Film Festivals I Have Missed

Film festivals are excellent things, brilliant opportunities to see films that you might not otherwise – or at least not for a long time – to see short films or obscure documentaries. I love film festivals, but crucially I don’t go to that many. Not, as some might presume, because there aren’t very many in Scotland, while the majority of the film festivals that take place in the UK are held in London there are a fair few up here. Recently the Edinburgh Film Festival has stepped out from under the shadow of its parent Festival, and the Glasgow and Shetland film festivals are gaining increasing international coverage; there are numerous smaller more specialised – Edinburgh’s annual Africa in Motion comes to mind – film festivals held in Glasgow and Edinburgh, festivals from the rest of the UK increasingly do tours and Tilda Swinton and co continue to produce charmingly eccentric efforts across the Highlands.  I just have this unfortunate tendency to miss them. Somehow, I’m always in the wrong place at the wrong time or don’t hear about them until it’s too late; one year I will hear that tickets for the Edinburgh film festival have gone on sale before the films I want to see sell out.

Never has this unfortunate tendency of mine been more obvious than this autumn. I knew in advance I would be missing the Africa in Motion festival as I was off adventuring around mainland Europe, and doubly so because its tour doesn’t come my way this year. However, it seemed everywhere I went around Europe I would find a film-festival that I couldn’t go to. Festivals seemed to be happening the week before I arrived places, or the week after I left them, in the case of the controversy dogged Zürich film festival it started the evening of the day I left. In one particularly annoying case I discovered that the last screening of one festival was the evening I arrived in that city; the day afterwards. It did occur to me that it would make quite a fun project to travel around Europe for a year trying to attend every single film festival, but mostly I came to feel that the film festivals of Europe were taunting me a little. It even continued once I’d returned to the UK, arriving in Bristol to discover that the Unchosen festival – which campaigns against Human Trafficking – was the following month. (Looking for a link to that festival I’ve discovered that I am currently missing the Encounters short film festival in Bristol…)

Therefore I felt thoroughly triumphant to actually make it to a screening as part of the Birds Eye View Festival when its tour arrived in Glasgow this week. Flooding and train cancellations meant I didn’t get to the Documentary Masterclass at the CCA but I did see an excellent silent film with live musical accompaniment at the GFT on Wednesday. My Best Girl starring the iconic Mary Pickford could almost be held up as the perfect archetypal romantic comedy, and despite not being the greatest fan of the genre I mean that as a compliment. Additionally it has a certain charm, a sort of innocence and naivety almost, borne of being made in a less cynical age than our own. I must admit that I think all silent movies should be watched on a big screen with live musical accompaniment, there’s a certain vibrancy that the live accompaniment gives them that doesn’t come across on the pre-recorded scores that accompany DVD or television screenings. Some films lend themselves to cinematic viewing, loosing a certain something on the small screen (I saw Requiem for a Dream in a tiny screening room, with an excellent sound system, at uni and I’ve never felt more claustrophobic or enjoyed that film more). There’s just something about that piano accompaniment, accentuating the moments of comedy or tenderness, or picking up the pace, galloping along as the inevitable chase gets increasingly manic, that somehow manages to hold its own against any amount of deafeningly crystal clear 5.1 surround sound. There’s something more intimate and warm about it, almost akin to attending a gig, knowing that you’re sharing a unique experience and that even if you were to go and see the film again, with the same people, in the same place with the same accompanist it wouldn’t be exactly the same. It was, as the girl in the row behind me announced at the end, “exactly what I needed.”

 

Cut Out + Keep; All Grown Up

Aww, Cut Out + Keep, I remember when you were just a blog with a forum. It’s quite strange to watch a website grow and develop over time, especially when you know the people involved. It’s an excellent, interactive not-so-little-anymore craft website – and I’m not just saying that because I occasionally contribute to Snippets! – constantly changing to fit its users, all 30,000 of them, requirements. Enjoy the news in full, I’m off to have a go at those rainbow cupcakes, here’s to them.

