This summer marks the 200th anniversary of George IV’s visit to Scotland. The portly Hanoverian monarch sailed north from the Thames and arrived in the Firth of Forth on Wednesday 14 August 1822. The whole royal visit, the first by a reigning British monarch for 150 years, was a piece of overblown pageantry orchestrated by Sir Walter Scott who had King George kitted out in full Highland dress. Cartoonists had a field day and there were parodies aplenty about the monarch’s attire and his Jacobite pretensions.

Blessings from Heaven: The journey to Scalan
We venture south, following Livet Water up into the Braes of Glenlivet. This area survived as an outpost of Catholicism in post-Reformation Scotland. At Scalan, on the lower flank of the Ladder Hills, a secret seminary trained priests in the 18th ...