Book review: A Sea Monster’s Tale

Colin Speedie’s new book A Sea Monster’s Tale: In Search of the Basking Shark takes us from swashbuckling hunts of giant sharks by reckless individuals with makeshift harpoons, through an age of mass slaughter, to the author’s personal shark-tracking adventures. At up to eleven metres in length and seven tonnes in weight, this plankton-feeding fish…

Read More

Book review: An Enormous Reckless Blunder

An Enormous Reckless Blunder tells the little-known story of the Lewis Chemical Works. In 1844, James Matheson purchased the Isle of Lewis with the fortune had had made from trading in the far east. He hoped to exploit peat deposits, which led to him creating the Lewis Chemical Works, to produce lighting oil and paraffin…

Read More

Book review: Giants of the Clyde

The River Clyde in Glasgow was known internationally and recognised as the ultimate shipbuilding accolade. By as late as the 1950s around a seventh of the world’s total sea-going tonnage was built on the Clyde. It’s certainly no Mississippi or Amazon in size – but its history is legendary. From the many yards on its…

Read More