for 
medicine.
“It was during the Enlightenment, the Edinburgh medical school was at its height, and he was one of its leading professors,” he adds. “He wrote two very important textbooks – one, First Lines in Practise of Physique, was a hugely successful medical textbook at a time when lots of people were learning medicine.
“And he must have been a fantastic teacher. He was certainly very 
famous.”
Dear Doctor, with Professor David Purdie, College Librarian Iain Milne and actress Elayne Sharling, is at the Royal College of Physicians, Edinburgh, until Saturday. Tickets £8 (£6).
Appeared Edinburgh Evening News, 7 August 2012.
Scotsman Publications.

THE FORGOTTEN WAR

The Second World War... such a long time ago yet even today it throws up stories which remind us of its human impact.
Below is a mini series of stories hooked around one element of the war - the devastating consequences it had on one group of foreigners living here.
The Italian community - hard working people who had come to Scotland with their flavours of home seeking a better life from the poverty of their own villages - were rounded up, kept prisoner and treated as if they were the enemy of the state.
Caught up in that were ordinary people, a little boy who never got to know his father and, in contrast to the Italian element, a woman who faced legal shame for refusing to do what was seen as her 'duty'.
Poignant and deeply personal tales that remind us that war's grim reach stretches well beyond the field of battle.

HISTORY: BRITAIN'S WAR SHAME

THE Sunday afternoons when rows of Italian ice cream vans lined the street outside the house, when there were freshly made bowls of pasta for dinner followed by singing and laughter are the ones that Rudy Muir prefers to remember.

They were the days when his father, a handsome artisan whose fine terrazzo and marble work adorned the foyers of many Edinburgh public buildings, would cook for his ice-cream vendor visitors: folk just like him with dark hair, swarthy Mediterranean complexions and an expressive, melodic language.

It was the late 1930s, before war, and everything in the young Rudy's life was good.

Back then he was Rudolph Cianfarani, son of Deodato, a hardworking, talented Italian who came to Britain seeking a better life, who married an English girl in Newcastle and made their family home in Edinburgh.

But within five years, Deodato - like many Italian immigrants in Britain at the time - would be arrested as an enemy of the state and interned in the Isle of Wight.

Bad enough, but when he was finally freed, the joy of his homecoming was soured by the discovery that his wife, left penniless and desperate by the sudden arrest of her husband, already had another man to take his place.

It meant that for the young Rudy, the first time he saw his father after years apart, was also the last time he'd ever see him.

To this day he has no idea whatever became of the kind-natured, highly skilled, loving father who used to post comics containing a 6d postal order from his prisoner of war camp in the Isle of Man to the Humbie children's home where the evacuated young Rudy spent the war. And he knows nothing of his father's Italian family or what drove him to leave Italy to start a new and ultimately doomed life in Scotland.

He's now an 83-year-old grandfather, but the memories of what happened when Britain imposed internment on Italian men in 1940 still prompts tears of bitter regret.

"It was the government," he says quietly. "They were wholly ignorant of any danger the Italian community at that time posed.

"It was a botched job. They didn't do their homework and they made so many people suffer.

"I feel for the hundreds and thousands of people that were affected by that one decision.

"And I feel for that one man: my father."

For decades he has kept his thoughts to himself. Now as the 70th anniversary of the government's decision to impose internment on the country's Italian male population looms in June, he's chosen to recall the very personal impact of that one decision in the hope his story might help prompt official recognition for the plight of those it affected.

And he is supporting calls for either an apology or a memorial to mark the 70th anniversary of Italian internment - before the generation still affected by it are gone forever.

"My father was a very skilled man," recalls Rudy. "A gentler and more peaceful man you'd be hard put to find. But he suffered more than any man should have because of politicians."

Rudy was 12 years old when men came to arrest his father one day in early summer 1940.

"They were men dressed in dark suits. I was out playing with my mates, and they asked what was happening with my dad and we laughed it off.

"But there was this strange feeling of foreboding that something not right was happening, that this was something serious.

"I could only stand and watch while they put him in the van. My dad had a kind of puzzled look on his face, as if he was wondering what was happening."

Days earlier Churchill had given his "collar the lot" order, the result of Italian leader Mussolini's decision to enter the war on Hitler's side. For a generation of Italian immigrants who brought to Britain artistic skills like Rudy's father, who opened cafes and ice-cream parlours, or simply laboured hard to make ends meet, it heralded the beginning of years under arrest without trial.

Other nationalities were affected too: Austrian and Germans, ironically many of them Jews who had fled the Nazi uprising.

Some were deported: hundreds perished when the vessel taking them to internment in Canada, the Arandora Star, was torpedoed by a U-boat and sunk just off Ireland.

And some, like Rudy's father, were sent to the Isle of Man camps - within bed-and-breakfast or hotel accommodation, others in sprawling compounds of wooden huts originally used for internment during World War One - surrounded by barbed wire and under constant guard.

Internees dealt with the boredom by setting up artistic and educational projects - one camp boasted a university, another had a drama group and a library. There were lectures, concerts even camp newspapers.

While Rudy's father languished under arrest, his mother, Jean, faced her own challenges.

With one son and four daughters to look after and no income, the once lavish family meals of pasta, mince and tatties, casseroles and home baking were replaced with two slices of bread fried in lard.

Soon she recognised the benefits of having Rudy and his two younger sisters evacuated to the countryside - for a start, it meant fewer mouths to feed.

While his sisters Veronica and Yolanda went to Middleton near Gorebridge, Rudy was sent alone to Humbie in East Lothian where, ironically, the skies overhead saw the early action of the war take place, with the first German bomber to be shot down in Britain coming down in the Lammermuir Hills watched by the evacuees.

Sadly Rudy was out of sight and out of mind. His mother, caught up in her own life in Edinburgh, visited only once, bringing with her the man who would eventually take Rudy's father's place.

"Visitors were allowed once a month, but after a couple of months I realised nobody was coming for me," he recalls. "Post times were exciting, but the same thing happened, not for me.

"I would take myself into the woods and have a good cry."

His interned father, however, kept Rudy in mind. Occasionally a rolled up comic with an Isle of Man stamp would arrive, tucked inside would be a 6d postal order.

After around three years, Rudy went home. He was outside the family home in Loganlea Drive - scene of those pre-war gatherings now home to his mother's new man - when he saw a familiar figure walking towards him.

"It was a Saturday evening," recalls Rudy. "My father just appeared from nowhere, he came towards me with this smile on his face. He was a very handsome man. He gave me a hug and said 'how are you?'

"Then he said he'd go inside and see how my mum was and then we'd go to the pictures together.

"I was very apprehensive as I knew my mother had a new partner - and he was in the house."

What followed might have been laughable if not ultimately so tragic. Rudy watched as the man who would later become his stepfather and whose name he'd eventually adopt - Muir seemed at the time a better option than Cianfarani - leapt in panic from a window wearing only his shirt and socks and ran from the house.

"I never found out what was said," he recalls. "I only know my father came out of the house, spoke with me for a while then said goodbye.

"I never ever saw him again."

Rudy never found out what happened to his father. "I think there was one or two registered letters with money in them that came from Stornoway or Orkney which showed that he was a caring man who didn't want to think of his family being in need if he could help.

"But I've never found out anything else," he sighs.

Churchill's "collar the lot" order was perhaps made with the country's interests at heart but, argues Rudy, "scarred us all for life."

"Looking back on these times all of 70 years ago sometimes feels like a nightmare, a horror story," he says.

"This was a very traumatic experience for a young boy, maybe just old enough to understand why this should be happening.

"When you think how today in modern times we embrace all cultures with care and affection, it seemed so very cruel that this should take place in Great Britain, of all places.

"My father was a very unlucky man. We were a very unlucky family . . .

"Child casualties of war."

IMMIGRANTS' FALL FROM GRACE

THEY came to Scotland seeking a better life. Edinburgh welcomed Italian immigrants and fell in love with their ice cream, food, and Continental ways.

But as war raged across Europe, attitudes began to change. And when Mussolini entered the war on Hitler's side in June 1940, fears that Italians living here could be a potential security threat to the nation reached fever pitch. There were at least 20,000 Italians in Britain and Churchill wanted them rounded up - including those who had lived here for decades.

People turned on the Italian families they had once welcomed and their shops were often attacked.

Amid the shocking scenes there was kindness. Some Italians were looked after by locals, their businesses kept running and returned to them after the war.
Edinburgh Evening News April 14, 2010
*****




I had to fight to stay out of Land Army


The deaths of her grandfather and father when Italians were interred made Sylvia De Luca a conscientious objector In 1940, as Italy joined Hitler in the war, thousands of innocent Italians here were imprisoned or deported. As calls for an official apology are made, Sandra Dick speaks to families who are still haunted by the events of 70 years ago, in the second of our series

THEY journeyed across countries by foot and over sea by tug boat to a destination they knew little about other than it might offer them a better life than the one they had.

It was just around 1900 when Anthony Tartagli and his wife Theresa completed their journey to arrive at their new home at the heart of Scotland's capital.

They left behind the sun-drenched hillsides of Atina, an ancient town once conquered by the Romans, near Cassino, where Anthony had tended sheep, and Theresa worked as a maid.

Together they dreamed that Scotland would offer them and their future children a life that Atina never could.

Today their granddaughter Sylvia is in her late 80s but recalls with pride the determination of her ancestors and with bitterness the fate that would befall them.

For the Tartagli family - like thousands of hardworking Italian immigrants who came here in search of a better life - would find themselves innocent victims of wartime prejudices which helped cost two of them their lives.

