Issue 675

The best free and cheap things to do in Glasgow and Edinburgh

Visit a library, go for a walk, bake a cake or see some cheap theatre

Beat the January blues with these guaranteed pick-me-ups, suggested by our writers and some friends of The List. They’re all free, or cost just a few quid, so you’ll come out of winter with your bank balance intact and a smile on your face

Robert Burns app features poems, biography and a Burns Supper guide

iPhone app to launch Robert Burns Birthplace Museum opening

The famous and most loved Scots poet has a free iPhone app launched by the Scottish Government which includes his complete works with over 550 poems and love songs. Burns is renowned for being Scotland's greatest cultural icon and is celebrated…

Liz Lochhead announced as Scots Makar, succeeding Edwin Morgan

Poet, author, playwright appointed to role of Scotland's national poet

Poet and playwright Liz Lochhead has been announced as Scotland's national poet on Wednesday. She succeeds Edwin Morgan, who died in August 2010 aged 90 and who held the title of Makar since it's creation in 2004. Lochhead, First Minister Alex Salmond…

The List Sex Survey 2011

Good people of Glasgow and Edinburgh – let us into your bedrooms!

On 2 Feb 2011 The List is printing a special Sex Issue to coincide with Valentine's Day. As part of this we've commissioned a survey into the sex lives of folks in Glasgow and Edinburgh. Want to represent your city? To build up a good impression of…

The best places for hot chocolate in Glasgow and Edinburgh

The cafes and chocolatiers who serve up the sweet stuff

Temper Chocolates 148 Woodside Terrace Lane, Charing Cross, 07886 215209 This tiny café-cum-shop-cum-factory makes for a pilgrimage for hot chocolate lovers. Chocolatier Kirsty Shepheard’s own blend of 70 per cent organic dark chocolate with chilli…

Peter Mullan's Neds revisits 1970s Glasgow gang life - interview

The director gives a straight-talking tour of his old city haunts

It’s the first Wednesday of the New Year and I’m driving with Peter Mullan across the Clyde into the Southside of Glasgow. We’re on our way to Cardonald, the predominantly working-class area of Mullan’s home city that serves as the backdrop and…

Mogwai's seventh studio album radiates diversity and sense of purpose - interview

Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will - 2011 tour dates

As record titles go, Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will provokes a pause. Utterly fatuous and perversely profound, it is the name of Mogwai’s seventh studio album since forming in Glasgow 15 years ago. But there’s no sense of finality here; rather…

Scenes from a Teenage Killing profiles every teenager murdered in the UK during 2009

Morgan Matthews' BBC documentary charts aftermath of young deaths

A couple of years back, the Beeb aired The Fallen, a funereal documentary which marked the deaths of every British soldier killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. The screen was filled with names, ages and date of death, stopping every so often to focus on a…

Campaign to save Inverleith Park from housing development

Proposal looks to build six homes in public space

A new year dawns and the city’s spaces are in jeopardy once again this fortnight as Edinburgh fights over another unique corner. In an unexpected development late last year, it emerged that Edinburgh City Council may try to build luxury houses on a…

Laurent Garnier's LBS project fuses live performance with DJ roots

French techno legend lines up UK tour

‘We don’t have a recipe for what exactly LBS is,’ explains Laurent Garnier from his studio near Marseille, where he’s lived since leaving Paris five years ago. ‘We like to say it’s the first letters from our names, Laurent, Ben [Rippert] and Stephane…

Glasgow curry house Green Chilli Café explores pot-style home cooking

Succinct menu is dominated by Indian tapas or small plates

Glasgow does love a curry. Recently crowned Curry Capital of Britain for a record fourth time, the city’s passion for the spice has yielded a long and illustrious history of curry houses. What began with Green Gates and Taj Mahal in the 1950s, exploded…

Get Low - Slow burn storytelling of character organising own ‘living funeral’

Film is too thin despite great performances from Robert Duvall, Bill Murray and Sissy Spacek

(PG) 103min George W Bush aside, was there ever a greater master of malapropism than gifted American baseball player Yogi Berra? He once noted that: ‘You should always go to other people’s funerals; otherwise, they won’t come to yours.’ Round about…

