Susan Morrison and Len Pennie explore what it takes to be King in medieval Scotland, where ruthlessness and brutality where qualities at the top of the job description.

Aberdeen is soon getting the Baird Family hospital for Maternity, Neonatal and Reproductive Medicine - but who were the Baird family and why is it named after them? Dr Alison McCall clues in Susan Morrison on Sir Dugald, his wife, Lady May Baird, son Professor David and daughter Dr Joyce Baird. From Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Shauna Irani introduces Susan to Ned Burke, her favourite person from the poignant Jacobite collection of relics and accounts of sufferings ’The Lyon in...

Bee keeping, basket weaving - if you lost limbs in WW1, you might need to retrain for a job, Louise Bell of Leeds University tells Susan Morrison about the Erskine Hospital and a Gordon Highlander who wanted to go there. Servicemen of an earlier age might find care more rough and ready - Dr Catherine Beck of Copenhagen University looks at mental health in the age of Nelson’s navy and why it was thought to be such a pressing issue. In the 18th century electricity was thought to be mysterious...

It’s one of Scotland’s almost forgotten campaigns. James Graham the charismatic Marquess of Montrose and his allies occupied Orkney in 1649 - they were planning to invade the Scottish mainland. Would the islanders turn out to fight? Dr Andrew Lind of the Institute for Northern Studies takes Susan Morrison through the battle that came next and its tragic aftermath. On a lighter wartime note, Susan chats to Dr Michelle Moffat, Tutor at Otago University in New Zealand about how Scots took their...

Right in the heart of what’s now Glasgow's 'Merchant City', there was a vanished industry we rarely ever talk about. Dr Jade Halbert, Lecturer in Design Studies at the University of Leeds introduces Susan Morrison to Glasgow’s lost rag trade and what happened to it. Moving back in time to the 16th century we explore the biggest scandal of the early Reformation church - the firebrand minister of Dundee who spectacularly fell from grace. Dr Bess Rhodes of St Andrews University has been digging...

Susan Morrison explores the real life behind modern dark mediaeval fantasy. Were Scottish nobles really getting starved to death in dungeons? Who by? Dr Katy Jack has the answers. Once you lost your land in the Highland clearances, how did you fight to get it back? Juliette Desportes of Glasgow University looks at the Galson raiders in Lewis. And finally, are you melancholy? Does your parrot have a ‘looseness’? You might need an 18th century recipe book. Susan chats with Dr Charlotte Holmes...

Susan Morrison explores cabbage - no, not the stuff that used to bulk out the school dinners, but a mysteriously legal perk they used to carve out of the rag trade. Fashion historian Dr Jade Halbert of Leeds University has the goods on Scotland’s surprising contribution to cabbage history. A bit of sly cabbaging might get you a cheap designer wedding dress, but would a Scottish bride have changed her name in times gone by? Dr Rebecca Mason has the answers and they might surprise you. Scottish...

Yes we’ve all heard about Vikings and monasteries but there’s a lot more to it than that - they might make you a business offer you couldn’t refuse but their fashion and language really caught on. Dr Adrián Maldonado of National Museums of Scotland, author of 'Crucible of Nations: Scotland from Viking age to Medieval kingdoms' chats to Susan Morrison about the new cultures emerging in 9th-11th century ‘Scotland’. Norse culture in the Northern isles produced striking carved stones and in the...

Susan Morrison explores with Dr Callum Watson how King Robert Bruce and Sir James Douglas were best chivalric buddies in the wars of independence and how chivalry was nothing to do with throwing down cloaks for ladies over muddy puddles. Dr Désha Osborne and Lisa Williams introduce us to the Garifuna people and the horrific colonial violence they faced in 18th century St Vincent. Scots settlers trying to make their fortunes played a prominent part. Moving back in time, Susan talks to Dr...

Dr Jade Halbert of the University of Huddersfield would have loved to be alive in the sixties! She introduces Susan Morrison to the glories of Glasgow’s boutique culture where you could finally buy trendy clothes your mum wouldn’t be seen dead in and listen to music your dad would shout at. Emily Hay of Glasgow University heads for the not-so-swinging 1560s and looks at why you might use a sonnet sequence to help frame a queen for murder. Did Mary Queen of Scots have her own poems taken down...

Susan Morrison catches up with Dr Katie Barclay of Adelaide University to find out what life was like for Scotland’s travelling poor in the 18th century - were we more generous back then, and how hard a life was it for women tramping the road? But if it gave you sore feet, might there have been an ancient remedy for that? Dr Sharon Arbuthnot of Sabhal Mòr Ostaig, Scotland’s National Centre for Gaelic Language in the Isle of Skye has been digging into the Gaelic medical manuscripts of the...

Susan Morrison gets to grips with the South Queensferry witch-hunt. We know about the horrors which people accused of witchcraft suffered but we very rarely get to see what happens to their families. How could you try to save your accused loved ones? Who did you have to take on and what could they do to you in return? Dr Ciaran Jones and Dr Louise Yeoman follow one family in the South Queensferry witch hunt of 1643-44 with Susan and look at how they took on the authorities and with what...