As for Sylvia, who watched helplessly as wartime internment destroyed her grandfather and father's health, there would be a personal battle as she railed against the authorities.

Her grandparents arrived with only a few lira in their pockets and made their home in the poverty-stricken Grassmarket.

Starting with an ice-cream cart, they developed a small chain of fish restaurants under the name Tarry's.

"My grandparents managed to raise five children. They were very, very poor when they came here but they gave their children a good education and they worked hard.

"But Mussolini came along, and they became pawns in a game of chess played by politicians."

It was the Italian leader's decision to enter the war on Hitler's side that changed the lives of thousands of innocent immigrant families. Germans and Austrians in Britain were already regarded as "enemy aliens". Now it was the Italians' turn to be rounded up and imprisoned without trial.

Anthony, by then in his 60s, and his eldest son Ralph - Sylvia's Edinburgh-born father who was desperately ill from tuberculosis - were among those to be interned. "My father had TB, my mother looked after him as best she could but he was a dying man," says Sylvia, who ran Little Women boutique in Newington until she retired four years ago at the age of 84. "What threat did he pose to anyone?"

Sylvia's father had met her mother Theresa while on a family holiday home to Atina. It was love at first sight for the Scots-Italian and the young nurse.

Together they ran the thriving Tarry's fish restaurant near the family's Sighthill home, raising a family of four, until illness prevented him from working and Theresa combined caring for him with running the business.

Ralph was already sick when officers arrived to arrest him under internment laws in 1940.

"They sent him to Saughton Prison which initially was OK because it was near and we could visit him," recalls Sylvia. "He was chronically ill, but for some reason they decided to send him to York to stay in disused stables.

"Imagine a man with that illness in a damp atmosphere like an old stables," she sighs. "Of course it was not long before he was sent home to die. He was only 40."

A dreadful fate awaited her grandfather Anthony too. "He was 60 years old but he was sent to the Isle of Man. The police that came to arrest him were in tears. One said, 'Mr Tarry, this is the worst job I have ever had to do'."

He was sent to an internment camp but the trauma of the situation shattered his health and he suffered a heart attack.

"He died within seven months," says Sylvia, who lives in Baberton Park, Juniper Green.

Sylvia, then 19, was further enraged by the treatment meted out to her ageing grandmother.

Internment meant wives of "enemy aliens" were expected to move away from cities to the countryside - and her grandmother was sent to Innerleithen and Peebles.

"What for?" asks Sylvia. "These women didn't have guns in the house, they weren't going to commit some terrorist act. They were just ordinary working folk."

Her anger at the injustice of internment meant that when Sylvia was approached to 'do her bit for the war effort' and serve her country, she refused, declaring herself to be a conscientious objector.

It was a stance that led to legal hearings - reported at the time in the Evening News - to establish her grounds for refusal before a Tribunal for Conscientious Objectors led by Lord Elphinstone.

"I'm only 5ft tall and Lord Elphinstone was sitting high up as the presiding judge, but I was determined," she remembers.

"I understood it was wartime and that everything was in upset. But my grandfather died of a broken heart and my desperately ill father was treated very badly.

"They wanted me to go into the Land Army and I thought: 'Why should I?'"

Internment left its mark on every Italian family in Britain, she adds. Her English-born husband Peter De Luca was turned down by the RAF because of his Italian background and sent to the Pioneer Corps - the army unit often dubbed "The King's Most Loyal Enemy Aliens" because its ranks included so many British Italians and European Jews - while his younger brother William - then just 16 and born in Italy - was arrested and interned.

Now as the 70th anniversary of internment approaches, Sylvia believes the time has passed for apologies and memorials.

"What is an apology? Saying sorry doesn't cancel out the heartbreak, it can't turn back time.

"And a memorial won't change what happened.

"War is war," she adds. "It's uncivilised and doesn't do any good at all."

CASE STUDY

'We knew the man who took father away'

"THE man who came for my father was a policeman. We all knew him, he was friendly. But he had to take him away."

When Sperino Guerri was seized from his family's two-bedroom flat in St Mary's Street, the life his daughter Gloria, her sisters Alice, Maria and Marcella and brother Elario had known in the Old Town ended.

Not just because Sperino ended up in an internment camp on the Isle of Man, with only an occasional heavily-censored letter home to his wife to let her know he was still alive.

Nor that they suffered the violent prejudice many other Italian families did, after Churchill delivered his decision to round up their men as potential enemies.

As Maria, recalls: "We were lucky because people liked my daddy. There was terrible poverty in Canongate at the time, but the people were good. They never smashed our windows."

But the nightmare wasn't to end with Sperino's arrest. With the family's thriving fish and chip shop in Canongate abandoned, the future looked uncertain for Sperino's wife, Assunta, and her children.

Gloria was sent to boarding school in North Berwick. But as an Italian national Assunta was considered a potential risk - and rules meant she had to move at least 28 miles from the city.

Maria, now 76, recalls: "The local fishmonger, Mr Croan and his wife, were listening to the news. He said to mum, 'Get your things, I will get a van and I will take you somewhere'.

"He took us to a farm in Lauder in Berwickshire and we stayed there right up until daddy came home."

The farm was safe, but the area wasn't immune from prejudice and fear. The Guerri children were allowed to attend the local school but barred from travelling there by bus. Maria remembers walking a mile and a half to school in horrible weather, taunted by the children passing them in the bus.

"We were regarded as 'aliens'," she says. "The other children made faces at us out of the back window of the bus. I was just five, but I was very conscious that we were different from them.

"Mother would give us four pence for a mince pie and a cup of Bovril for lunch at the bakers because we weren't allowed to eat with the other children in the school dining hall.

"There was kindness too, though. The farmer's wife would give my mother fresh eggs, milk and butter that she churned herself.

"But the farm workers were unhappy about that and threatened to go on strike. So the farmer's wife used to hide it all in a haystack, wrapping the butter in a dock leaf, for my mother to find at night."

Gloria, at boarding school in North Berwick, endured her own nightmare. Visits from her mother were rare - simply leaving the farm meant she had to have a visa stamped at each town she passed through - and her schooldays were a tearful affair spent pining for her family.

Eventually internment conditions were relaxed and Maria, who now lives in Hastings, and Gloria, of Newtongrange, were reunited with their father.

"You could see the bus at the road end, away in the distance," Maria recalls. "There was a man coming up the road with a cap on.

"My mother recognised him straight away."

Within weeks the family had returned to St Mary's Street and their chip shop business as if nothing untoward had happened.

But the couple never forgot their Italian roots.

Years later, once their family had grown up and their marriage was approaching its 50th year, Sperino and Assunta left Edinburgh to spend their final days together in Roccapelago the small village in the northern Italian Province of Modena, where they were both born.


Edinburgh Evening News April 15, 2010



Call to heal the open wound of Italians' treatment

THEY came to Scotland seeking a better future, bringing with them a flavour of European cafe life.

But 70 years ago this summer, to be Italian was to be an enemy of the state. On the orders of Winston Churchill, Italian men were dragged from their homes in handcuffs, interned in Saughton Prison and other Scottish jails, and even deported.

Now one of Edinburgh's best-known Italian figures is leading calls for official recognition of their plight and a government apology.

Arts impresario Richard Demarco wants the Scottish Parliament to take a lead and apologise for the internment and help ensure a memorial is created to mark one of the most tragic incidents in Scots-Italian history.

A total of 446 Italians were among 700 people who died when the Arandora Star was torpedoed by a U-boat as it took more than 1,500 deported Italians and Germans to Canada in 1940.

Mr Demarco said: "This is a subject that is on my mind every single day: why were the Italians treated like rubbish?

"The Scottish Government should do what Westminster has never done - issue an apology and even compensation to pay for the suffering that has gone on for a generation.

"Imagine, in the middle of the night police officers come and they take away your husband, your father, your grandfather. And some were never seen again.

"But if people had taken a moment to think, they would have realised it was madness. These people couldn't be the enemy, they were much-loved members of the community, they had businesses here."

Among those interned and deported were members of some of the city's best-known Italian families, including those behind the celebrated Valvona & Crolla delicatessen in Elm Row.

Former lord provost Eric Milligan today backed the call for official recognition of the suffering of a generation of Scots-Italians.

"These were good, law-abiding people who were highly valued members of the community and who became 'enemies of the state' overnight because of Mussolini," he said.

"That opened a wound that has never satisfactorily been healed.

"Perhaps it is time to revisit the events that took place, and consider some form of recognition for what took place."

However, neither the Scottish Parliament nor the city council currently has any plans to mark the occasion.

Because the internment was ordered by the Westminster government, officials suggested it was unlikely Scottish ministers would feel they were in a position to offer an apology.

Edinburgh Evening News March 10 2010

Sorry seems to be the hardest word


Stage show on 'father of pop art' sparks fresh debate over whether Italians deserve an apology for wartime internment

IT WAS midsummer 1940 when government officials came calling at the Paolozzi family's ice cream parlour and sweet shop in Leith.

They weren't terribly interested in the teenage lad: prison would be good enough for Eduardo Paolozzi for the time being. But for his father, ageing grandfather and uncle who'd come to Scotland seeking a better life for their loved ones, their fate was sealed.

As the men sent by the government to round up these undesirable aliens in wartime Britain departed, angry crowds gathered to ransack the family's shop. Further up Leith Walk, it was a similar scene at Valvona and Crolla. The menfolk were dragged away and the shop which had brought a delightful flavour of the continent to Edinburgh became the target for a violent mob.

