Scottish Samurai's Home to Reopen as Museum

Braehead House, the Victorian mansion of ‘Scottish Samurai’ Thomas Blake Glover is to be reopened as a tourist attraction..

"Thomas Blake Glover's House" by Kanshiketsu is licenced under CC BY-SA 2.0

Two years ago the mansion in Bridge of Don was forced to close due to low visitor numbers. Aberdeen City Council will now take over ownership of the building, and plan to turn it into a tourist attraction to help promote links with Japan.

Thomas Blake Glover is relatively unknown in his birth country, but he helped change the face of Japan back in the late 1800s.  His former home in Nagasaki has two million visitors a year, and is the oldest surviving Western style house in the city.

He was a key figure in the industrialisation of Japan in the period following the end of the Sakoku policy (a foreign relations policy which forbid foreigners entering the country).  Glover opened Japan’s first coal mine, brought over the first steam train, and helped to found the shipbuilding company which became Mitsubishi Corporation and the Japan Brewery Company which became the Kirinn brewery.  He was awarded the Order of the Rising Sun.

He made his fortune selling ships and arms to the rebels in the Boshin War in 1868-69, which led to the Meiji Restoration of Imperial rule.

Author Julie Davidson to share Mrs Livingstone's story in talks series

Author and Journalist Julie Davidson will share the enthralling story of the extraordinarily courageous and stoical wife of the world-renowned explorer and missionary, David Livingstone in a talk based on her book Looking for Mrs Livingstone in Aberdeen, Dundee, Dunfermline and Edinburgh between the 6th and 9th January.

This talk is part of the Royal Scottish Geographical Society’s Inspiring People talks programme.
In the history books, Mary Livingstone is a shadow in the blaze of her husband's sun, a whisper in the thunderclap of his reputation. Yet she played an important role in Livingstone's success and her own feats as an early traveller in uncharted Africa are unique.

She was the first white woman to cross the Kalahari, which she did twice - pregnant - giving birth in the bush on the second journey. She was much more rooted in southern Africa than her husband: he has a tomb in Westminster Abbey, London; she has an obscure and crumbling grave on the banks of the Zambezi in a destitute region of Mozambique.

In the thrall of Africa, Julie Davidson has travelled extensively over several years in the footsteps of Mary Livingstone, from her birthplace in a remote district of South Africa to her grave on the Zambezi. She explores the places the Livingstones knew as a couple and, above all, explores the detail of the life and family of this little-known figure in British - but not African - history.

JULIE DAVIDSON's varied and award-winning career in journalism, includes work for The Times, Observer, Guardian, Daily Telegraph, Aberdeen Press & Journal, The Scotsman, The Herald (Glasgow), Cosmopolitan and House & Garden. Winner of 5 Scottish Press Awards, she was a TV presenter and has won several awards for travel writing.

Julie’s talk will take place at 7:30pm on:

6th January - Aberdeen - MacRobert Building, University of Aberdeen, King's College, Aberdeen, AB24 5UA

7th January - Dundee - Tower Extension Building, University of Dundee, Perth Road, Dundee, DD1 4HN

8th January - Dunfermline - Carnegie Hall, East Port, Dunfermline, KY12 7JA

9th January - Edinburgh - Appleton Tower, 11 Crichton Street, Edinburgh, EH8 9LE

Everyone is welcome. Tickets are £8 for adults, free for students, under 18s and RSGS members.

For more information about the RSGS talks and how to join the Society visit www.rsgs.org, contact us on enquiries@rsgs.org, find us on Facebook or follow the Society on twitter @RoyalScotGeoSoc.

Missing From the Map: Bruce Gittings shares a Geography of Secret Places.

As part of the RSGS’s popular ‘Inspiring People’ talks programme, Bruce Gittings will be speaking in Aberdeen on February 4th about some of the interesting and intriguing information that is not shown on maps.