Susan Morrison reckons you can’t have a mediaeval Hollywood movie without knights in shining armour but wants to know when did the Norman knight come to Scotland and who was hiring him? Dr Fiona Watson has the answers and it’s earlier than you might think. But if you wanted to refight those historic battles on your living room carpet, you’d need some toy soldiers. They’ve always had a topical side to them too, reflecting whatever conflict was going on at the time. The great age of the lead...

Susan Morrison explores the rich and sometimes murky depths of Scotland's past.

Elizabeth Stuart, Queen of Bohemia- the Scottish princess born in Dunfermline who could have become Elizabeth I of Scotland and II of England is the subject of Dr Nadine Akkerman’s book. Susan Morrison asks Nadine how close to the thrones of Britain this remarkable woman got and about her sometimes stormy relationship with her brother, the future Charles I. Leaping ahead in time, we hit the railways and discover the perils of scoffing on your commute Dickensian-style. Chloe Shields of the...

How do you write a persuasive letter in your poshest Scots to the Queen of England? Susan Morrison would like to know. So let's meet Annas Keith, Countess of Moray, at one time Scotland’s first lady. After her husband's assassination, she was trying to hang onto Mary Queen of Scots’ splendid jewels, Dr Jade Scott of Glasgow University shows us how Annas went about it. Leaping forward to Victorian times and Dundee’s extremely not posh Overgate, Dr Hannah Telling explores a murder in a tenement...

Alison Rough was a 16th century Edinburgh war widow - her husband was killed at Flodden and she was left raising a family on her own - which she did in her own feisty and formidable manner - often with the cards stacked against her. Professor Elizabeth Ewan formerly of the University of Guelph takes presenter Susan Morrison into Alison’s world. Raising a family on your own was tough in the 16th century but even as late as the 1970s in Scotland for single mums who refused marriage it was...

Are you sure that cat is just a cat? Accused witches in Scotland (who were over 80% female) were sometimes believed to have shape-shifted into animal form - but why? Nicole Cumming, researching at Strathclyde University, has been on the trail and she shares her research with Susan Morrison. Women’s lives changed a lot between the 1950s and 1990s - but how far did they come in terms of escaping domestic abuse? Dr Anni Donaldson, Honorary Research Fellow at Strathclyde University takes Susan...

If you were poor what kind of medical help could you expect in the Highlands and islands in the 1850s? You’d better believe there were some pretty grim remedies in your future. Dr Daisy Cunynghame heritage manager and librarian of the Royal College of Physicians, Edinburgh introduces Susan Morrison to ‘Remote and rural remedies’ their new online resource on Highland medicine then and now. You might have been better off with your local accused witch in earlier days. Dr Sierra Dye of Guelph...

If you think the Darien Venture for Scottish settlers to colonise part of the isthmus of Panama and set up a trading hub was only a disaster, think again. Even though nothing about imperial projects is very moral, they’re still windows into many lives. In this case women - Dr Gina Bennett of the University of Arlington at Texas joins Susan Morrison to take us into the worlds of 1690s Scottish female investors, businesswomen and settlers. There’s getting into empire and there’s getting out of...

Dr Hannah Telling of the Institute of Historical research loves rowdy gallus Dundonian women who get in the papers. She introduces Susan to the Victorian mill workers who worked hard, played hard and fought hard - don’t cross them! Dr Charlie Lynch of Glasgow University is back to tell us how the West was won - looking at cohabitation in Glasgow’s West End in the 1970s and Dr Eloise Grey of Aberdeen University takes us into the world of making families and breaking them up across cultures in...

Historian Kevin Dawson, associate professor of African Diaspora studies at the University of California, Merced introduces Susan Morrison to the hidden underwater world of the Africans who dived for Spanish silver - enslaved by pirates yet masters of their skilled and dangerous craft beneath the waves. Dr David Wilson of Strathclyde University tells how the Caribbean came to be hoaching with those pirates in the first place and what a Scot had to do with it. And get a taste of Dr Hannah...

Susan Morrison gets on the trail of border reiver Kinmont Willie and finds out from Fergal Leonard of Durham University how Sir Walter Scott of Buccleuch Keeper of Liddesdale went about rescuing that famous bad lad in the times of King James and Queen Elizabeth. Dr Martha McGill of Warwick University is our ghost consultant - exploring how the Highland ghosts became fashionable and how beliefs about hauntings became so alluring for tourists. And there’s more expert advice from Dr David Wilson...

Nuclear journalist, Julie McDowall introduces Susan to living on the eve of destruction with the local government plans made for World War 3 - where to put the bodies? How to evacuate the cities? Collapsible coffins complete with tassels... It would all have done us no good whatsoever if The Bomb had actually dropped but people felt they ought to at least try. On a less doom-laden note, trying to get to California was all the rage in 1849 when Scotland went mad for the Gold Rush. Devin Grier...