Stones shattered the shop windows, showering glass on the Elm Row pavement. The women left behind, bewildered by the dramatic loss of their men, cleared it away and partly drew the shop's steel shutters.

At fish and chip shops, cafes, ice cream parlours, barbers, indeed anywhere hard-working Italian families were striving to make a living, June 1940 brought the same horrors.

Mussolini had entered the war on Hitler's side and Churchill had issued his internment order: "Collar the lot."

Italian men who had left poverty for a better future in Scotland - Edinburgh families with names like Crolla and Demarco, Pacitti, Coppola, Di Ciacca, Di Rollo, Pelosi and Rossi - were rounded up. The lucky ones were imprisoned, the rest were put on board the Arandora Star bound for deportation to Canada and doomed to be hit by a U-boat torpedo.

Now, as the 70th anniversary of internment looms, debate is under way over whether the time has come for Britain to apologise to a generation of Scots Italians.

It's been partly sparked by a new play at the Traverse, The Shattered Head, which has attempted to unravel the links between what happened to the young "father of pop art" Eduardo Paolozzi and his work.

Yesterday saw calls from another of Edinburgh's leading artistic figures, impresario Richard Demarco - who was also caught up in the episode as a child - for a national apology and memorial to the Italian community affected.

"There should be a memorial, a little statement, something to bring comfort for the relations of those who died. They still live and breathe and suffer this every single day," he said.

He was just ten years old at the time, yet he recalls suffering abuse and beatings as anti-Italian feeling festered. "I remember being attacked by a group of much older boys at the public baths in Portobello. I remember the blood streaming down my face and having stones thrown at me."

Eduardo Paolozzi was 16 at the time and just old enough to be thrown in Saughton alongside hundreds of fellow Italians.

A few years older and he might have joined the male members of his family on board the Arandora Star, sailing to their deaths.

The Blue Star Line leisure cruiser had been previously used to take troops across the Atlantic. In July 1940, however, she was overflowing with 1,500 prisoners, mostly Italians, and 400 troops guarding them.

As she passed the north-west of Donegal, she proved too big a temptation for the captain of a German U-boat.

Nearly 700 prisoners and 200 soldiers perished. When desperate captives tried to clamber into lifeboats to save themselves from drowning, the British shot holes in the lifeboats.

The truth of what happened and why is contained in government documents, some of which have yet to be released.

That concerns Mary Contini, director of Valvona and Crolla, whose grandfather Cesidio Di Ciacca died on the vessel, while her father Johnny was interned on the Isle of Man. Her husband Philip's grandfather Alfonso Crolla also drowned, while his uncle Victor languished in Saughton.

"A lot of the information surrounding what happened has not been released," she says. "I would like all these files to be opened and access available for everyone to find out what happened.

"The Italian community's attitude is this was war, Dunkirk had just happened and it must have been a horrendously difficult time. No-one feels anger, but it would be a testament to openness and honesty to find out what happened."

As for Paolozzi, few of the visitors to the Dean Gallery at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art or the pedestrians who dodge his giant foot and hand sculptures - part of his The Manuscript of Monte Cassino trio of works - outside St Mary's Cathedral might even be aware he was once considered a potential enemy.

According to former lord provost Eric Milligan, Paolozzi found it "ironic that the city of his birth, which during his formative years viewed him with suspicion, later went on to establish a gallery dedicated to his work. But there was never resentment".

Yet Paolozzi's daughter, Anna, believes the episode left a scar on her father. "I think it brutalised him," she says. "The last time he saw his father was when he was dragged off in handcuffs.

"His dad, his grandfather and his uncle were on the Arandora Star. To lose that amount of people . . . it's impossible to think that it wouldn't brutalise someone.

"He was given the choice of staying in prison or being sent to the front line. He didn't want either, so he headed to the library to read up on mental illness.

"He pretended he was schizophrenic and ended up in a mental hospital. Once there, he asked if he could go to art school. It was an incredibly clever way of surviving the war."

As The Shattered Head writer and director Graeme Eatough points out, Scots Italians like Paolozzi had done nothing wrong except for being Italian, in the wrong place at the wrong time.

"You can understand why it could still be a sore point," he says. "People were rounded up and imprisoned or deported - often their families were not told where they were being sent.

"Paolozzi's family ended up on the Arandora Star, fenced in by barbed wire. The ship was twice as full as it should have been.

"Tragically, the British decided not to mark it as a civilian ship."

The Shattered Head is at the Traverse until Saturday, at 1pm.

LASTING MEMORIAL

TODAY it is recognised as being possibly the finest Italian deli in the UK. But 70 years ago, Valvona and Crolla was under violent attack.

Director Mary Contini's grandfather was lost on board the Arandora Star and her Scots-born uncle was arrested and slammed in jail alongside Eduardo Paolozzi.

"As a child I was only told that my grandfather had drowned."

Internment, she recalls,

"was done as a sweep during the night, which makes it all the worse.

Then there was rioting and the windows were smashed."

The steel shutters were put in place to prevent further attacks. They've never moved since.

"They are left as they are as a memorial to the family," she adds.

Edinburgh Evening News March 11, 2010.

HISTORY: THE SOLDIER BEAR

THE STOOD over 6ft tall, the largest and undoubtedly most intimidating fighting force of the Polish Army.

Like his fellow soldiers, Wojtek liked a beer and a fag. When it came to his duties, he threw himself into his task of transporting weighty artillery boxes with gusto.

On rare occasions when there was time to relax, he humoured high-spirited comrades who courageously took turns to wrestle and play-fight with him.

Always, though, and without fail, there'd be only one winner.

Wojtek - the name means "smiling warrior" - was a Polish hero, a Syrian brown bear with vicious claws, teeth like razors and the strength of several men, whose bravery and loyalty is almost as exceptional as his incredible gentleness.

The story of how he was found by soldiers and raised to be one of their own to join their wartime struggle is testimony to the amazing rapport that can be achieved between man and the most unlikely of beasts.

He ended his days - some say with a certain sadness in his deep brown eyes - in solitude behind bars in a cage at Edinburgh Zoo, where visitors would pass him cigarettes and the sound of a Polish voice was guaranteed to prompt an instant response.

Today, Wojtek is remembered with fondness and pride by some, vaguely recalled by a few, but largely forgotten by most. Soon, though, it's hoped there will be a lasting and fitting memorial to "the soldier bear".

Sculptor Alan Herriot's farmyard workshop on the outskirts of the Midlothian village of Howgate is a far removed as possible from the bloody slopes of Monte Cassino where Wojtek and his comrades saw action in some of the fiercest fighting of the Second World War.

Over the past few months, the Newtongrange miner's son has created a dramatic 19ft tall equestrian bronze of Robert the Bruce which is destined for Aberdeen and currently at Powderhall Foundry.

Now he's preparing to turn his skills to capturing the unique character of Wojtek in a striking "larger than life" statue.

The group behind the GBP 200,000 sculpture plans, among them Cardinal Keith O'Brien, Edinburgh Tattoo producer Major General Euan Loudon, and Borders farming wife and author Aileen Orr - whose family farmlands became temporary home to Wojtek and his comrades - are embroiled in talks over where it might finally take pride of place, with hopes currently pinned on Edinburgh Castle. Interest in the work has come from across the globe. Eventually, Herriot's Wojtek could be recreated at locations in Poland and Italy.

"I'm passionate about Wojtek's story," explains Herriot, standing in his cluttered workshop overlooked by a bust he's working on of the current Lord Elgin and a wild-eyed painted statue of Deacon Brodie, brought from the Royal Mile for emergency repairs. "Wojtek was an incredible creature. He liked a fag and drank his beer from a can, he slept alongside the other soldiers.

"One day they were unloading military artillery shells and the bear picked one up and started to move it, walking on his two legs, carrying shells. He became a national hero."

Wojtek's incredible story began by chance in Persia, now Iran, 1942, where the Polish Second Corps, a group of soldiers released from Soviet slave camps in Serbia, were making the arduous journey to join comrades fighting in Egypt and Italy.

A young mountain shepherd boy had found the orphaned baby bear, and somewhere on the narrow mountain tracks running between Hamadan and Kangavar, the boy and the soldiers met. The Poles shared their food with the emaciated lad and watched with interest the sudden movements made from within his sack.

The cub inside was desperately in need of care. For a few provisions, the boy traded his "pet" and set Wojtek on the road to becoming one of the world's most famous creatures.

The soldiers, recalls Herriot, raised him with remarkable patience and care. "He became one of them," he says. "He lived with them, he played with them and he fought alongside them."

He even became a soldier with them. In 1944, troops were ordered to head for Italy to join the Allied advance on Rome. No animals were supposed to accompany them, so the Poles enrolled Wojtek as a soldier.

They headed for Monte Cassino, where the 500lb bear astonished all by raising himself onto his hind legs and carrying boxes of live shells from lorries to gun emplacements.

It was such a remarkable sight that Wojtek became adopted as a symbol of the Polish fight, and the banner and buttons of the Transport Corps were redrawn to bear his image.

The Soviet occupation of Poland meant that at the end of the war the Polish soldiers and Wojtek ended up at Winfield Aerodrome on Sunwick Farm near Hutton in Berwickshire, where writer Aileen Orr's grandfather, a King's Own Scottish Borderers colour sergeant, was reacquainted with the bear. "He had come across Wojtek in Palestine and Egypt and was amazed to see him," recalls Aileen, whose book about Wojtek is due out in September.

