Culture UK
Who are the British? Do they really drink tea, eat roast beef and Yorkshire pudding and never leave home without an umbrella? Find out more about true Brits; past and present, myth and legend, fact and fiction.
The Magical Life and Curious Death of the Great Lafayette
On 9th May 1911, The Palace Empire Theatre in Edinburgh was packed with an audience of 3,000 people. They were there to see the spectacular illusions of the world’s most talented and famed magician, The Great Lafayette…
The Oldest Running Cinema In Scotland
In the small loch-side town of Campletown in Scotland, you will find a hidden gem – a cinema that is over 100 years old, beautifully restored and still showing films!
The Horsemen and their Mysterious Word
In the 19th century, there were two areas that were particularly famous for their skilled horsemen, or horse whisperers as we might call them today. There were the Toadmen of East Anglia, and then there were the horsemen of Aberdeenshire, members of the Society of the Horseman’s Word…
Sir Walter Scott
Sir Walter Scott was born on 15 August 1771, in a small third floor flat in College Wynd in Edinburgh’s Old Town. Scott was the ninth child of Anne Rutherford and Walter Scott, a solicitor and member of the private society the Writers of the Signet.
Old Billy The Barge Horse
Holder of the record for equine longevity, Old Billy the barge horse is said to have died at the ripe old age of 62…
Thomas Willson’s Pyramid Mortuary
Architect Thomas Willson had great plans; he had an audacious scheme for a giant pyramid mortuary, 90 stories high and capable of holding up to five million dead, in 19th century London…
The Cottingley Fairies
“There are fairies at the bottom of our garden,” announces the opening line of a poem by Rose Fyleman first published in 1917. Coincidentally, that was also the year two intelligent and talented young conspirators managed to convince some very well-known people that there really were fairies living near Cottingley Beck, the stream that ran past the foot of their garden.