Online craft community, Cut Out + Keep celebrates 30,000 members worldwide

Cut Out + Keep, the online craft community is today celebrating the 30,000^th member joining the site. For a site which began as a personal craft blog for journalist Cat Morley and has been custom built for the purpose of sharing craft tutorials, this online hub of arts, crafts and entertainment is leading the way in the craft craze.

Members and celebrity ‘Crafty Superstars’ inspire fellow creatives by posting their own sewing, baking and making efforts to the site. And with 15,000+ step-by-step tutorials to chose from ranging from a ‘burlesque bustle skirt’ to rainbow cupcakes, there’s lots to learn and little to lose. And the fun doesn’t end there. Cut Out + Keep’s blog, competitions, chat board and online magazine, Snippets inject further fashion, music, art and craft kudos in to the site.

Cut Out + Keep creator, Cat Morley says: “I never fail to be amazed by the imagination and creativity of our members, so we’re continually working to make the site as easy and fun to use as possible.”

 

5. Monsoon Wedding

So I watched this film at the end of August/beginning of September wrote it up and went off travelling for a bit. I was going through some files checking up on things when I found the write-up and realised that I’d completely forgotten to post it before I went. I even bought a book of Indian film criticism while I was away (Hindi Cinema: An Insider’s View by Anil Saari) and was highly disappointed to discover that I’d missed a short season of Indian cinema at my local cinema, all without twigging that I’d forgotten something.

I’m quite substantially behind on this project so I roped my mother into watching this one with me so I didn’t forget my original plan and watch something different. I’m glad I did as we both rather fell in love with the film.

Given that the last piece of Indian cinema I’d watched was Asoka, Monsoon Wedding came as a completely different kind of culture shock. Although it lacked the stylistic distinctiveness that I’ve come to associate with Indian cinema  I felt as though I was actually learning something, gaining some sort of insight into modern Indian culture.

I should add at this point, it was going to be an aside in the last paragraph but grew into a paragraph all of its own, that I’ve come to understand that there are several different ‘Indian cinemas’, the dominant role that Bollywood has taken/been drawn in, for Western audiences unfortunately means that other than film-makers, such as Mira Nair, who work both outside and inside India it is quite hard to get hold of/become aware of these other cinemas. For example, there’s a book on Tamil cinema in the uni library, but while I can borrow a book on Hong Kong cinema and easily buy or borrow the films analysed, that wasn’t the case with the Tamil cinema – more like several frustrating hours on the internet to no avail. Which is doubly annoying as I would like to know positive things about Tamil culture, they are more than just the Tigers.

On a related note I think one of the best things about Monsoon Wedding is that the viewer gets to see an India that is diverse, that has many different cultures, people drop into different languages to talk to different people. Much like the portrayal of Kowloon in Chunking Express the city, in this case New Dehli, felt like a real place, somewhere you could visit, wander the streets and see what the characters had seen.

I must say that I found the romance between the wedding organiser (I suspect everyone knows an entrepreneurial chancer like him, wherever they come from) PK Dubey and housemaid Alice to be my favourite strand of the film. From the reviews I’ve read I know that a lot of people find them to be a sort of awkward comic relief that played on class and didn’t work for them, but for me there was a sort of tenderness and honesty to their courtship that surpassed all the complexities and complications of the main characters interactions. I’ve never liked the taste of Marigolds, but I really want to eat some after this.

 

The Danger of the Single Story

Written for the STV ‘Write Factor‘ competition (edited slightly to allow the inclusion of the video that inspired it originally), I didn’t make the short list but I still like the article. The single story hurts us all in the end.

This video is doing a round of the Internet at the moment; its of a talk given by Nigerian authoress, Chimamanda Adichie (Half a Yellow Sun, Purple Hibiscus) about what she calls the danger of the single story. She articulates, in a rather personable manner, some important ideas that got me thinking about how we view the world and ourselves.