Eventually the soldiers left, but Wojtek had to stay behind.

"They took the bear to Edinburgh Zoo which must have been terrible for them to do," adds Herriot. "By all accounts, they were in a terrible state."

Wojtek's health failed and he withdrew further into his compound, rarely venturing out and reacting only to the sound of a Polish voice.

"It was very sad in the end," adds Herriot. "He had crippling arthritis. He was 22 when he died in 1963, anaesthetised and shot - a soldier's death."

Interest in Wojtek was revived three years ago after an Evening News story told of his remarkable life. "The reaction was amazing," recalls Aileen. "People were in touch from around the world."

Historic Scotland is in talks with the Bear Memorial Trust over siting the statue of Wotjek at Edinburgh Castle.

Finally seeing the statue in place would, says Herriot, be a fitting tribute to the remarkable bear and his keepers.

"The statue is not just about celebrating Wojtek's life," he insists. "It's about acknowledging the Polish role in the Second World War and the part played by the Polish community in Edinburgh."

Wojtek The Bear, Polish War Hero by Aileen Orr is due to be published in September by Birlinn Books.

Edinburgh Evening News June 10, 2010

HISTORY: SILVER GHOST FROM A GOLDEN AGE

THE road north was little more than a bumpy track more typically used by horse-drawn carriages than sleek new-fangled sporty motor vehicles.

From the bustling hub of London, the striking silver car meandered gracefully through English counties, cruising through market towns and past rolling countryside heading towards its Edinburgh destination.

It was September 1911, when motoring was still in its infancy and few were familiar with the name Rolls-Royce.

But as a result of staggering drivers' skill combined with stunning engineering, this extraordinary car was about to make motoring history - and make its manufacturer one of the most famous marques on the planet.

These days, of course, the Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost is legendary, its reputation associated with high society and early 20th century glamour; gents with twirled moustaches and driving goggles, genteel, corseted ladies. The few remaining versions of the classic car, with its 50hp Rolls-Royce engine lurking beneath custom-built bodywork, are precious examples of a golden age when driving was strictly for the select few.

But back in 1911 Edinburgh, the arrival of a Silver Ghost as it raced against a rival car on a 700 miles round trip - without shifting gear - not only brought out the crowds, it gained the car Royal Automobile Club (RAC) approval and sealed Rolls-Royce's reputation for producing "the best car in the world".

And what of rival car firm Napier, which laid down the challenge to put one of its vehicles up against the Silver Ghost for this gruelling test of endurance, speed and reliability? Well coming second was never going to be enough . . . and by 1924 it was out of the business of making cars and concentrated on aeroplanes instead.

Now to mark the centenary of the 1911 Top Gear trial, 17 Rolls-Royce Silver Ghosts will set off from London's Pall Mall on Sunday, bound for the Scottish capital, following almost the same route as the original. Among them will be the very car that took part, known by its chassis number, 1701.

They are due to arrive at Arthur's Seat the following afternoon, and with each valued well in excess of GBP100,000 it is likely to be one of the most exclusive car rallies the city has seen.

According to organiser Nick Naismith, the 1911 trial helped introduce a wary public to the benefits of motoring, setting the wheels in motion for the birth of today's motor industry.

"The general feeling at that time was that cars were not very reliable, they weren't terribly powerful," says Nick, a member of the exclusive 20-Ghost club made up of owners of pre-1940 Rolls-Royce cars. "This Top Gear trial was intended to demonstrate that they were powerful, they could climb hills in a high gear and they could reach high speeds.

"Earlier that year the Prince Henry Tour involved around 60 cars travelling to Edinburgh and back south and had helped prove reliability. That was met by celebrations in every town. Cars had really just been invented, they were modern contraptions and seeing one was a big event indeed."

The success of the September trial was reported in The Scotsman newspaper at the time, which provided readers with intricate detail of the car's 7.5-litre engine, the key to its superiority over the Napier. Readers were informed that while the average speed was a mere 19.59 mph and the Silver Ghost had achieved 24 miles to the gallon, a speed test had seen it hit an impressive 78.2 mph.

These days Silver Ghosts are sought as much for the beauty of their copper and brass fitted engines as for their unique bodywork and the fascinating history attached to previous owners - typically well-heeled members of high society traced through meticulous vehicle records.

Certainly 1924 Silver Ghost owner Major Lennox Jamieson, 75, from Stockbridge found a surprising twist to his car's history when, having bought it in the south of England, he began to trace its ownership.

"It turned out to be originally registered in Edinburgh and owned by a family called Fleming who lived in Magdala Crescent in the Haymarket area," he recalls. "Unfortunately I haven't been able to find out much about them other than they had it for about three years.

"Company records then show it went to a Lady Badminton who had it until the mid-1930s. The next owner's name is scored out and marked 'deceased' and the trail runs cold . . . however I was told the car had been filmed in Spain for the movie, Lawrence of Arabia. It appears in a sequence when the bonnet is opened to show off the engine."

Lawrence of Arabia used a squadron of Silver Ghosts modified into armoured vehicles against Turkish forces during WW1, prompting him to declare that "a Rolls in the desert is above rubies".

Maj Jamieson - who bought the car in the mid-1960s - brought it to Edinburgh where his search for its original registration plate had mixed results: "I went to the council licensing office in Princes Street at the time and asked if they could find me the original registration number but it had been destroyed.

"I asked if there was anything else suitable and they came back with S46. I said 'That will be fine'," he grins. Today the car's number plate alone is reckoned to be worth the price of a modern family saloon.

Maj Jamieson has used his Silver Ghost every day for more than 40 years. Even now he can be spotted behind the wheel with the car's soft top open in all weathers. "I've done well over 100,000 miles in it," he nods. "I do attract a lot of attention in it. I think a few people think I'm a curious old eccentric."

He believes the Silver Ghost deserves its place at the forefront of motoring history. "There was a time when there were many Rolls-Royces in Edinburgh. They'd be used as hearses, break-down trucks . . . practically every taxi was a Rolls-Royce, they'd be lined up the length of Princes Street. But they were basic, almost Victorian engineering," he adds, "eventually they were replaced by the Phantom".

The Silver Ghost finally went out of production in 1926, but its place in motoring history was sealed thanks to events in 1911.

"It was a very important year for Rolls-Royce," adds Nick Naismith. "The Prince Henry Tour and the London to Edinburgh trial helped create the Silver Ghost's reputation as the best car in the world."


Timeless and elegant classic

A TOTAL of 7874 Rolls Royce Siler Ghost's with a 40/50 horsepower chassis were built between 1907 and 1926.

While Rolls-Royce made the chassis, the bodywork was created by coachbuilders chosen by the buyer. In Edinburgh, one name was most associated with Rolls-Royce bodywork: Croall.

Reports of the 1911 Scottish Bodybuilding Show at Waverley Market reveal Messrs John Croall and Sons of George Street had a remarkable Rolls-Royce on display, with an aluminium body painted dark blue and styled in a limousine shape to carry five people.

It was also "fitted with every convenience imaginable", including a speedometer, speaking tube, electric light, electric cigar lighter and a silk net for carrying parcels on the roof.
Edinburgh Evening News September 6 2011.

HISTORY: THE FIRST MILLIONAIRE

SOME say it's the root of all evil, for others it makes the world go round. Right now, for most of us, there's not enough of it to make ends meet. Today, however, one Scots couple are awash with it. As they celebrate their £160m Euromillions' win, it's unlikely Largs pair Colin and Chris Weir will be aware that they are following in the gold-plated footsteps of another Scot.

John Law is considered to be among the world's very first self-made millionaires - he's even said to have helped create the word - a charming, charismatic, if flawed, character who, hundreds of years before the likes of Sir Fred Goodwin was busy bringing down a nation's finances all by himself.

Edinburgh-born Law not only made millions but he lost them too and, in a curious mirror image of certain modern events, it was his ill-judgement in American investments that sparked the globe's first stock market crash. But there is more than that, he virtually invented the paper bank note.

Law was born in a goldsmith's luckenbooth in St Giles' in the Royal Mile in 1671. His father, William, had made a fortune through money-lending, so while John was still young the family was able to leave the stench of the Old Town for the glorious surroundings of Lauriston Castle.

When Law's father died suddenly, the young man inherited his wealth. But while the dashing Law had a flair for maths, he had a bigger interest in gambling and frittered away his legacy in London until, faced with debtors' prison, his mother had to bail him out.

Law wasn't put off, though. Instead he used his brilliant mathematician's mind to research laws of probability which he then used against gamblers to give him a winning edge.

But this was a murky, dangerous world where disputes often flared. Luckily Law was an excellent swordsman, which he demonstrated when he was challenged to a duel by a love rival, his first defensive lunge being decisive.

He was convicted of murder in 1694, aged 23. But Law's charisma and charm meant he escaped the death sentence and fled to the Continent.

In France he set his mind to solving something that had challenged economists and financiers for ages: how to 'make' money.

There was a shortage of gold and silver and economies desperately needed an alternative. While alchemists strove to turn base metal into gold, Law was considering a less challenging alternative - paper money.

No-one was interested but Law understood the limitations of using reserves of precious metals. When his ideas were rejected back home in Edinburgh too, he had to wait until France was gripped by financial disaster, then his idea was welcomed with open arms.

According to Janet Gleeson, whose book Millionaire: The Philanderer, Gambler and Duelist who Invented Modern Finance, Law was a "visionary financial hero".

