This page is designed to be the catch-all for the year’s news and projects. Some of them blend in from previous years, so have a look at the 2024 page here just in case….

First inquiry of the year is on 15th January from Jon Cooper, Stewart Melville College’s Heritage Officer, a gentleman I’ve met on a few occasions recently, including during a splendid tour of his School. He has a major task in hand concerning Coats of Arms, Logos, School Badges and Clothing in that Mary Erskine School is shortly to merge with Stewarts Melville into one co-educational entity, and is asking several of his Archive/History contacts in Edinburgh schools for information. He has been sent the link to the Clothing article on the Digital history page, along with a background to our variety of Logos and badges, including those for Nations (now six, the Celts being a recent addition). You can see from the extensive information we have that the School has continually changed its standards. The current compulsory items are listed on the school website and include black or white T-Shirt and Jogging bottoms, albeit with the official School crest, items which are not a million miles from the somewhat casual clothing.of the 18th Century. As a result of the inquiry, a document explaining the current knowledge about the Coats of Arms and mottos has been created and can be seen here.

Kenny Kemp (leaving year 1975), well known Author and Journalist will soon be featured on the FP Authors page.

Izuka Hoyle (one of our featured ‘modern’ biographies) has a starring role in the 2023 Detective Drama series Ludwig. A second series of six shows will be seen later in 2025. After leaving school in 2012, Izuka initially trained at the MGA Academy, at that time in Balgreen, subsequently in Livingston, but sadly closed in May 2025.

Better late than never – The School inspection results were published in February 2023, and the results were very positive. Read an abbreviated version here.

Ross McCann (leaving year 2014) is selected for the Scottish Squad for the 2025 Calcutta match on Saturday 22nd March at ‘The stadium formerly known as Twickenham’

The School historian and Ian R C Cowie are helping the two school vice-Captains assemble an exhibition showing the origins of the Crichton Cup, the annual inter-Nation competition. The resultant article is available here, and the Popup screen designed by the historian can be viewed here. The popup will be part of the display used by the Vice captains to publicise the last weeks of points collection towards the winning of the trophy.

Douglas Ford GC – a memorial bench in his memory was recently dedicated in a short ceremony. The bench sits on Calton Hill, directly above the Regent road site of the Royal High, a fitting place for the memorial. At the ceremony were Elizabeth Ford, Douglas’s nephew (son of James Allan Ford) and Boroday Pang, a Hong Kong National who encountered Douglas’s grave in Stanley Military Cemetery in Hong Kong some years ago, and wished to celebrate this particular ‘Forgotten hero of Hong Kong’. Click here to see a copy of the inscription. Boroday also intends to publish a series of books for children celebrating Douglas and other Forgotten Hong Kong heroes.

John Cruickshank VC – a sad announcement on 16th August advised that John had passed away aged 104 – the day following the 80th anniversary of VJ Day. Click here to see the article we published on his 100th birthday

Sir John Kay at Wigtown book festival. If you happen to be in Galloway on Saturday 27th September, our own Sir John Kay joins media and political heavyweights Rory Cellan-Jones, Rita Chakrabarti, Gavin Essler, John Suchet (and Nicola Sturgeon) at the 2025 Wigtown Book Festival.   The blurb says “Economist Prof Sir John Kay will deliver the James Mirrlees lecture, in honour of the Galloway-born Nobel-prize winner”…. Ticket information here

Creating the previous article about a specific memorial to a former pupil (Douglas Ford) made your editor speculate about the possibility of an article about memorials to other FP’s, e.g. Statues, Busts, Columns, Plaques and Postage stamps.

Sir Walter Scott’s eponymous monument and statue in Edinburgh possibly leads the way, but aside the ‘Gothic Rocket’, research has found a further half dozen instances for the Abbotsford bard, including postage stamps and plaques. Alexander Graham Bell has several, the statues of which are all thus far in Canada, but many countries have commemorated him in postage stamps. In all, we have found twenty names, (including Eric Brown, Robert Fergusson, Ronnie Corbett and James Hutton). The first version of the article is now available here.

Two more names have been added to the FP Artists page. Jenny Matthews and Janet Melrose have been nominated by Tom Bacciarelli, and their CV’s can be seen here.

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Archaeology – an item which should have been added some time ago. In 2020, ‘Finding the Blackfriars: excavations at Old High School, Infirmary Street, Edinburgh’ was published by The Society of Antiquaries of Scotland. This article espouses the view that the location of the 1777 High School building in High School Yards was also the location of the Blackfriars monastery, the building we commonly believe to be the fore-runner (in 1578) of the school building in the Monastery grounds. This archaeological survey did much more than that: it found buried beneath the car park, directly in front of the entrance to the 1777 building, no fewer than 88 human skeletons. The oldest of these, radiocarbon dated with an accuracy of 95% date from 1215 to 1395.

The skeletons vary from those of high status, to those with signs of chronic disease or (apparently) debilitating injury, the latter indicating the presence of a hospital. The knowledge that humans were in the area of the monastery as early as 1215 makes the task for the historian to validate the alleged 1128 establishment of the High School (a.k.a. the Urban Myth) just a bit easier. It doesn’t prove anything about the supposed Holyrood Abbey school connection, but the mere presence of individuals of high status in existence no more than 90 years adrift from the supposed (fictitious?) date moves the fiction nearer to fact. To read the entire report, click here and select the ‘Results’ PDF.

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Scottish National Centre for Music – a short video shows the features of the new building, which is a conversion of the Old Royal High School in Regent Road, Edinburgh

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Izuka Hoyle (leaving year 2012) is in the news once again, receiving the award for actress of the year at the Scottish Baftas on behalf of ‘her friend’ Saoirse Ronan. Click here for the trailer of the film Outrun, in which Izuka also starred. Izuka is one of our six nominated ‘modern’ biographies.

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The 2025 Remembrance Service included a presentation on the lives of two of our most decorated War Heroes, Douglas Ford GC and John Cruickshank VC. Click here to see a report.

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Curious that no known statue or memorial of any other sort (aside a plaque outside the house where he was born) exists in UK for Alexander Graham Bell (AGB) Perhaps our most notable former pupil, he left school with ‘lacklustre grades’, but that didn’t hold him back. There is a plaque in his memory outside no 14 South Charlotte Street, but despite there being a raft of memorials in the form of busts, statues, plaques and stamps in Canada and elsewhere in the World, the closest we get a memorial in UK is the Wetherspoons ‘Alexander Graham Bell’ pub just round the corner from the house of his birth. Owner Tim Martin was evidently sufficiently impressed… To help rectify this, the school and the historian have been contacted by an FP from another Edinburgh School, who wishes to fund the installation of a memorial to AGB, ideally within the grounds of the Barnton Campus, and is seeking the help of the historian and senior school staff.. More news on this project as it develops.

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2025 Captains’ Christmas messages