At it’s most basic, the single story is where one fact or idea about a person, a group of people, a country, even a continent, comes to define them in the eyes of others. Reducing them to a simple 2-D caricature. It is often convenient for governments to use this method when dealing with sections of society that they wish to control. Power is the operative tool in this equation, the more power one party has, the more stories that it can have told and heard, the less power, the fewer stories.

Nigeria, the eighth most populous country in the world, is celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of its independence next year. Nigeria gets caught on two fronts by the single story, firstly by the old referring to a continent as a single country tendency, and secondly by its reputation of collapsed infrastructure, ethnic strife and Internet fraud. In the run up to the anniversary the Nigerian government has started an intensive campaign to ‘Re-brand Nigeria’ to the rest of the world, though a lot of their efforts seem more like an attempt to increase civic pride and reduce corruption – both good things in their own right – rather than actually doing anything to inspire that pride. Yet Nigeria has much to be proud of, one of the three largest film industries in the world, vibrant grass-roots engagement with literature, especially their own. Thriving entrepreneurs, tech savvy and still ingenious enough to turn bicycles into wheelchairs. It is these stories that need to be heard, that can do more to enhance and solidify Nigeria’s identity and reputation to the rest of the world than any amount of stylish ad campaigns.

In today’s world, despite 24-hour news channels, the Internet and the wealth of newsgathering and historical information that lies at our fingertips, it is just as easy to only encounter a single story of a place as it was a hundred years ago. This might not bother the average person on the street, but they should consider that failing to acknowledge that Nigeria has more than one story in turn allows other people to portray a single story of Scotland, one that doesn’t look remotely like the country we live in. As Adichie says “the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story.”

Scotland isn’t just about empty Highland vistas, castles and ceildhs, anymore than it’s only about deep-fried pizzas, teenage pregnancy and stabbings on a Saturday night. They are part of the story but not the whole story. The single story reduces a national obsession with football to sectarian bigotry, forgets about Gaelic children’s programmes, it erases the Italian ice-creameries that were a staple of day trips to the seaside for several generations, it denies the unexpected burst of homesickness I suffered in Crewe station on hearing a Glaswegian lady give the guard a piece of her mind about the service, for no better reason than that she was wearing a Sari. There are a thousand stories of Scotland, but if we want them to be heard or sought out by others, we need to do some listening and searching of our own.

 

Colour in Phantom of the Opera

Originally written for suite101.com, now hosted over at Xomba.

Colour in Phantom of the Opera

Colour is used to paint emotional changes, particularly fear and horror, throughout this 1925 Universal production and also showcases an early Technicolor sequence.

Phantom of the Opera (Rupert Julian, 1925) is an unusual experience for the uninitiated viewer of silent films. The best-known image of this film is black and white shot of Lon Chaney, in disfiguring make-up as the Phantom, menacing a beautiful ingénue. It fits perfectly the view of silent cinema held by the casual viewer – silent, black and white, clichéd overacting.

Yet this is a film, which employs colour to great effect as it moves from location to location. Although the colour palette used is limited, and mainly restricted to tinting the whole scene one particular colour, it manages to suggest changes in location and character point of view (such as a move from following the Phantom’s view on a scene to his captive’s perspective).

This was not an uncommon feature of cinema of this period. However, due to the expense of the process and the subsequent increased fragility of the stock, many such examples only survive in their black and white master copies. This fragility is only emphasised by the way these early colourings have faded over time, so that many films that once had golden yellow tones, have faded to the sepia we are more familiar with today.

Tinting and Toning

Most commonly in films of this period, tinting and toning were the dominant methods of creating colour. A surprisingly broad palette of shades was available to the discerning director – although those with a limited budget were likely to stick to yellow for daylight and blue for night. This undermined the creation of a standard template for connecting colours with emotions.

Colour-coding of emotions therefore varies from film to film, Phantom of the Opera having to its advantage an internal logic and consistency in its use of colour shades. In the main scenes in the opera house itself are black and white or a warm gold, those in the labyrinth below are green and eerie, those on the rooftop blue and those in the heat chamber and with the mob a fiery red.

