Alexander Dow (1735/6-1779) army officer and writer. Born in Perthshire, Alexander Dow ran away to sea at a young age joining a private ship of war, the King of Prussia, in 1757. By 1760, he was in Bengal where he joined the East India Company achieving the rank of ensign within […]
William Thomson (1746-1817) – writer – was born at Burnside (Forteviot) in 1746 and was educated at the grammar school in Perth before entering St Andrews University to study theology. He later attended Edinburgh University. At university, he gained a post with the Earl of Kinnoull (chancellor of the university) as […]
John MacDiarmid: John MacDiarmid (1779-1808) was born the son of the minister of Weem at Perthshire. A writer amongst which his body of work is found: An Inquiry into the System of Military Defence of Great Britain (1803) Inquiry into the Nature of Civil and Military Subordination (1804) Lives of British […]
“In 1819 Robert Southey, poet laureate, together with Thomas Telford the engineer, undertook a tour of Scotland. The Journal of the Tour is coloured to some extent by his extreme Toryism but for all that is a lively, direct and on the whole sympathetic account of his travels.” As the pair […]