People & Places

Author of Discover your Scottish ancestry Graham Holton offers tips on tracing your Scottish family tree.

There will be no fireworks in Stornoway on Lewis this Hogmanay with the celebration of the new year to be more muted this time round.

He had hundreds of tenants in Argyll - and more than 2,000 slaves in Jamaica.

Around 450 people from a Scottish island packed up their houses and sailed to New York province on the promise of a new lucrative life - but were to find themselves without homes or promised land after the shaky scheme to get them there went awry.

He was a strong and hardy apostle who fished the waters off Galilee, so how did St Andrew become the patron saint of Scotland?

Claire Fraser can’t stop smiling, Jamie Fraser can’t stop smiling and neither can young Ian Murray as the Outlander plot moves the family to their new land at Fraser’s Ridge in North Carolina.

There is an air of domestic bliss as the three start felling trees, fishing for trout and mapping out their cabins among the 10,000 acres granted to them by the British Government.

READ MORE: Outlander: The real Highlanders of North Carolina

The land comes with such an amazing view that unease over the neighbouring Cheroke, who are not happy with the arrival of the new colonists, simply evaporate into the North Carolina air.

On a suggestion that they should perhaps move their new homestead, Jamie is adamant he is not giving up the spot. “The mountain spoke to me,” he says.

READ MORE: How Outlander has sparked a renaissance in the Scots language

Moving on and Jamie manages to win over his Native American neighbours by killing an outcast who raped a woman. I

It is enough to earn the Highlander the name Bear Killer, so that difficult subject of colonisation can be broadly leapfrogged as the factions decide to live in peace and spill no blood between them.

So far, so Outlander.

Back to the 1970s and Roger Wakefield is still smarting over his rather embarrassing proposal to Brianna which saw him drink a couple of drams and become deeply offensive to the woman he supposedly loves.

Roger is suddenly a deeper, trickier character than previously alluded to with Season 4 likely to test this man to the maximum.

He a potential way back into Briana’s heart when he is sent a pile of documents that prove Claire and Jamie - Brianna’s parents - did indeed meet up in the 18th Century after a spot of time travel.

Unfortunately, Roger also finds out that the Claire and Jamie die in a house fire at Fraser’s Ridge with the date of the tragedy not yet clear.

It could be soon, it could be far into the future. It serves as a nifty plot device to keep watching with the writers also laying a couple of other major seeds to keep the story moving.

Claire is told by a native American of the forthcoming death of someone close while we now know Briana is heading to Scotland.

There are irons in the fire but it doesn’t feel like Outlander 4 is burning bright. Not yet, at least.

The new season of Outlander follows lead characters Claire and Jamie Fraser as they make their new life in North Carolina during the mid 18th Century.

A special film screening of Outlaw King will be held in the town where the remains of Robert the Bruce were found 200 years ago.

To the Scots, he was known as Good Sir James Douglas. To the English, the staunch ally of Robert the Bruce was known more sinisterly as The Black Douglas given the ferocity of the battle-hardened knight.

Perthshire woman Christina Smith became known as the ‘white woman’ after arriving in south east Australia in 1845.

The first pieces of a pioneering plan to save Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s domestic masterpiece from the driving West Coast wind and rain have been put in place with work now underway on the giant chainmail ‘box’ that will protect the property from the elements.

The gravestone in St John’s graveyard, Princes St, Edinburgh, memorialises Malvina Wells as faithful servant and friend to a prominent family in the capital for more than 70 years.

Scotland’s highest mountains are synonymous with the man who listed them in the late 19th Century - the celebrated Sir Hugh Munro.

The surrender of the German high seas fleet in the Forth off Cockenzie ten days after the Armistice involved an unprecedented 300 naval vessels, including 70 German ships.

More people are flying into the Outer Hebrides’ main airport than ever before with passenger numbers setting a new record this autumn.

The first four miles of the M8 opened on this day in 1964 at Harthill to cope with the rising number of motor cars on the road and an old A8 that was creaking and dangerous under the strain.

Languages evolve over time, but we must act to stop the disappearance of Scots from our tongues, says Robert Millar, Professor of Linguistics and Scottish Language at Aberdeen University.