Graham Ogilvy

To Glasgow for dinner with my old colleague and friend Marion Scott, Scotland’s finest and, quite possibly last, investigative journalist. Where else but the legendary Buttery for this special night? Marooned amid housing developments and cut off from the city centre by motorways, this is Argy

To Edinburgh to meet a recently retired university pal. We choose Fishers in Thistle St, the city centre redoubt of the popular Leith restaurant. A cheery welcome greets us and we’re guided to our seats and wait … and wait. Eventually a waitress appears and takes our wine order. This hu

As a young journalist visiting Brezhnev’s sclerotic Soviet Union, I felt privileged to be shown around the huge state library in Leningrad, the second largest in the world, by one of the aged librarians who had actually worked there during the horrendous 872-day siege of the city, when the Naz

Perched on the South bank of the River Tay at the end of the rail bridge, The View is aptly named – offering diners a chance to admire the Victorian colossus that spans the yawning Tay estuary.

To Perth, and just a few steps from the busy Sheriff Court, Cardo has become an institution in the local dining scene. This year it celebrates its 20th anniversary – and continues to defy the economic and cultural headwinds that are laying waste to Britain’s restaurants. Cardo (Portugues

To the ‘silver city of the North’, as it was once styled, and home to Scotland’s other Faculty of Advocates. Aberdeen is in the economic doldrums following the downturn in the North Sea, the current government’s reluctance to ‘drill baby drill’ and the failure of

This is a serious, well-researched consideration of how the prosecution of violent crime in Scotland has developed and of society’s changing attitudes to it. Some of the fifteen cases carefully selected by Dr Louise Heren are well-known landmark cases like those of Burke and Hare, Madeleine Sm

The Battle of George Square which took place on January 31, 1919 has entered the mythology of the Left and, indeed, the mainstream of Sottish history as Bloody Friday when thuggish Glasgow police baton-charged thousands of peaceful but revolutionary-minded workers striking for a shorter working week

The vaults of the Antwerp Diamond Centre were thought to be impregnable until, on February 15, 2003, a gang of professional thieves made off with a haul of diamonds worth over £100 million – none have ever been recovered. Patient planning and stunning ingenuity allowed the gang to loot h

Sebastian Smee’s Paris in Ruins: Love, War, and the Birth of Impressionism was published last year to coincide with the 150th anniversary of the first exhibition by 30 artists who rebelled against the stultifying grip of the French art establishment and who jointly ushered in the age of the Im

Turning Point: The Vietnam War, NetflixThe new five-part documentary series on the Vietnam war, now available on Netflix, charts the course of the war and skilfully explores how the Vietnam debacle has weakened American democracy and continues to do so. It may lack the subtlety and incredible show-d

It is a curious fact, strange but true, that the best books on Spain are written by foreigners. It is impossible to think of Andalucía without Irish writer Gerald Brenan springing to mind. The lives and careers of the poet Lorca and film-maker Buñuel are likewise synonymous with anothe

The recent announcement by Lord Pentland of the publication of a court reporters’ guide by the Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service is a welcome recognition that the decline of what is now termed the ‘mainstream media’ has serious implications for the administration of justice and

Dorothy Parker was celebrated in her time as a poet, a critic and a writer. Above all, she is cherished today for her acerbic wit. But she is less well-known for her Hollywood screenwriting career which spanned three tumultuous decades. Parker detested Hollywood from the very start – despising

A monumental new history of Irish republicanism in Dundee reveals much of the Irish diaspora experience in Scotland and leaves Graham Ogilvy impressed by its thorough research. As a young boy I walked through the derelict tenements of Tipperary every day to get to school and in the evening, after sc