Bruce suggests that leaving significant details off the map was not just a feature of Soviet Russia, but is the case in 21st century Britain.  Linking remarkable tales of wartime history with fieldwork in modern landscapes, maps and high resolution aerial imagery, he takes us to some lesser known features of places we may think we know.

Bruce Gittings.

Bruce has an extensive knowledge and understanding of Scotland’s places. He is one of the core team who contribute to the MSc in Geographical Information Science at the University of Edinburgh and he created and maintains the web-based Gazetteer for Scotland, a vast encyclopaedia of Scotland’s geography, people and history, from the Scottish Borders to the Northern Isles.  The first comprehensive gazetteer produced for Scotland since 1885, it includes tourist attractions, industries and historical sites, together with histories of family names and clans, biographies of famous Scots and descriptions of historical events associated with Scotland. 

Bruce’s talk will take place on Monday 4^th February at 7:30pm in the University of Aberdeen’s MacRobert Building, King’s College, Aberdeen, AB24 5UA. Tickets are £8 for adults, (redeemable if buying membership) and free for students, under 18s and for RSGS members. Tickets are available on the day from the venue. For more information about any RSGS talks this season please visit www.rsgs.org/events/

John Pilkington Shares His Journey from Georgia to Afghanistan this January

A BBC Journalist, writer and speaker who has been called “one of Britain’s greatest tellers of travellers’ tales” will speak in Aberdeen, Dundee, Dunfermline and Edinburgh from the 7th-10th January.

John Pilkington will share the story of a trip from Georgia to Afghanistan following a less-travelled branch of the Silk Road.

This talk is part of the Royal Scottish Geographical Society’s Inspiring People talks programme.

John Pilkington, a journalist and broadcaster with the BBC World Service and Radio 4, followed a spectacular branch of the Silk Road from the Caucasus across the Caspian Sea to Samarkand. He then turned south-east to explore the High Pamirs of Tajikistan and Afghanistan – a region well-known to Marco Polo – before finishing in Kashgar, China’s so-called ‘Crossroads of Asia’.

John Pilkington.

Matt Dickinson shares his 'Wild Images'

DOCUMENTARY MAKER SHARES HIS ‘WILD IMAGES’
Matt Dickinson speaks for the RSGS in Aberdeen, Dundee and Dunfermline

Award winning expedition documentary maker Matt Dickinson will take his audience on a breathtaking journey of discovery based on his extraordinary filming career, in a talk in Aberdeen, Dundee and Dunfermline on November 5th-7th.

Matt will reveal the thrills and spills, the human highs and lows, that have formed the highlights of his work. 'I have always been fascinated by risk takers' Matt says, 'and the motivation that spurs them on. This talk is an opportunity to explore how explorers react in moments of life and death drama.'

Matt Dickinson is a filmmaker and writer who specializes in the wild places and the indigenous people of the world. He has a passion for adventure that has so far taken him to almost one hundred countries, including expeditions to the Sahara Desert, Greenland, and the jungles of South America.

This talk is part of the Royal Scottish Geographical Society’s Inspiring People talks programme.

He studied anthropology in college before beginning a career in television. After training for four years at the BBC he went freelance in 1988 to produce and direct adventure documentaries for, among others, the BBC, National Geographic Television, the Discovery Channel, and the Arts & Entertainment Network.

His recent film projects have included a sea voyage by yacht to Antarctica, a whitewater rafting film on the Brahmaputra River in India, and an expedition on foot across the inhospitable Namib Desert.

In the pre-monsoon Everest season of 1996, amid the worst weather conditions on record, together with Alan Hinkes, Britain's foremost high-altitude mountaineer, he made a successful ascent of Mount Everest's notorious north side, one of the more technically demanding climbs on the world's highest peak.

Matt Dickinson’s Talk ‘Wild Images’ will take place at the MacRobert Building, University of Aberdeen, King’s College, Aberdeen, AB24 5UA, at 7.30pm on November 5^th.  £8 for adults, and free for students, under 18s and RSGS members.  Tickets are available on the day from the venue. For more information about any of our talks this season please visit www.rsgs.org/events/