In Glorious Technicolor

The stand out scene for colour in the film comes in the middle where a masked ball takes place in the Opera house. Disconcertingly to modern eyes, this sequence stands alone in its bright Technicolored glory. As the phantom revels in his role as the red death, pursuing the lovers through the party, the colours are every bit as vivid as one might expect in a film made twenty years later.

Even the inter-titles for these sequences feature coloured motifs, although this was not an unusual technique. Until at least 1914 several major studios used tinting of title cards in otherwise black and white films as a mark of authenticity – Pathé using first blue and then red with Gaumont preferring a blue-green (Paolo Cherchi Usai, p23, Silent Cinema: An Introduction, 2000).

In the early twenties, most producers and studios were unwilling to risk more than a few sequences to the new process. Phantom of the Opera itself appears to have been Universal’s only foray into this new world for many years. It was not until the following year that United Artists’ Black Pirate would embrace its star Douglas Fairbanks’ faith in the new technology and become the first full-length production from a major studio to use it throughout.

 

Development of Colour in Cinema

Originally published at suite101.com on 03/11/08 – now hosted at Xomba.

Development of Colour in Cinema

The image of silent cinema as a purely black and white affair is largely a misconception; from the turn of the century experiments in colour were common occurrences.

To most of the cinema-going public, if they consider it at all, colour is a distinctly post-war phenomenon. Yet before the studio system had finished getting its claws entirely into Hollywood a whole variety of experimental colour techniques had fallen in and out of favour with filmmakers across Europe and America.

Black and white predominated cinema during the late twenties, thirties and early forties for the same reason that black and white dominated the budget and start up end of the market until the advent of cheap digital technology. Making films in black and white was simply much cheaper. For many studios colour was too expensive to be used for anything other than epics and special event features.

For much of the early years of cinema the ideal that so many aimed for was to give their moving images natural colours and natural sounds. It had after all been the creation of the ‘Magic Lantern’, which had first allowed practical experiments in still colour photography during the 1860s. (Steve Neale, p112, Cinema and Technology: Image, Sound, Colour 1985)

Hand Painting and Stencilling

From the earliest years of the century filmmakers seeking to push the boundaries of the new medium experimented with colour. Much of George Meliès work along with most other early experimental colour films were hand painted individually. Despite the time-consuming nature of the method, the cheapness of labour allowed it to be sustained for longer than would be imagined.

Stencilling techniques, pioneered by Pathé – thus known as Pathécolor – and later improved upon by the Handschiegel process thanks to a St Louis engraver of the same name, allowed for a more industrialised production of colour films. The technique reached its peak in the nineteen teens but still remained in use into the early 1930s. (Steve Neale, p116, Cinema and Technology: Image, Sound, Colour 1985)

Tinting and Toning

Tinting and toning became the dominant method of colouring films for quite some time, due to their lending themselves to true mass production. Some of the techniques employed to this end were even developed specifically to allow colour to be applied to film in a quicker and cheaper manner than those that preceded it.

Although this method limited the colours to turning the whole image one shade, the advantage of opening up colour to film-makers unable to afford or unskilled enough to manage the more finicky techniques that came before. This technique only really fell into disuse with the coming of sound, as the process damaged the parts of the film cells used to record sound.

Additives and Technicolor Rainbows

In the meantime a variety of techniques were being experimented with, in an attempt to create truly ‘natural’ colour. Kinemacolor, Chronochrome, Prizmacolor and Sodachrome to name but a few of the techniques. However, these techniques never really took off due perhaps to their additive nature, which meant that they involved adding colour, and hence involved additions to either the camera, the projector or both.

The early Technicolor experiments ran into similar problems, before finding success with a subtractive process, which unlike tinting and toning, did not affect the sound. The increased durability of the new film led to a boom in demand. Although this was quickly followed by the depression, however, they were able to improve their technique considerably in the interim. Re-emerging with an improved system into an industry that it would dominate for a considerable time to come.

