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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Help at hand before sense of despair loses control

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The facts

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

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

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

LEADING THE WAY

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

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

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

WRITING is ON WALL FOR CITY'S BOOK OF KNOWLEDGE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


Weighing in at 129lb

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Edinburgh Evening News 15 March 2012

Kicking soccer into something more familiar

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Earning Stripes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Appeared Edinburgh Evening News, 3rd Feb 2012

HOW GOEBBELS GAVE TITANIC A NAZI TWIST

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Sometimes the more basic is actually the better."

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


Pioneers in ancient Egypt

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

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

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

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

Bishop: I was never good at keeping rules.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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