"He was big in every sense, over six feet tall with ambitions that were larger and more daring than anyone else's," she notes. "On one level his story is the stuff of romantic legend. But his ideas and actions invest his life with far more significance than that of a beguiling and ambitious playboy: the things Law made happen still have resonance today."

Certainly France in 1715 was a country willing to gamble on his paper money theory. With support of the Duc d'Orleans, Regent for the infant French King, Law gained permission to set up the first Bank of France and a trading company in Louisiana at a settlement he named La Nouvelle Orleans, New Orleans.

He issued customers with the new paper money to buy shares in his trading company. Louisiana, he said, was rich in gems and metals - people across Europe fought to invest.

Shares that started at 500 livres each, quickly doubled, and then marched from 1000 to 10,000 livres. When they hit the millions, the term 'millionnaire' was coined.

Edinburgh historian Michael Turnbull, who researched Law for his book, Edinburgh Portraits, says: "He acquired over 20 landed properties in France, he had a collection of jewels, a library of 45,000 books and wine cellars and held the post of King's Secretary, and received the Freedom of the City of Edinburgh."

But while his financial theory may have been sound, his claims about Louisiana's potential were less so. Soon people realised the land was more or less one vast swamp.

By 1720 it had all gone horribly wrong, the French currency was in tatters and Law's 'system' had collapsed.

He was chased through the French streets, plunging from celebrated 'millionnaire' to outcast and house arrest before fleeing France.

And by the time he died in Venice in 1729, Scotland's millionaire money maker was virtually penniless.

CREAM OF THE CROP

Top of the Scots has to be the fabulously rich Andrew Carnegie, whose wealth from American industry earned him around $400 million in 1901 - around dollars 300 billion by today's standards - before the Dunfermline-born industrialist gave vast sums away.

Entrepreneur Tom Hunter is among the wealthiest Scots, although the global financial crash is said to have halved his GBP1 billion fortune. Earlier this year, North Sea tycoon Sir Ian Wood was named as Scotland's first oil billionaire, but even he is still not as well off as former United Arab Emirates ambassador to the UK, Mahdi al Tajir, the Scottish-based businessman who owns the Highland Spring mineral water firm and is worth just over £1.5bn.

Edinburgh-based Harry Potter author JK Rowling has an estimated £530m fortune.
Edinburgh Evening News 18 July 2011

HISTORY: SORDID HABITS OF GREAT WRITER

EDINBURGH, he wrote, was not so much a city as the largest of small towns, not so much beautiful as interesting, and that, "in a word, and above all, she is a curiosity".

And so too, it seems, was Robert Louis Stevenson.

For beneath his veneer of respectability and charm, his status as celebrated writer and his social rank as the son of a highly regarded god-fearing citizen of the New Town, Stevenson liked nothing better than to satisfy his own carnal curiosities among the city's seedy underbelly.

The forbidden fleshpots around Leith Street, where bawdy brothel girls flaunted disease-ridden wares and negotiated hurried sex for a few shillings and the illicit drinking shebeens where booze flowed regardless of the law, were where, according to a new biography, one of the Capital's most famous writers frequently spent his nights.

Just like his most famous character, Dr Jekyll, Stevenson had another dimension to his character - one which would have had his church-going father broken by shame.

For while the writer was busy making the short journey from the New Town to the sleazy brothels around Leith Walk, his own family were campaigning against the evils of prostitution and donating money to "save" the city's fallen women.

They were women who made their living selling sex to outwardly respectable men like Stevenson, who - thanks to biographer Jeremy Hodges' laborious research - now have names and ages, backgrounds and identities.

"Many of these girls would have been only around 19 to 24 years old," says Mr Hodges, who trawled through census papers from 1871 in a bid to uncover detail about the ladies of the night who so fascinated the Edinburgh writer.

"Some reports from the charitable institutions set up to try to help them suggest many were just 14.

"It would be quite possible that within ten years, they'd be dead. For many, it was a grim existence."

Stevenson's mother, a daughter of the manse, and his father, a brooding, religious character with strong Calvinistic convictions, were seemingly unsuspecting: they thought their only son was studying hard at university.

In fact, says Hodges, as darkness fell and the city shed the strait-laced daytime outer shell to reveal its hedonistic and wanton streak, he had no qualms about joining in the "fun".

He certainly didn't need to travel far to find a seedy side to the city.

The High Street, says Hodges, thronged with "sixpenny whores", loose women who sold themselves for pennies which typically would be used almost immediately to buy booze.

The New Town, meanwhile, may have had a classier exterior, but behind the prim walls of some of its impressive properties, the same kinds of salacious acts and transactions were taking place.

"You can picture the scene of horse drawn carriages and gaslight," says Hodges.

"Stevenson lived in Heriot Row, he would have walked along Queen Street which would be perfectly respectable, but turn right to Elder Street and he'd have found a wicked place which decent people would not go near at night.

"St James Square was known for its large number of brothels, but Stevenson was most likely at Leith Street.

"The tobacconist shop at number nine was where he had his 'private' mail delivered - items that, presumably, he didn't want his parents to see. Below was a network of cellars, which, at night became a shebeen."

Stevenson, who was given just a small allowance by his prim father, couldn't have afforded a visit to Clara Johnson's Clyde Street brothel, the most posh in town.

"There, clients would pay GBP5, which was a fortune by today's standards," adds Hodges.

Clara's girls were far removed from the High Street's "streetwalkers", he says.

Instead, they were given the much less tawdry title of "gay ladies".

The 1871 census revealed them to be young women with previously respectable jobs such as milliner and dressmaker, whose GBP8 annual salaries would have been dwarfed by their earnings under Clara's roof.

Indeed, morally bankrupt as she was, Clara was eventually found to be worth around GBP14,000 - in the region of GBP2m by today's standards. And while she operated a high-class prostitution business, many brothels were far less salubrious.

"There were around 200 brothels known to the police in Victorian Edinburgh, and of course, there would have been a lot of "part-time" prostitution which doesn't show on police records of the time," adds Hodges.

"Some parts of the city would be barely recognisable by night.

"In Princes Street and Hanover Street, once the shops shut, it would be all prostitution. If you were respectable, you would not even go there after the shops closed.

"Prostitution was a massive problem for respectable people and they could be quite hysterical about it at the time."

Among them were Stevenson's own family.

"The girls whose company he enjoyed were the same 'fallen women' his father, a respected engineer, was trying to save at the Edinburgh Magdalene Asylum," says Hodges.

"His uncle David, meanwhile, supported the Scottish National Association for the Suppression of Licentiousness in its campaign against vice, including the banning of nude models at the city's school of art."

It seems unlikely that the man known as "Velvet Coat" for his Bohemian style jacket and for his charming manner and consideration for the women he encountered, did not partake in some services.

"He mentioned one, Mary H, who worked in a factory in Leith but at times she apparently went on and off the game, sometimes a perfectly respectable woman who would not welcome advances at all, and then there'd be periods of prostitution," Hodges says.

"Stevenson seems to have known her very well."

In visiting these brothels Stevenson was, adds Hodges, dicing with danger. For those found to be dallying with women of loose morals often paid a very high price.

"It was a very claustrophobic society," adds Hodges. "Stevenson's parents actually thought they would have to leave Edinburgh when he married an American divorcee, such was their shame.

"Whether they were aware of his shenanigans, I don't know, but he certainly had a lot of upset with his parents which was usually put down to his opposing views on religion."

Worse though, Stevenson's dark side may even have been the death of him. For fraternising with Victorian prostitutes could be a deadly business.

"Stevenson had TB but he died from a stroke," says Hodges, who has delved into ageing census records and historic reports in a bid to unravel key elements of Stevenson's short but prolific life.

"And a stroke had nothing to do with TB.

"However, it could have been one of the things that happened to you in the later stages of syphilis."

It's not completely clear whether Stevenson visited the brothels for illicit sex or simply because of his fascination for Edinburgh's underbelly - eventually he'd drawn on its schizophrenic nature for one of his most famous works.

"What is known is that while he wasn't a great physical presence, he had enormous personal charm," adds Hodges.

"He would chat away with anyone. And that is one of the things that made him a great writer."

n Lamplit, Vicious Fairy Land by Jeremy Hodges, is being serialised on www.robert-louis-stevenson.org, which is hosted by Edinburgh Napier University's Centre for Literature and Writing (CLAW).

Colourful life of talented author

Robert Louis Stevenson was born in November 1850, at Howard Place, Edinburgh, son of lighthouse engineer Thomas Stevenson, and his wife, Margaret, daughter of a Colinton minister. The family later lived at 17 Heriot Row.

Stevenson's childhood was plagued by illness which left him frail and thin. He studied engineering at Edinburgh University but his talent was writing. He eventually made his home in Upolu, one of the Samoan islands.

He died from a stroke aged 44 on December 3, 1894, leaving behind his works including Treasure Island, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and Kidnapped.


Edinburgh Evening News 8 September 2010

HISTORY: THE VERY GREAT MICHAEL

TWO men in a rowing boat. One a king, the other a notable ship's captain. Bobbing about on the Forth, determined to find the ideal spot for the most incredible, most unlikely sea-faring venture imaginable - the construction of the world's biggest ship.

It sounds like some kind of comic caper. In some ways it was - for their bold plan was to make Scotland's navy a world-beater with a monster vessel that would rip up great swathes of the nation's forest in its construction and leave 16th-century rulers across Europe consumed with bitter jealousy.

