The language of the sea
PETER URPETH reports on the latest developments in the ongoing Sail Loft Project in Stornoway
FOR MANY, the boat-making traditions of the Scottish Islands and coastal communities […]

Stories, paper, stone…
PETER URPETH gives an update on Stornoway’s Sail Loft Project
The walls have been stripped. What wasn’t saved is now lost. The wallpapers are soaking in a bath in Moira Macaulay’s studio […]

Destroyers from Seattle
PETER URPETH gets the lowdown on a Gaelic punk band from Seattle ahead of their short tour of Scotland.
SEATTLE based Gaelic punk band Mill a h-Uile Rud, meaning ‘destroy everything’ in a […]

Sign of the times…
Lewis band SIGN RED have been grabbing the headlines for their enduring popularity with the listeners of Radio 1’s Vic and Gill show, and are heading into a third week at the top of that show’s […]

Banishing the Sunless Summer Blues
PETER URPETH looks forward to another mass outbreak of Celtic music in the big tent at Lews Castle as the HEBRIDEAN CELTIC FESTIVAL gets underway.
IT IS WITHOUT doubt the most […]

Sea Passages – Stornoway’s Sail Loft Art Project
In the first of a series of pieces, PETER URPETH follows the work of IAN STEPHEN and his collaboraters in a project aimed at capturing the soul of a building and […]

PETER URPETH conjures up the unique atmosphere of one of the leading folk and traditional music occasions of the year, the HEBRIDEAN CELTIC FESTIVAL on Lewis.
THERE IS MORE to the Heb Celtic Festival than the […]

Bridging the Gàidhlig-Gaelige gap
PETER URPETH talks to Skye-based poet RODY GORMAN about the publication of an important new anthology of Gaelic poetry, his own work, and the state of Gàidhlig and Gaelige […]

Early Stornoway paintings reveal ‘A kind of Glenrothes for the 18th century’
PETER URPETH reports on the unveiling in Stornoway of a new acquisition by the Scottish National Portrait Gallery.
THE TWO earliest […]

PETER URPETH takes a look at the plans for an ambitious new Arts Centre in the Western Isles.
Work on the new Arts Centre in Stornoway will finally get underway in July, and as these drawings from architects […]

The Buddha of Grimshader
TORCUIL MacRATH of Grimshader celebrates his 80th birthday this year. He remains one of Gaeldom’s most original poets and scholars yet his work is little known outside of Lewis and among […]

 Brave new words
PETER URPETH interviewed ANGUS PETER CAMPBELL following the publication of his new Gaelic novel, An Oidhche Mus Do Sheòl Sinn.
AT THE OPENING of Angus Peter Campbell’s novel, An Oidhche Mus Do […]

A journey home…
CHRISTINE PRIMROSE is one of the great voices in traditional Gaelic singing. PETER URPETH looks at Christine’s contribution, and welcomes a new recording with Brian Ó hEadhra
AN TURAS, the […]

PETER URPETH brings us the lowdown on the packed programme of the 2003 Hebridean Celtic Festival.
Those hoping to see The Waterboys perform a power-packed stadium rock gig at this year’s Hebridean Celtic Festival […]

Lews Castle Green, Stornoway, Isle of Lewis, 22 August 2009 THIS IS August in Lewis. Like an army of minute junkies the midges are getting their score from each square millimetre of exposed flesh, and the thin grassy crust on the porridge of mud beneath our feet is threatening at any moment to break open and swallow […]

An Lanntair, Stornoway, Isle of Lewis, 21 May 2009 PERFORMANCES by Maggie MacInnes have for this writer always had something of a qualitative difference from those of other singers performing songs from the Scottish Gaelic tradition. The difference stems entirely from Maggie’s direct family relationship to a tradition of song which evolved in…[Read more]

Stornoway, Isle of Lewis, 16-19 July 2008 IT IS NOW almost a contractual necessity for reviewers of British summer music festivals to dwell on the vagaries of the climate and the appalling public health consequences of the seemingly endless deluge that is the British summer in these modern times. The latest excesses of this climatic speculation […]