Thriving abroad

It was the combination of a book launch, and meeting up with Eddie Tait, who runs the website www.scotsinlondon.com, that got me thinking about just how well the Scottish diaspora (I dislike that word intensely, but it appears to fit the current obsession with meaningless media jargon) is doing nowadays.

The book launch, which took place at the headquarters of The Scotsman newspaper before Christmas, was for Wherever the Saltire Flies (Luath Press), a second collaboration between two members of the Scottish Parliament; Henry McLeish, a former First Minister, and Kenny MacAskill, a leading light of the Scottish National Party. Their highly researched book provides chapters on Caledonian and Scottish societies around the world, a phenomena which has fascinated me now for more than 30 years, On reflection, my interest was most probably derived from different objectives; from my having been born part of that diaspora (in Sarawak, now in Malaysia) and my father's involvement with St Andrews Societies in Penang and Singapore.

Thereafter, when living in England, my parents had a great family friend called Margaret Mackay who was London representative of the National Trust for Scotland. Anyone Margaret knew with a connection north of the border was vigorously recruited to the cause, so we found ourselves, my sisters and I, roped into NTS promotions at an early age.

Between the late 1970s and 1990s, I worked out of Glasgow as editor of a string of Scottish interest magazines and No...

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• By : Roddy Martine
• In : Roddy Martine's World
• Issue : 31
• Page : 7
• Words : 782