 

Sound Techniques: Cleaning Dialogue

Originally written for suite101 back on 18/10/08, now up at Xomba.

Achieving clean dialogue is a vital part of almost any audio-visual production, a few simple techniques can be employed to avoid and repair a variety of aural glitches.

One of the most common requests made by directors to sound editors and sound designers is to clean up dialogue. This relatively straightforward request can vary from a simple matter of removing a few clicks and clunks; to hours spent isolating and adjusting frequencies to remove a particularly stubborn annoying background hum.

Microphone Choice and Position

For most television and film productions, the majority of sound will be recorded by a shotgun microphone on a boom, as this is generally the simplest way to record a moving subject in this situation. However, close up shots are often taken as an opportunity to get the microphone close to the subject, which opens up a variety of issues when it comes to matching shots to sound.

Often differences in sound quality are quite dramatic between long and close up shots, especially noticeable if dialogue has been recorded from a microphone built into the camera itself. Background hums become louder, breathing, mouth noises and dialogue tics become pronounced. While most sound editing software will allow the isolation and removal, or at least patching and masking of most of such sounds, consistency of microphone position can save a lot of time and trouble.

For close up shots where the intention is to create a close and intimate or oppressive quality with the sound, if at all possible a different microphone should be used. Many microphones designed for close work in potentially noisy environments use ribbon or hypercardioid elements combined with a shield, and are particularly useful for outdoor work especially in inclement weather.

While others use an optional ‘presence boost’ to create the illusion of closeness while working from a distance to avoid the vocal dangers of closeness. At the very least a small mesh ‘pop shield’ should be employed for close dialogue recording to minimise the distortion of p, b and sibilant sounds.

ADR and Re-recording Dialogue

Sometimes dialogue recording may be distorted or damaged to the extent that ripping it all out and starting again seems the best option. While this can be effective for individual lines, it should not be seen as the easy option, as it requires considerable skill from both the actors and sound editors involved in matching performance and effect. ADR dialogue can produce a very particular effect, especially if used for a large amount of dialogue.

The sound of silence is often anything but; with all rooms and locations having their own unique sound, which can even vary according to the time of day. Recording ‘room buzz’ for later editing and patching is a common practice to prevent future stress. If there are concerns on set about problems with dialogue clarity, it is a sensible precaution to record, ‘clean’ dialogue separately on the set itself.

Habituation, Masking and Background Hum

Habituation is the process by which everyday sounds become inaudible to our ears, the hearer becoming so used to the presence of a particular sound that they no longer notice or actively ‘hear’ it. This can be a particular problem with location filming, where sounds that were inaudible on set, become loud and intrusive in editing.

Most sound editing software offers a simple if sometimes time consuming solution to the persistent buzz or hum, especially if the extraneous sound comes from a single consistent source. An EQ adjuster will allow the isolation of the relevant frequency, and thus allow it to be quietened. Care must be taken that the removal does not silence the irritant only to distort other elements.

Background noise can, however, be your friend; the steady drone of traffic can mask a multitude of aural sins. A little white noise, turned down very low can often disguise places where different dialogue takes have been cut together to match the image.

Further Reading

For a more specialised and technical discussion of many of the points covered above, Glyn Alkin’s Sound Recording and Reproduction is very useful.

 

Sound in Shaun of the Dead

Originally post at suite101 on 12/10/08, can now be found Xomba.

The use of hyper-real sound more common to action movies, to accompany everyday actions creates tension and humour that adds to the film’s knowingly referential nature.

Contrast of Image and Sound

During the early stages of the film, before the dead rise, while Shaun continues his bland everyday life, the contrast between actions and accompanying sounds is pronounced. The sound effects for Shaun’s routine as he prepares for work are beefed up to belie the fact that he’s clearly operating on auto-pilot, cupboards open with dramatic whooshes, toast is spread with a heroic crunching swipe.