But before Scotland could become the envy of the maritime world and spark a desperate race among rivals to better her,they needed to find somewhere to build the thing.
Eventually King James IV and his loyal captain Andrew Wood's eyes rested on a small natural harbour, deep enough to take their planned super ship's mammoth bulk, free from sandbank obstacles to hinder her graceful slide into action.

The place they found became Newhaven. And the ship they'd build at this new yard was The Great Michael, a monster vessel that almost defied belief.

Scotland's role in shipbuilding has been brought into sharp focus this week as the fate of modern naval vessels being constructed at Rosyth and Govan shipyards has hung in the balance. But 500 years ago, King James IV had no qualms about throwing almost his entire annual income - around £30,000, worth millions by today's standards - into one of the most staggering shipbuilding projects of the time.

The Great Michael was eventually sold to the French - ironically she was used just once in anger in Scottish service. Her final resting place is, sadly, lost in the mists of time.

But now Scotland's greatest ever naval vessel will "sail" again - rebuilt by clever computer imagery to reveal how she probably looked for part of a new BBC One Scotland television series, Making Scotland's Landscape.

It recalls the fascinating story of how Scotland's navy became the envy of the world, while next month a two-part series on BBC Radio Scotland will explore further its impact on the country, the incredible challenge to build it and how it became a status symbol for the nation.

"James IV wanted a naval ship to impress the world and that's what he got," explains historian Louise Yeoman, who has produced the radio series. "He loved ships. He decided he wanted the biggest and the best. He was the last truly great medieval king - he drank with the people, he gave them money, he led them from the front. And they loved him."

The Great Michael would eventually weigh 1000 tons. She was 240ft long and 33 ft abeam and set sail equipped with 24 Flanders guns and around 40 smaller guns - Mons Meg is said by some to have been among her weaponry - manned by a crew of 300 sailors, 120 gunners and up to 1000 soldiers.

The King's plan was to make her a ship for hire to Scotland's allies as required. But before any of that could happen, he had to find somewhere suitable to build her.

"There is this wonderful accounts entry that shows how Captain Andrew Wood paid a man money to run him and the King up the Forth to seek the 'new haven'," adds Louise. "They were rowing back and forth, checking out the locations and asking each other where they should put it.

"Leith had a sandbar at its entrance so it couldn't be made there. So Newhaven was literally created to make this ship. Newhaven was Scotland's first world-beating shipyard."

The Great Michael not only impressed all who saw her with its scale, but the skill of its workmanship and its lavish fittings.

"She possibly took up to 72 acres of wood to create. The ammo guns on board would have been hugely expensive. She was carved, decorated and painted. The cloth used for just one of her Saltires measured 22 yards long. She would have been a remarkable work of art," adds Louise.

The radio series presenter, Evening News columnist and ship fanatic Susan Morrison, says she was a staggering piece of engineering which used all the new technologies of the day.

"The reason James IV wanted this ship was probably mainly to show off," she says. "It's possible she was built as a castle smasher - a kind of death star vessel to hire to kings who got themselves in all kinds of bother."

Her place in maritime history is unique, adds Louise.

"The Great Michael sparked an international arms race with the jealous monarchs of Europe. She was a revolutionary ship - building her was a massive international project like running a space project. The amazing thing was that it wasn't one of the European superpowers doing it - it was Scotland.

"Scotland's excellence in shipbuilding begins here on the Forth."

********
THE Great Michael was launched from the new dock at Newhaven in 1511, the largest warship in Europe.

After King James IV's death at Flodden, she was sold to France for a bargain sum and became the flagship of the Vice Admiral of Brittany.

She became a significant weapon in the war of the French fleet against the Spanish.

Her final resting place is unknown, however it's thought that in 1523 she may have returned to Scotland, carrying the regent of Scotland (the duke of Albany, regent for James V) from France.

Appeared Edinburgh Evening News 21 October 2010

HISTORY: SHARP END OF SURGERY

HIS eyes are tightly closed, lips firmly pursed. His hair is a striking shade of strawberry blond, it's fine and wispy and the same unusual colour as the rough beard that sprouts along his jawline and creeps towards his severed neck.

He is disembodied, lifeless, eerie. A floating head with waxy, grey skin and that shock of hair, suspended in a specimen jar filled to the brim with preserving fluid, tucked out of sight to visitors to the Surgeons' Hall Museum for fear it may cause distress.

For as severed heads go, this one is even more disturbing than most others might be.

"You're not too squeamish, are you?" asks Chris Henry, heritage manager at the Royal College of Surgeons Edinburgh museum, as he prepares to unveil the reason why meticulously sketched images of the face and head of this unfortunate middle aged man are among the most striking features of a forthcoming exhibition.

For where flesh and bone should be on the left side of the face is a broad, gaping hole stretching from eye to ear to chin, the flesh gnawed away by a rampant tumour that, if it occurred today, could probably be tackled by medical expertise and its damage rectified by the reconstructive art of the plastic surgeon.

"That's one of the things we're trying to get people to think about," says Chris, who has delved into the hundreds of the museum's specimens in preparation for what promises to be a fascinating exhibition themed around plastic surgery, Skin Deep.

"It's about encouraging people to think about what is perceived as being 'acceptable' in the pursuit of beauty.

"It's not just to do with plastic surgery," he stresses.

"We want people to think about those who are born with facial disfigurements or who go on to develop them, and to consider what people might use plastic surgery for today.

"We want to show that plastic surgery isn't anything new."
The severed head, thought to date from before 1825 and an original specimen from the museum founder Charles Bell's collection, will remain behind the scenes for the exhibition.

Drawings of it specially commissioned for the event are graphic enough.

Visitors to what promises to be a fascinating exploration of the impact the surgeon's knife has had on rebuilding shattered features, of social attitudes to facial deformities and the modern quest for perfection - all themes tackled under the Skin Deep banner - will be greeted by an intriguing collection of sometimes curious and often grim exhibits.

Few are more bizarre than the brass mask currently waiting to go on display.

It's been designed to cover the lower half of a man's face, with an oval flap that opens outward like a trap door to allow him to eat.

Inside, there's a lower set of teeth, a drainage system for saliva and assorted simple straps to hold it all in place.

Oddly, it also sports a rather dashing twirled brown hair moustache.

Next to it is propped a white cast of how its wearer, Alphonse Louis, would have looked in life: lower jaw blown away by artillery shrapnel and, with nothing to hold it in place, fat tongue lolling out.

The impact in white plaster is dramatic enough. In reality French soldier Alphonse, 22 years old when he was injured during the Siege of Antwerp in December 1832, must have been an arresting sight.

"He lost most of his lower jaw and his right forearm," explains Chris. "Many people will have heard of the film, The Man in the Iron Mask, Well this is the real thing.

"Alphonse was said to have been even more proud of his mask than the Legion of Honour and Leopold medals that hung on his tunic."

Records suggest that a cleverly wrapped scarf meant few who passed Alphonse in the street even realised that underneath was a gaping hole where the flesh and bone should have been.

It's those connections between patient, reconstructive surgeon, social reactions to facial deformities and different cultures' definition of what constitutes 'beauty' that curator Chris hopes the exhibition, supported by facial disfigurement charity Changing Faces, will highlight.

Such the black and white photograph of a middle aged man, two long curved cutaneous horns - dead keratin which erupt through the skin often as the result of a virus - sprouting from his forehead like antlers.

His deformity was far from deliberate. Yet some cultures revere what makes others reel in horror. Such as the man's mis-shapen skull, deliberately flat at the top and moulded at the sides during childhood to create the slight cone shape regarded by South American Mayan tribes as physical perfection.

Striking too are disturbing 1920s images of men whose facial features have been ripped apart by dreadful accidents, being gradually rebuilt by the emerging skills of plastic surgeons.

That era of medical advances led by the discovery of antibiotics, the growth of antiseptics plus two world wars providing human "guinea pigs" to perfect skills on, meant a period of rapid growth in the history of plastic surgery led by London based Sir Harold Gillies.

He is known as the "Father of Plastic Surgery", however, as Chris explains, the plastic surgeon's work stretches much further back than that.

"People were replacing noses in India as far back as 600 BC," adds Chris.

"It was an extreme punishment to have your nose cut off.

"Someone found you could grow a flap of skin from the arm to the nose - effectively building a new nose.

"There are Italian records of nose replacement using skin from the arm dating back to 1597, he adds.

"In 1794, two English surgeons in India watched a brickmaker perform a rhinoplasty on someone who had his nose cut off.

"They realised what a fantastic thing it was and the idea was eventually published in the Gentleman's Magazine."

By 1818, a German surgeon had published a book detailing his "nose job" techniques, entitled Rhinoplastik, and the word "plastic" stuck.

The first facelift, around the turn of the 20th century, was a forerunner to today's booming cosmetic surgery industry: the latest statistics from British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons (BAAPS) show the number of surgical procedures last year exceeded 36,400, an increase of 6.7 per cent from 2008, with more men than ever before turning to the knife to improve their looks.

"The face is such an important communication tool," adds Chris. "But there's this whole ethical minefield about what people should or should not do in the name of 'beauty'.

"These days many people want to have surgery to remove lines or give them a better figure, but in places in the Third World there are people desperate for surgery for cleft lips and others here have facial deformities," he says. "We want people to see the exhibition and think about it."

Skin Deep: The Restoration of Form and Function, runs from August 5 at the Surgeons' Hall Museums at the Royal College of Surgeons Edinburgh. www.museum.rcsed.ac.uk

If you're not confident, surgery won't help.

Susan Campbell Duncan is used to people staring at her.

