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| Processional frieze in the Great Hall |
After a long morning at Edinburgh University providing background material for a book on local government, and a Tapas lunch with Bill, I had the afternoon free. I took myself to the National Portrait Gallery, somewhere I had not visited since retirement and was keen to see the new exhibits. It was a revelation, defying its Victorian origins housed in its sombre Corsehill red sandstone neo-gothic building on Queen Street. The Gallery had been wonderfully renovated in 2011. The ambience on arrival, the welcome from the curators and the magical Great Hall were totally embracing. There were many visitors from around the world, it was not even Easter but Edinburgh was already buzzing as the Athens of the North.
My quest to see the new exhibits was delayed by the time required to admire the processional frieze and the colourful murals painted on the upper balcony of the Great Hall by William Hole. Such was the influence of the Scotsman Newspaper at the time the building was completed in 1889 that its proprietor, John Ritchie Findlay, was able to commission this work as well as the purpose designed Gallery to display Scottish heroes. I also spent even more time exploring the old portraits of Scottish Kings in the Reformation and Revolution Gallery and figures from the Scottish Enlightenment in the Globalisation galleries.
Finally, I made it to the modern collection. Familiar figures came to life in paintings and photographs. A friend is writing a book on 100 Radical Scots and I had made a dozen or so suggestions to him for inclusion in the book including Sir Patrick Geddes and Tilda Swinton. They were both in the Gallery, a bust of Geddes and a frolicking painting of Swinton. I sent photos of them both to my friend and he confirmed that he had completed his biography of the radical Geddes.
Other post-war legends, poets, musicians, sportspeople and artists were splayed across a gallery as diverse as its portraits. Amongst them, a photograph of Wai-Yin Hatton who had been the Chief Executive of Ayrshire Health Board stared out at me. She had asked to work shadow me about twenty years ago and this was reciprocated as we spent several days in each other's domains. It gave me an insight into the management culture in the Health Boards. The hospital consultants were ferocious in their bids for money and they treated primary care with a studied disdain. Wai-Yin was a formidable character and was greatly frustrated by this but the silos in the NHS were well entrenched and not easily controlled.
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Mural of the Battle of Bannockburn
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| Poets' Pub |
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| Sir Patrick Geddes |
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| Tilda Swinton |
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| Wai-Yin Hatton |
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