Britain at its best: Drinks by the dram and crumbling cathedrals in Moray, Scotland

Britain at its best: Drinks by the dram and crumbling cathedrals in Scotland’s whisky heartland The Daily Mail’s Hugo Brown visited Moray, an hour-and-a-half west of Aberdeen  He stayed at Dalvey East Lodge, a cottage which sleeps six, in Forres  Pubs here have menus of whisky longer than their wine lists, says Hugo  By Hugo … Read more

Am Dram – The world’s most lethal hobby

THE ARTS  QUESTORS, JESTERS AND RENEGADES  by Michael Coveney (Bloomsbury £25, 216pp)  Michael Coveney says, in a statistic that stretches credulity, that there are 2,500 amateur dramatic societies in Britain, putting on 35,000 productions a year in disused cinemas, chapels, barns and converted Nissen huts. The most spectacular venue is the Minack in Cornwall, carved … Read more

Britain at its best: Raise a wee dram to the Isle of Islay

The Isle of Islay is closer to the ‘island of Ireland’ (as politicians call it when squabbling over the EU ‘backstop’) than it is to Scotland’s big cities. Out there, in other words. And yet for a first-timer it seems like a microcosm of Scotland as a whole, with its mountains, heathered moorland, grazing sheep, … Read more