Open Book

The Declaration of Arbroath will be displayed at the National Museum of Scotland from 3 June this year, but you can find out more about it now. In this talk, recorded on the Declaration's 700th anniversary in 2020, archivist Dr Alan Borthwick spoke about the document's long and surprising history, and more about its significance… … Continue reading 700 Years of the Declaration of Arbroath, with Dr Alan Borthwick

  6 April 2020 is the 700th anniversary of the Declaration of Arbroath - perhaps the most famous and important of Scotland's historic documents. Drafted in 1320, the Declaration is a powerful call for recognition of the Kingdom of Scotland's sovereign independence and it's a key treasure in the National Records of Scotland archives. The … Continue reading 1320-2020 – 700 Years of the Declaration of Arbroath, by Dr Alan Borthwick

  In the last of our three World War One podcasts, NRS Head of Outreach Dr Tristram Clarke looks at the forgotten stories of the men who exchanged their pens and desks in Edinburgh's Register Houses for rifles and helmets in France, Flanders and the Dardanelles, some never to return. He also explores the contribution of those who … Continue reading A Very Arduous Period – The Register Houses During WWI, with Dr Tristram Clarke

In this week's Open Book podcast Dr Tristram Clarke, Head of Outreach at NRS, looks in detail at the people, the items and the stories that inspired our current exhibition, For You The War Is Over: Scottish POWs 1914-1918. Each soldier tells a different story - some of them were imprisoned in 1918 and others were captured during the war's … Continue reading Behind The Wire: Scottish POWs 1914-1918, with Dr Tristram Clarke

We're now approaching the centenary of Armistice Day in 1918, so this seems like an appropriate time to take stock of the cost of World War I for Scots who fought in it. In this week's podcast, we hear from project cataloguers Lynn Bruce and Olivia Howarth, who are currently cataloguing and preserving Scottish Military … Continue reading “I Am What You Would Call Done” – Lynn Bruce & Olivia Howarth on the Scottish Pension Appeals Tribunal Records

  …I begged her not to interfere with me in the performance of my duty and told her I would listen only to her father, and that I would go whenever he asked me. Then she ran off to another room and almost instantly returned with a large brass bell which she kept constantly clanging … Continue reading No Vote, No Census – Ruth Boreham on the 1911 Census suffrage protests

  We head back to the law courts this week for a nineteenth century court case with some surprisingly modern themes about privacy and the public interest. On Valentine’s Day this year, Professor Hector MacQueen of the University of Edinburgh joined us at General Register House to share his observations about a court case arising from … Continue reading A Private Matter? Robert Burns, Agnes Maclehose & the Court of Session, by Professor Hector MacQueen

  Have you ever wondered what an archivist does? In this week’s podcast, NRS archivist Simon Johnson opens up the case papers of Scotland’s supreme criminal court in the early 19th Century. Case papers from the High Court of Justiciary provide endless research potential, both as a record of individual cases and as a tremendous … Continue reading From Disorder to Order: Cataloguing the 19th Century Criminal Case Papers of the High Court of Justiciary, with Simon Johnson

Long before there was an Edinburgh derby; before the offside rule and the Wembley Wizards or pies and Bovril there was the Football Club, founded in Edinburgh by John Hope in 1824. It was the world’s first dedicated football organisation, active until 1841, and John Hope’s meticulous records have been preserved among his personal papers here … Continue reading Trailblazers: The world’s first football club, with John Hutchinson & Andy Mitchell

  This is the third episode of Open Book, a Podcast by National Records of Scotland dedicated to preserving Scotland’s past, recording its present and informing our future. This week, we’re off to the lonely isle of St Kilda in the Outer Hebrides, forty miles west of Benbecula. This craggy isle once supported a small but … Continue reading St Kilda: The Edge of the World, with Dr Alison Rosie

Crime and Punishment: How Archives Can Inspire Fiction, with Dr Elaine Thomson. In this week’s Open Book Podcast ES Thomson, author of “The Peachgrowers’ Almanac”, “Beloved Poison”, “Dark Asylum” and others, tells us how archives have inspired her and how the stories of real people from the past can help to develop and inform creative … Continue reading Podcast: Inspiration from the Archives, with ES Thomson