Radio listener

Published on Friday 5 March 2010 13:29

You will know, of course, what a galanthophile is ... No? It is an enthusiastic collector of snowdrops, Galanthus being the cheery little winter flower's genus name, from which there are now some 700 cultivars in circulation.

In tomorrow's SNOWDROP MANIA, biodiversity consultant Kerry Ten Kate discovers that the current obsession with snowdrops in Britain, which has been compared to the "tulip mania" of 17th century Holland, is resulting in single bulbs of desirable strains changing hands for 150 and, inevitably, a consequent upsurge in the unscrupulous digging up of the plants, regardless of environmental concerns, to supply the unprecedented market. She also meets the collectors, including "the Pope of Snowdrops" himself, Joe Sharman, at one of his gala auctions.

There will be snowdrops blooming at the moment on Perthshire's Atholl estates, where BBC Scotland's Elizabeth Quigley takes us in THE DUCHESS, about Katherine "Kitty Murray", the now largely forgotten Duchess of Atholl who became Scotland's first female MP.

The woman who became known as "the Red Duchess" was born in 1874, the daughter of the 10th Baronet of Banff, Sir James Ramsay and initially planned to be a concert pianist, but following her marriage to "Bardie" – the Marquis of Tullibardine, she followed him across the globe on his campaigns in South Africa and Egypt, and became involved in nursing.

After her husband became the 8th Duke of Atholl, the feisty Kitty become involved in running his extensive estates but also in politics. A woman of contradictions, she became Scotland's first female MP when she won the seat of Kinross and West Perthshire for the Conservatives, holding it for 15 years, yet was opposed to women's suffrage. She was later one of the few Conservatives to oppose the Government policy of non-intervention in the Spanish Civil War, having visited Spain and witnessed for herself the appalling effects of Luftwaffe bombing, opposed appeasement with Hitler and fell from favour with her party, having been branded a "communist".

Snowdrop Mania

Tomorrow, Radio 4, 2:45pm

The Duchess

Tomorrow, Radio Scotland, 10:30am

&#149 This article was first published in the Scotsman, March 6, 2010