Clans, Castles and the Scottish Borders

  KIRKHOPE. Church valley. Old English hop ‘valley among hills for summer grazing, or place of refuge’. Site of St Gordian’s Kirk. UGLY G...

If you're heading for Peebles Golf Club, you'll drive along Rosetta Road.  But why Rosetta, a substantial town on the Nile Delta?  W...

 I enjoyed Part III of Simon Schama’s ‘The Romantics and Us’ (BBC2 on Friday). It’s about nostalgia, the ‘songs of our homeland’ and ancestr...

It fell about Martinmas tyde, When border steeds get corn and hay The Captain of Bewcastle hath bound him to ryde And he's ower...

,  Writing this, I keep coming up against Lord Dacre - specifically Thomas Dacre 2nd Baron of Gillsland (1467 - 1525) -  a perpetual thorn i...