"The other day I was on a bus when a white van drew up alongside," she recalls. "One guy was having a good look at me.

"He turned to his mate, who then leaned forward to look too. I thought, 'You have no idea what I've gone through to reach this point'."

She's lived with facial deformity since developing a rare form of facial cancer as a baby. Aged two, Susan underwent her first of almost 100 operations aimed at rebuilding her features.

Now 46, she says she's not going under the knife again. "More surgery is not going to do very much good," she shrugs.

Susan, who lives in Craigleith, works with Changing Faces, a nationwide group that supports people with facial disfigurements and is supporting the Surgeon's Hall exhibition.

For her, there are clear lines between the kind of surgery she's undergone, and surgery carried out in pursuit of perfection.

"I understand some people who have cosmetic surgery because they want to look beautiful, but if you're not already confident, no amount of cosmetic surgery will change it," she says.

"People might look at me and think 'how can she possibly be happy', but I am. I said a long time ago that 'okay, this is what I have got to live with, I can't change it'."
Edinburgh Evening News 22 July 2010

HISTORY: TALE OF THE AFGHAN BRIDE

ZEPPELINS carrying their deadly cargo floated menacingly above Edinburgh, war raged across Europe and life, once fairly simple and carefree, probably felt altogether more dangerous.

Elizabeth Louise MacKenzie was the 16-year-old daughter of a respectable middle-class Edinburgh family, with delicate, pretty features and, until war struck, a life largely sheltered from hardships.

She was young, smart and increasingly intrigued by the world beyond her strait-laced home city.

And when she first set eyes on a tall, dashing Afghan prince, descended from the Prophet Muhammad, with his strong, proud features and a spectacular curled moustache, her teenage heart beat faster.

"I followed the chieftain's son with my eyes as he crossed the room," she later recalled. "He walked so erectly and looked like the popular idea of a handsome sheikh. He was tall, with finely chiselled features and the air of a swashbuckler."

Social conventions decreed that young bedazzled Elizabeth wasn't supposed to fall head over heels in love with this striking foreigner.

And she certainly wasn't supposed to run off and marry him, convert to Islam and embark on a new life in Afghanistan and India.

As a result, Elizabth's father never spoke to her again, such was the mortification she'd heaped on her family.

The couple's romance was a scandalous clash of cultures, but it forged an East-West bond that stretched much further than a marriage that neither side's family had particularly welcomed.

And even now, as the 50th anniversary of Elizabeth's death approaches, this daring and loving pair's determination to overcome international, social and religious divides has, perhaps, more relevance than ever before.

Elizabeth died from cancer, aged 60, on August 15, 1960. Her body lies in the historic Brookwood Cemetery in Surrey, her devoted husband buried by her side. Their final resting places are just a few hundred yards from the graves of some of the latest Afghan conflict's most recent soldier victims.

Elizabeth's death marked the final chapter in a remarkable life that stretched from Edinburgh to the wilds of the North-West Frontier.

There the Khyber pass cuts through the Hindu Kush mountains, connecting Afghanistan with Pakistan. It's where, even then, the Pashtun people â€" the main ethnic force within today's Taliban â€" raged bitterly against the British occupation of their nation.

That Elizabeth followed her heart to embark on such a thrilling adventure as a memsahib would have been enough of a challenge for most women.

But she and her husband, Sirdar Ikbal Ali Shah, great-grandson of Afghan warlord Jan-Fishan Khan, would also spend the rest of their lives trying to build bridges to unite West and East and create a more enlightened understanding between their cultures.

Elizabeth tried to do just that in an acclaimed book, My Khyber Marriage: Experiences of a Scotswoman as the wife of a Pathan Chieftain's Son, which she penned under an assumed name, Moray Murray Abdullah, perhaps to save the blushes of her Edinburgh relations.

In it, she wrote passionately of her experiences as a white European wife in a war-torn foreign land, from arriving at her husband's home fearful she was to find herself part of a scantily-clad harem, to gazing in wonder at the fine embroidery and silks worn by her mother-in-law. "The East is not a land of sweet-do-nothing inhabited by handsome, wealthy sheikhs lying in wait to lay hands on white women," she wrote.

While Elizabeth dispelled popular myths surrounding Eastern life in that and her second book, The Valley of the Giant Buddhas, a travelogue based around the Buddhas of Bayman which were destroyed by the Taliban in 2001, her husband Ali Shah, a British Foreign Office diplomat and acclaimed author, was also producing dozens of works and giving lectures to build links between East and West.

Their unlikely union would even go on to deliver a second and third generation of descendants who have strived to forge stronger understanding of the area. Among them is their granddaughter, documentary maker Saira Shah, whose acclaimed 2001 film Beneath the Veil coincided with a new wave of British and American presence in the region which, to bloody cost, continues today.

None of which could have been known to young Elizabeth's head as she stood at an Edinburgh University reception nearly a century ago and gazed in awe at the striking young man at the other side of the room.

"It was 1916," she wrote. "Trainloads of troops kept leaving. The streets of Edinburgh were full of injured men. Everybody was doing something, some war work."

She was grieving the loss of her brother in the war, while working at a depot making flags to sell on street corners for the war effort, some days toiling from 5.30am until 6pm.

An invitation from Edinburgh University for flag sellers to attend a reception was a cause for much excitement for her, less so from her father.

She was allowed to go for just two hours. She arrived to find herself overwhelmed by a sea of unknown faces of various nationalities. Among them was the man who would eventually capture her heart.

"To me, he was the principal actor on the stage," she reflected.

Once introduced, he brought her tea and chocolate cake, confessing to the blushing Elizabeth how he preferred his own country's green tea.

Then, as if in a forewarning of what she might come to find in her future life as his wife, he added: "Moreover, we are men of the sword and do not care for sugar buns."

They left together and continued to meet for strolls in the Braid Hills or tea in a café overlooking Princes Street Gardens.

Their blossoming romance was a carefully guarded secret. And when her father found out, it seemed doomed as he forced her to write a farewell message to her suitor.

Both families attempted to organise engagements to other parties before, finally, word came from the east that, if Ali Shah could promise his father that Elizabeth would become Muslim and had the fighting spirit to defend the family fort in times of crisis, he would give his blessing to their marriage.

It was all the couple needed to hear.

Soon young Elizabeth was on her remarkable, lifelong adventure.

My Khyber Marriage by Morag Murray Abdullah is published by Octagon Press. For further details visit www.clearlight.com/octagon

DISTANT NATIONS WITH CLOSE AFFINITY

Marriage took the young Elizabeth to a life she could never have anticipated in 1920s Edinburgh.

She lived in her husband's Khyber homeland and travelled with him across nations in his role as a leading diplomatic figure.

At one lecture in Edinburgh shortly after Afghanistan had won independence from Britain, Ali Shah told the Edinburgh Philosophical Institution of a need to establish "that friendly feeling which must prevail between Great Britain and Afghanistan for the future peace of the world".

The future of Afghanistan depended on the exploitation of its resources, he added, pointing out that there were "close affinities between the Afghan and the Scottish people because they were both Highland people . . . and that in future the people of this country would be the first who would help them".

At another address to the Overseas League in London, he drew further parallels with the Scots: "I have a great respect for the Scots still wearing the kilt," he said. "There is some affinity in the feeding of the two peoples. The Afghans have porridge and broth. They are also intensely fond of money and, like every hill folk, cannot keep it as long as they would like."

He added that Afghans shared the common traits of humanity and though they were warriors by birth and sometimes brigands by profession, the sniper's bullet was "not the emblem of the Afghan race".

The couple had three children. Their son Idries was famed for his books on the Sufi element of Islamic religion.

His three children all became writers, while daughter Saira, risked her life to make television documentary Beneath the Veil, in which she went undercover in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan where she witnessed executions.

Ali Shah died in 1969. Bereft following the death of Elizabeth" known then as Saira Elizabeth Louiza Shah" he vowed never to live in a country where he'd lived with her.

He moved to Morocco and he was killed by a reversing truck. His body was taken to England and he was buried alongside Elizabeth.
Edinburgh Evening News July 20, 2010

A CENTURY COLLARING CRIMINALS

A COLD, clear Sunday morning in January 1911. City insurance clerk Eric Wilson strode along a cinder path in the Braid Hills, contemplating the rural landscape.

He was walking along a path in the shadow of the Hermitage Woods when something odd caught his eye. On a patch of land in the valley that dips between Blackford Hill and Braid Hills, on a field known to many locals as the Hermiston estate "bog" or the "sheep park", lay what looked disturbingly like the figure of a woman.

Lying on her side, her face covered by her hat, she was respectably if a little shabbily dressed, with her gold wedding ring glistening on her finger.

At first Wilson hoped she was just in a deep, probably drunken, sleep. His hands gripped the fence that separated the path from the field and shook it as hard as he could, yelling out to her.

There would be no answer.

He dashed to a nearby dairy farm for help. Now with farm labourer William Fleming by his side, the lifeless woman's light blue hat was lifted to reveal her features. Both must have reeled at the sight of the blood which had seeped from her staring eyes and streaked her lifeless face.

Now it was becoming horribly clear. This unfortunate woman, only around 30 years old, had been murdered.

Who she was, exactly what had happened to her and, most importantly, at whose hands she met her end, was now a matter for the police to solve.

It was Sunday, January 22, 1911. Generations have come and gone and what shocked Edinburgh at the time is now largely forgotten. But while this was a tragic, wasteful end to a young woman's life, the crime heralded the dawn of a whole new era in police detective work. For the officers investigating the murder victim's grim death on this picturesque landscape, did what none before them had attempted in Scotland.

