Local author brings the Fair City’s past to book
Top chef Andrew Fairlie has teamed up with renowned Scottish artist Iona Crawford to create a quirky art collection.
The Gleneagles-based restauranteur – Scotland’s only two Michellinstarred chef – has partnered with the Stirling-based creative talent to create a collection of ceramics, fabrics, wall coverings and fine art prints.
It has been inspired by Fairlie’s ‘secret garden’, Inspired by Andrew Fairlie’s ‘secret garden’, a rarely-seen, walled Victorian garden where rare and unusual ingredients are grown and harvested for the award-winning restaurant.
Gregor Mathieson, Fairlie’s business and creative partner, said: “The secret garden is a most beautiful, mysterious and magical place that very few have visited.
“This design collaboration is a manifestation of that magic, and celebrates the respect for tradition and the pursuit of innovative excellence that both our restaurant and Iona’s designs represent.”
Iona said: “Andrew Fairlie’s secret garden is a creatively-inspiring place, which epitomises in miniature all that I love and admire about nature and the Scottish landscape.” The vanished vennels and thoroughfares of old Perth are brought back to public notice in Gary Knight’s newlylaunched book, ‘No Fair City: Dark Tales of Perth’s Past’.
It’s the first venture into writing by the Blackford resident, whose day job is working for environmental services at Perth and Kinross Council.
As the title indicates, Gary chose to reveal some of the city’s more gruesome incidents.
He planned the project for years, spending two years doing painstaking research.
The finished book is illustrated by emotive pen and ink illustrations by his wife Lynne, who balanced being a full-time mum to four with getting the drawings done.
Gary explained how Perth’s familiar streets have more to them than meets the modern day eye.
He said: “There is not much left of historic Perth to see today, but at the bottom of the Skinnergate, at the Red Brig, you can still see a portion of the old city wall.
“At one time Perth was protected by a defensive wall and a moat. A castle stood around the site the museum now occupies.”
Gary’s book helps place the Fair City’s past right under the feet of today’s residents.
He continued: “If you go for a walk down the Watergate you are in a street where at one time all the movers and shakers of Perth had property.
“The Lord Provost would have lived there. Anyone who was anybody would want a house in the Watergate. It was the first street in the city to be paved with flat stones taken from the river bed.
“It is hard to believe now that the Watergate was once such a prestigious address,” added Gary.
He considers Perth’s most shameful moment in history to be the assassination of King James I in the winter of 1437.
The history enthusiast continued: “He was murdered in the Blackfriars. This event would have shocked Scotland to the core at the time.
“Regicide was very unusual in Scotland and as the news and circumstances of the King’s death spread, the name ‘Perth’ would have been on everyone’s lips throughout the main European royal courts.
“This is what makes the killing of King James I in Perth by far the most serious event that has ever taken place in the Fair City.”
‘No Fair City: Dark Tales of Perth’s Past’ is published by local label Tippermuir Books Ltd and costs £9.99 from Waterstones. Knight
Iona Crawford. Pic: Paul Chappells Gary and Lynne