Outside, all Shaun’s actions come with a dramatic soundtrack, stumbling on a curb produces a sound like running into a wall, change given to a homeless man tinkles brightly. The sounds of the rest of the world are distant and muted, robotic, repetitive and unnoticed. Standard procedure would be to have normal life accompanied by normal sounds and then boost and enhance everything once the dead rise.

Instead here, normal life is accompanied by powerful exciting sounds, and amid all the carnage it is the little mundane sounds that are most powerfully emphasised.  Notably in one scene David flicks the fuse switches repeatedly in panic, zombies groan as they try to break down the door behind him but by way of habituation their sound has faded like traffic noise in our – and his – ears.

What we hear loud and clear over the music is the sound of the switches, the focus of the scene and its humour. That is ultimately the main purpose of sound in this film, subtle sound cues directing the audience to which part of the hybrid genre of the film they are about to experience. This is, after all, a film after which, the slap of leather on willow will never hold quite the same connotations.

Sound Aware Writers and Director

Like many films that make good use of sound, Shaun of the Dead, benefits from having writers and a director who are aware of the importance of sound. Director, Edgar Wright, even tells the story of a test screening with a rough cut of the film minus some of the sound effects, and how it made him realise how important the sound was to many of the jokes.

The music element of the soundtrack is laden with references to the zombie genre, from the opening use of the Dawn of the Dead (Romero, 1978), through to numerous appropriately titled popular songs. It would have been easy to keep the soundtrack references to musical ones, but there are dozens of subtle little aural references in terms of effects, which add nicely to the overall impact.

Nigel Heath’s Sound Mix Adds Impact

The film also makes good use of its surround sound, not only does this assist the creation of an aggressive mix for the battle scenes and general undead carnage, there are also some nice moments where passing zombies can be heard groaning and moaning round different speakers as the camera moves. Especially useful for those: ‘it’s behind you’ moments.

Aggressive though the mix can sometimes be, dialogue is kept clean and clear, which, given the high density of verbal gags and cultural references keeping the dialogue unsullied by the surrounding cacophony is particularly important.

 

Cambuskenneth Abbey: James III’s Tomb

Originally published at suite101.com on 04/10/08, now over at Xomba. More photos can be found here.

Located in a secluded bend of the River Forth, near Stirling, the ruins of the 12th century Augustinian Abbey watch over the village of Cambuskenneth.

Founded at the request of David I around 1140, and originally dedicated to St Mary, the abbey enjoyed a close connection with royalty at the nearby Stirling Castle. Something reflected in the main road from the castle to the abbey retaining to this day the title of St Mary’s Wynd.

Rise of the Abbey

The proximity to such a favourite royal residence caused the abbey to grow quickly in wealth and influence, leading it to play an important role in Scotland’s history over the next few centuries. The abbey regularly provided accommodation to visiting royalty and in 1423 the Abbot was sent to negotiate the release of James I from English captivity.

Several Scottish kings held Parliaments at the abbey; Robert Bruce notably held one in 1326, which was the first to include representatives from Scotland’s burghs, and confirmed the succession of his son David. James III was even buried before the altar, after his death at the battle of Sauchieburn in 1488, and his rather grand tomb remains, somewhat forlornly, among the ruins.

The church itself is laid out in a manner more common in Cistercian abbeys. The freestanding bell tower is unusual and thought to date from the late 13th Century, though it has been altered extensively over the centuries. Possibly erected as a result of damage sustained to the original bell tower, part of the main church, when it was reportedly struck by lightning in 1378.

Fall of the Abbey

Naturally the proximity to both Stirling and the royal family did not always play in the abbey’s favour. It found little favour with passing English armies during the Wars of Independence and spent much of the later half of the 1300s in ruins, before being rebuilt in the early 1400s.

After the Reformation the abbey fell to ruin, with few monks remaining by the time it closed in 1559, most of the buildings having been looted and burned out. Later it would fall under the guardianship of the Earl of Mar and there is some debate as to whether the stone was used to build his town house in Stirling or for the extension of the castle itself.