They called in the hounds.

Today police dogs play a fundamental role in helping to patrol our streets, their unique skills a key weapon in the battle against drugs, in the search for missing people, in crowd control and on the scent of criminals.

It's hard to imagine a modern police force without its unit of highly-trained sniffer dogs and handlers.

But in 1911 when Edinburgh's police force asked for bloodhounds to be brought to this stretch of hillside in the hope they might sniff out the perpetrator of such a dastardly deed, it was the stuff of a Sherlock Holmes story.

While some at the time may well have questioned whether dogs could really help bring a criminal to justice, there was no doubting that the unusual decision to use them helped change the face of policing forever.

Not that the startled insurance clerk or the grim labourer from Braid Hills Dairy Farm had any of that on their minds as they gazed at the lifeless body of 30-year-old Maria Jane Boyle, a mother of two who lived with her husband, a platelayer, in Leith.

Poor Maria must have been a desperate sight for those two startled men as she lay on the cold, hard ground, the pocket of her brown skirt ripped off and lying near the body - the only sign of a possible struggle - her deathly white cheeks stained with blood that had trickled from her eyes, and angry marks on her neck where her attacker had squeezed the life from her.

Within an hour, Edinburgh University's Professor Harvey Littlejohn had confirmed she had been strangled. But it was the remote location of where the deed had been done and the potential that the area still harboured the killer's scent that immediately raised hopes that a new and largely untested method of detective work - using "sniffer" dogs - might well help.

Within hours, a call had been made to Frank Raynor, an accountant from Haddington who had spent five years attempting to train five bloodhounds in tracking scent. He was told to bring his bloodhounds to the scene as soon as possible. They came, one a large black beast called Warboy, by taxi cab.

It was so unique that The Scotsman at the time reported the appearance of the bloodhounds in fascinating detail: "An unusual development in police investigation work in Edinburgh was the requisition of bloodhounds for the purpose of tracking the assailant," reported the paper the day after the murder had taken place. "No sooner had the hounds been set to work than they went off keenly upon what appeared to be a very hot scent."

Police historian Alastair Dinsmore, of the Glasgow Police Museum, says dogs were a rarity in police work in those days. "London police used privately-owned hunting dogs to try to find Jack the Ripper. That was probably the first time dogs had been used in that way. But it was very new for this country. We were well behind the Continent
In Belgium and Germany dogs were used regularly by police to look for murder weapons."

Sadly, Edinburgh's first murder search involving dogs would end in failure. The scent took the dogs, detectives and various other officers for half a mile through the Hermitage Woods. But as they trudged across open ground and over burns, initial optimism faded as the dogs struggled to keep track of the scent.

Miles of ground were covered, but it was eventually assumed the killer had escaped over the burn, unknown to him at the time, a move that earned him his freedom as it washed away the scent and defeated the dogs. Maria's killer was never traced. Even a £100 reward put up by the city magistrates failed to turn up any clues.

It could have been an embarrassing failure for the force. But, as The Scotsman confirmed: "The authorities intend to resume operations with the bloodhounds as they are of the opinion that the possibilities of these agents have not been exhausted."

Precisely when the Edinburgh City Police - later part of Lothian and Borders Police Force - welcomed its first official canine recruits is unclear.

But what is known, is that on a chilly January day, 100 years ago, police found themselves on the trail of a whole new era in fighting crime.



LEAD ROLE

THEY were first used in fighting Edinburgh crime 100 years ago this month, but today's police dogs play a key - and varied - role in keeping our streets safe.

Today's hounds are usually German Shepherds trained in anything from crowd control to finding missing people, sniffing out drugs and even finding buried bodies.

There are 17 "general purpose" police dogs at the dog unit at Fettes, along with five which specialise in finding explosives and eight trained in finding narcotics.

Sergeant Duncan Sutherland, one of the force's dog trainers and handlers, says: "Like every area of the force, the dog unit is looking to the future and how to evolve. One of those areas is wildlife crime, one of the dogs is now trained to sniff out poisons.

"It's hard to imagine a modern force today that wouldn't use dogs."

APPEARED Edinburgh Evening News Jan 13,2011.

Heroes went Forth to beat Germans

THE scene is a boy's bedroom above a busy pub, a stone's throw from the Palace of Holyroodhouse.
Young Ferg Handley is turning the pages of his favourite comic, eyes darting between pictures and story, imagination lost in a bloody war fought and won before he was born, brought vividly to life between the pages of his favourite Commando comic.
Inside titles such as Walk - or Die!, Hellfire Landing and Hun Bait lurked Nazis called Wolfgang and Herman, armed with Karabiner 98 Kurz machine guns yelling "Achtung!" and "Die British!" before a well placed bullet finished them off.
There'd be thrilling tales of high drama, risk, a few hand-grenade explosions and a bit of comic relief. Tommy might have shouted "Aaargh, I'm HIT" once or even twice but eventually he'd march home, victory ringing in his ears.
"The Second World War was part of my growing up," recalls Ferg. "I read these comics years after it had ended but at the same time my dad had served in Bomber Command in the Second World War, with more than 1000 hours flying time to his name.
"My parents and grandparents would speak about people having been evacuated during the war.
"They'd talk about rationing and how my mum queued for three hours and came back with a banana only for my uncle to take one look at it and announce he didn't want it.
"So the war, although in the past, wasn't really that far away."
Today the war is, of course, much further in the past. Ferg is 47, he might have been expected to have outgrown those days of war stories and be using his MA in politics, pushing his pen in a sterile office somewhere.
Instead he's still flicking through copies of Commando. The only difference is he's the one telling the stories.
As one of Commando's regular writers since 1996, Ferg has hundreds of tales of British derring-do to his credit.
But it's his most recent that is closest to home.
Divided Aces was published yesterday, a high-octane action tale inspired by the real-life drama in the skies above the Firth of Forth, 71 years ago.
It was 1939, RAF 603 Squadron - founded in 1925 as something of a hobby flying club for well-heeled city gents - had been embodied into the RAF and placed on a war footing for the first time in its history.
Its motto was the Doric "Gin ye Daur" (If You Dare), many of the pilots nicknamed their planes after their home city - names like Portobello, Auld Reekie and Corstorphine. The last thing they expected on October 16, 1939, was a German
raid.
Nine German aircraft took Scottish air defence by surprise as they roared over the Forth towards the Royal Navy base at Rosyth.
Their audacious raid left three boats damaged - HMS Southampton and two cruisers, HMS Mohawk and HMS Edinburgh - 16 Royal Navy crew dead, 44 wounded.
Startled members of 603 Squadron were scrambled from their Turnhouse base. Likewise, 602 City of Glasgow Squadron were raised from Drem in East Lothian.
Eventually, they shot down two Heinkels into the Firth of Forth and a bomber off May Island - the first enemy aircraft to be shot down over Britain.
Ferg came across their remarkable - and often neglected - tale as he researched background for other Commando tales to coincide with the 70th anniversary of the Battle of Britain.
"I'd read a book about the Battle of Britain and it gave me some ideas for Commando stories," recalls Ferg, of Willowbrae. "But all the action seemed to be set in the south of England.
"I knew there had to have been action further north, but there was not a lot of literature about it.
"Then I started to really look at it and I figured that there was definitely enough material for a story."
The facts from 1939 merged with a fictional story around a central character who - like Ferg - returns to Edinburgh after a spell away to rediscover the city of his youth.
"I was born in southern England," he explains. "We moved here when I was three so there was some stick about my English background.
"It was only after I returned here after living in London for 15 years that I started to appreciate what a wonderful and inspiring city it is."
Divided Aces is just the latest of around 300 Commando comic stories he's penned. When he's not tackling the Germans or the Japanese in Commando, he's Spider-Man - Ferg has been publisher Panini's sole writer for the superhero for the past three years and, for one story, brought the webbed one to Edinburgh. Once he created an X-Men story - plonking them in the depths of Dumfries.
Yet controlling the destiny of superheroes and battle-scarred soldiers was never his original career plan.
"I was doing an MA in politics but by the time my course was finishing I was pretty scunnered with it all," he recalls.
"I started to think about whether I might have a career in writing."
Those childhood days spent immersed in his comics flooded back.
"I knew there was this big underground scene, that comics like Dark Knight Returns and Watchman and V for Vendetta were adult stuff.
"I thought I'd like to do a graphic novel. The problem was how to do it."
He learned how to write in comic script form - a laborious process that involves writing everything from the cartoon characters' dialogue to descriptions of scenes for the artist.
With the Commando comics, comes a requirement too for fine historic detail and research.
In Divided Aces, the attention to detail is meticulous.
"I went for the most familiar images, partly because it's easier to get references for the artist. I wanted to depict the beauty of Edinburgh, to suggest that it was so important to protect the city.
"Pretty much all of the landmarks I scripted made it into the artwork. Jose Maria Jorge, the artist, is Spanish and got so many small details in - like iron railings missing from a school playground, melted down for the war effort."
Divided Aces is one of four new adventures which marks the 70th anniversary of the Battle of Britain, and although Commando comics is heading for its own 50th anniversary next year, Ferg believes it will be around for years to come.
"Several factors account for the British fascination for the war," he says. "We were on the winning side, which makes it a popular slice of history. It's why there are so many films, dramas and books. Commando taps into all that."
• Commando: Divided Aces is available now, £1.35.
Additional reporting by Liam Rudden

Published Edinburgh Evening News, 16 September 2010.