Word: scottishness
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...growing number of middle-class Europeans - and will likely hit millions more in the decade to come. "Inheritance tax used to be a problem for the rich. Now it's a problem for you and me," says Anne Young, a tax expert at the Edinburgh financial-services firm Scottish Widows, who calculates that about 1 in 3 of Britain's 24 million households now have estates that would fall within the taxman's reach. Young herself admits she has an inheritance-tax "problem." Blame the explosion of house prices. Unlike their parents, European baby boomers tend to own their homes...
...might think the spectacular cliffs and needle-like volcanic pinnacles that loom like a menacing picture postcard over the northeastern coast of the Isle of Skye in the Scottish Hebrides would have little need of adornment. But adorning unlikely physical spaces--natural and man-made--is what Angus Farquhar does. Farquhar, 44, is the founder of a Glasgow-based environmental-arts organization called NVA nva.org.uk that for nearly 15 years has been bringing Hollywood-scale lighting and acoustic effects to unusual places in Europe--a shipyard, a tramway, a gorge, a glen...
...project on the Isle of Skye--lighting an entire mountain known as the Storr--was Farquhar's most ambitious. Unfolding Landscape took four years of planning and paperwork, cost about $1.8 million and used 22 tons of lights and rigging. The effect, when the weather cooperated and the Scottish mist was just right, drew raves and won Britain's most prestigious lighting-design award. For six weeks last summer, some 6,500 visitors--200 a night--donned boots and waterproofs, picked up headlamps and walking sticks, and made the strenuous two-mile trek to the base of the cliffs, accompanied...
...night and made it only halfway up, compared the work to wrapping a mountain with a bow. ("Beautiful mountain, could you take the bow off, please?") And even Farquhar admits the piece may have gone a step too far. His more modest projects--an illuminated path through a lovely Scottish glen, a festival of light showcasing Glasgow's architectural treasures--tend to be more successful, exploring hidden layers of meaning in familiar places by literally shedding new light on them. --By Michael Brunton/London
When Robert Louis Stevenson set off from Le Monestier in the Upper Loire for France's mountainous Cévennes region in 1878, the Scottish poet and novelist spent much of his 220-km walk cursing and goading Modestine, the recalcitrant "she-ass" he'd hired to carry his load. But by the time he reached St. Jean du Gard 12 days later, he'd had a change of heart about his long-eared companion, and the encounters they shared inspired[an error occurred while processing this directive] his memorable account, Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes...