Graham Ogilvy

We’re pushing the boat out today. Kurt the Kiwi, an esteemed former colleague and now a senior man at the New Zealand Herald, is paying a flying visit. It’s 15 years since he left Scotland for home and the occasion calls for a special lunch at Edinburgh’s L’Escargot Bleu. We&

To Edinburgh for lunch with our ace reviewer and resident legal historian. La Bruschetta is the venue of choice. Right opposite Haymarket station, it is so convenient. On the hottest day of the year, the restaurant is pleasingly cool and what a joy – white linen tablecloths, gleaming silver an

Is Sunday lunch still a thing? Only just, I discover when we search for a decent restaurant to offer a Sunday roast with all the trimmings. They are few and far between and we finally settle on 18, the rooftop bar and restaurant of Rusack’s Hotel in St Andrews. As the name suggests, it boasts

To Inverness and McBain’s, a small family owned restaurant by the river, is our choice after a morning marvelling at the bronze age Clava Cairns and tramping through the steady drizzle of Culloden moor. My ancestors served in Lord Ogilvy’s regiment at Culloden and I once discovered an ac

To Dublin – a city fairly swarming with highly-paid lawyers, their salaries supercharged by big UK and US law firms locating to Ireland in search of a foothold in the European Union. New buildings are springing up on the banks of the Liffey like shamrocks after a summer shower. Our cheerful ta

Edinburgh’s Café Marlayne is full up so we’re in the capital’s branch of The Ivy. I personally loathe and detest chains which elevate mediocrity and present it as a culinary triumph. They suck the life blood out of our communities and I will always favour an independent vali

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