John Cooper Clarke lines up Glasgow Arches date

Bard of Salford continues public rehabilitation after celebrity endorsements

When John Cooper Clarke declaimed an epigrammatic ‘why struggle?’ at the opening of his final 2010 Edinburgh Festival Fringe show in his trademark deadpan northern twang, the statement was a typically double-edged mix of the philosophical and the…

Orange Prize-winning author Linda Grant publishes We Had It So Good - interview

On writing her fifth novel and being part of a spoilt generation

Orange Prize-winning author Linda Grant was glad to see the back of Christmas. ‘I’m delighted to have reached the end of the great annual close-down, when your toothache can’t be mended and your boiler can’t be fixed,’ she reflects from her North London…

Julia Donaldson set for appearance in Zog and the Gruffalo - interview

The celebrated children's author on Mick Jagger, tea and abusing the power of local radio

First record you ever bought ‘Girl Don’t Come’ by Sandie Shaw. First film you saw that really moved you The Red Balloon about a little boy in Paris. I cried when the balloon burst. First movie you ever went on a date to Planet of the Apes (with…

New exhibition The Inventors of Tradition examines Scotland’s textile past

Glasgow exhibition of samples, promotional materials and films

The glory days of Scotland’s textile industry, when the Borders whirred with knitting machines and tweed was a viable alternative to central heating, seem a long time ago. Post-globalisation, garments with the ‘Made in Scotland’ label are about as…

Dawn Penn, voice of Studio One records, lines up UK tour

Singer of You Don’t Love Me (No, No, No) set for UK dates

Dawn Penn From Born in Jamaica. Keeps her current whereabouts hush-hush. Occupation Singer for seminal Kingston label Studio One as a teenager in the 1960s, including her own reggae covers of tracks such as ‘To Sir With Love’, ‘Here Comes the Sun’ and…

Ditto explores how 8-12 year-old children listen and respond to music

Children's music show promises moments of tension, emotional resonance and humour

DITTO Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, Thu 20–Sat 22 Jan What do you think about when you’re listening to music? Chances are a range of thoughts, emotions and memories flood your mind. Add to that the vivid imagination of younger listeners, and you’ve…

Russell Kane set for non-festival date at Edinburgh Pleasance

Five things you might not know about the comedian

1 Born in Enfield, Kane lives near his adopted hometown of Southend. Armed with an English degree, he worked in advertising before deciding that comedy might provide an exit door out of his 9–5 treadmill. This despite him not really knowing what a…

Xplicit sixth birthday hosts Sub Focus

Scotland’s biggest drum & bass night invites Londoner Nick Douwma

DRUM & BASS SUB FOCUS Xplicit’s Sixth Birthday, Liquid Room, Edinburgh, Sat 29 Jan Scotland’s biggest drum & bass night has secured early appearances from many of the genre’s biggest crossover names, including Pendulum and Chase & Status. This…

Sunjeev Sahota - Ours are the Streets

Wholly measured would-be suicide bomber tale from British-Asian debut author

(Picador) A novel voiced by a would-be suicide bomber written by a British-Asian debut author was never likely to slip by unnoticed. Yet, there is little obvious material for the tabloids to get truly stirred up about as Sunjeev Sahota’s Ours are the…

Wee Dub Festival hosts Vibronics, Radikal Guru, Brina and Jammin J

Studio 24 event bring many types of dub music together

With Scotland hosting many reggae and dubstep nights in both Glasgow and Edinburgh, the overall dub scene is most definitely healthy and super vibrant. And, thanks to Gregory and Selecta Mania, two pals, DJs and promoters under the umbrella of Lion…

Earl Lovelace - Is Just a Movie

(Faber) In the aftermath of the 1970s Black Power Revolution, a Trinidadian musician named King Kala finds that the calypso style he plays, like the movement he supported, has slipped out of fashion. Meanwhile, young troublemaker Sonnyboy Apparicio…

Julian Barnes - Pulse

(Jonathan Cape) Julian Barnes’ third short story collection is divided into two books. The first deals with modern, middle-class folks in various states of relationship, from newly-single men trying to start over again, to couples conversing at dinner…

Jamie McMorrow & Garry McLaughlin - Year of Fear: Yellow

(Laser Age Comics) The second instalment of Year of Fear is another gruesome black and white affair as a faceless killer stalks the streets. Taking obvious inspiration from the Italian giallo film movement, we get the black gloves, savage violence and…