Dr John Goodsir (1746–1816): The surgeon of Largo

The ancient fishing village of Lower Largo or the Seatoun of Largo stands quietly on Largo Bay along the north side of the Firth of Forth and is famous as being the birthplace of its famous resident, Alexander Selkirk, who inspired Daniel Defoe’s, Robinson Crusoe. However, it has another resident, Dr. John Goodsir, who, for forty-six years served as a medical practitioner and was a Minister of the Gospel at the Largo Baptist Church for twenty years. The current work describes the life of this ordinary early medical practitioner and surgeon, discusses his correspondences, and finally examines his role as serving as Largo’s Baptist minister.

A Forgotten ‘Romantic’ Excursion: Joseph Blanco White's A Journey to the Trosacks in 1816

In 1816 Joseph Blanco White visited the Trossachs, having travelled to Edinburgh as a member of the household of Lord and Lady Holland. Soon afterwards he wrote A Journey to the Trosacks in 1816, a short but fascinating account of his trip which has remained unpublished until now. Lucidly penned, this autograph text shows admiration for the Scottish wilderness and interest in technological feats such as the steamboat that he takes on the Firth of Forth, an absolute novelty at the time. Observations on Highlands customs and language, and literary allusions to Sterne, Scott, Johnson and Boswell add to the interest of this forgotten piece, as do remarks about John Murray the publisher and Dugald Stewart the philosopher. The aim of this article is to present for the first time this work as a document of literary and cultural importance, given the renewed interest of Romantic era scholarship in travel writing and in Blanco White, the most important Spanish cultural mediator in Britain during the first decades of the 19th century.

Performing walking sims: From Dear Esther to Inchcolm Project

In 2012 The Chinese Room launched Dear Esther, a video game that would go on to shape video game history and define a new genre: the walking simulator. Walking simulators renounce traditional game tropes and foreground walking as an aesthetic and as a dramaturgical practice, which engages the walker/player in critical acts of reading, challenging and/or performing a landscape. In October 2016, Dear Esther was adapted as a site-responsive, promenade performance set on the Scottish island of Inchcolm in the Firth of Forth. The resulting performance, Dear Rachel, was then experienced alongside the game under the umbrella name Inchcolm Project. This hybrid event ‐ multimedia (promenade performance, gameplay and musical performance) and mixed-reality (with physical, augmented and virtual components) ‐ required the development and implementation of complex processes of remediation and adaptation. Drawing from a range of theories and practitioner reflection, this article puts forward a design framework ‐ storywalking ‐ which reconciled the two adaptation challenges: responding to the site and to the game.

The Fortification of the Firth of Forth 1880–1977

This book describes the story of the great Forth Fortress from 1880 to 1977, when the final traditional defensive capabilities were abandoned. The authors combine archival sources with new fieldwork and oral histories to not only describe what was built, but when and why. This meticulously researched, richly illustrated volume relates the defences in the Forth to the wider political and military context and also describes the human side of the defences: the men and women who manned the fortress. This is a fascinating resource for those interested in Scottish military and naval history, and conflict and battlefield archaeology.