Either way, by the time the site was excavated by the Burgh Architect in 1864 there was little left of the original buildings, and the Bell Tower required considerable restoration work. Shortly afterwards Queen Victoria financed the raising of a tomb for James III and his Queen Margaret of Denmark, and in 1908 the site was acquired by the crown for preservation.

Visiting the Abbey

Few enough cars find their way down the winding road from the Alloa road (A907) that the tourists compete with the cows for space in the adjoining field and visitors are kindly requested to close the gate. Most visitors come on foot and during the summer the ruins and lower parts of the tower are open for free. Accessible from Stirling itself only by a footbridge across the Forth from Riverside, both ruins and village retain an otherworldly air.

The contrast between the restored Bell Tower and the knee-high ruins of the rest of the abbey gives the impression that the visitor is at the gateway to another world. Standing with your back to the city, the tower outlined against the Ochils and the sound of small adventurous children seeking entrance to Narnia and Avalon, it is easy to imagine that the rest of the ruins will rise up around you.

Opening Hours

Maintained by Historic Scotland, the site is open from April to September.
Mon – Sat: 9.30am – 6.00pm
Sunday: 2.00pm – 6.00pm

 

Dunblane’s Leighton Library

Originally published at suite101.com on 19/09/08, now over at Xomba.

The Leighton Library in Dunblane was built between 1684 and 1688 to house a bequest of 1400 books by the former Bishop of Dunblane (1661-1670) and Glasgow (1670-1674) Robert Leighton.

Leighton was born in 1611 and educated at Edinburgh University, serving as Principal of the same from 1653, before rising through the clergy to become Bishop of Dunblane in the aftermath of the Restoration. After a career spent steeped in the controversy and dangers of trying to reconcile the various religious factions of the time, he retired to live in Sussex with his step-sister for the last decade of this life.

After his death in 1684 his will was found to proclaim that, “Only my Books I leave and bequeath to the Cathedral of Dunblane in Scotland, to remaine there for the use of the clergie of that Diocess.” Along with this Leighton also made a bequest of £100 to build a suitable building to house his collection of books and manuscripts.

Historical Significance of the Library and its Collection

Despite being built largely from stone reclaimed from the ruins of the Bishops Palace the cost of erection exceeded Leighton’s original bequest with the additional £62-2s-6d being donated by friends and relatives of the late bishop. At a time when most of the ordinary clergy would have owned half a dozen books each, the gift of this collection to the diocese would have been a considerable resource.

The collection expanded over time to encompass 4500 books in 88 languages, most of which were published between 1504 and 1840. Included in the collection are many rare first editions (such as Walter Scott’s Lady of the Lake) and historical curiosities from the poems of George Buchanan to an account of life at Balmoral donated and signed by Queen Victoria.

Between 1734 and around 1840 the library was used as a subscription lending library making it the oldest purpose built private library in Scotland. The library fell into disuse after 1840 but was restored to its former glory by public subscription during the late 1980s and since then the library’s fascinating collection of books in a myriad of languages has once again been open to the public.

Dunblane itself has been an important site since around 600 AD, often being closely entwined with events of both historic and religious importance. Leighton himself played a central role in Charles II’s attempts to reinstate episcopacy, becoming Bishop of Glasgow at his request in 1670. In a period better known for the passions and violence of both the Covenanters and the Jacobite uprisings that would follow, Leighton had a reputation as a voice of reason and moderation.

Visiting and Reading the Books

The collection has been recognised by the British Library as being of international academic importance. Normally a couple of the larger books are available to browse, but for a closer look the books are catalogued as part of Stirling University’s library catalogue and can be accessed by arrangement with the university for academic study.

The library has remained under the management of a series of trustees from 1691 to the present day. Between May and September the library is open weekdays between 11am and 1pm, information about arranging group visits outside those hours is available at the library’s website. The library is free to the public and staffed by knowledgeable volunteers, but donations are always welcome