Scotland from the Sky
Interviews
the press and journal
Flying High in Scotland
The Shetland-born writer and presenter of a major new BBC series has spent the last decade meticulously researching Scotland’s National Collection of Aerial Photography – an archive containing millions of images – and he has immersed himself in exploring how his homeland has changed over the course of decades, centuries and millennia.
Yet, as he admitted, nothing could have prepared him for the sheer adrenaline rush and giddy exhilaration which he derived from witnessing the transformation of the landscape from a bird’s eye view. The results will be unveiled in the Spring with the first of three episodes of Scotland from the Sky, but the Press and Journal has seen the programmes and they are a stunning combination of aviation adventure and historical detective work
The courier and advertiser
The closest you can get to time travel
Scotland from the Sky, a new three-part BBC TV series presented by James Crawford, explores the country from the air. It opens up many secrets and surprises, as Gayle Ritchie discovers.
On rare days, when Loch Cluanie is at its lowest, two chimney stacks poke out of the dark, glassy waters. Look closer and you might spot the desiccated stumps of old trees, and a road to nowhere, disappearing over a crumbling stone bridge into the loch.
This surreal, otherworldly view, which offers up relics of a by-gone era, is best understood from above. The fascinating story of the loch’s transformation is told in Scotland from the Sky, a new BBC One Scotland series presented by James Crawford. He believes the best way to view Scotland’s magnificent scenery – and to make connections with the past – is from the air.
Journalism & Extracts
the herald
Author James Crawford on his favourite aerial views
Ahead of a new book and BBC documentary series, Scotland from the Sky, author and presenter James Crawford shares some of his favourite highlights and aerial views.
books from scotland
The Time Machine
It’s not very often that you get the chance to travel back in time.
Through the doors of the aircraft hangar, waiting on the grass beside an apron of runway, was a 1942 DH82a de Havilland Tiger Moth – an open cockpit tandem biplane made of steel tubing, thin plywood and stretched fabric. This was going to be my time machine.
I walked out from the hangar and across the runway with my pilot, William Mackaness. Together, we were aiming to recreate a pioneering flight made from this same Perthshire aerodrome in the summer of 1939. Back then the pilot was a man called Geoffrey Alington, who operated a company called Air Touring. And his passenger was Osbert Guy Stanhope Crawford – now dubbed the ‘father of aerial archaeology’. Crawford’s flight was about travelling back in time too...
Edinburgh international book festival
On The Road
Coinciding with the broadcast of his new BBC Scotland TV series and the publication of its accompanying book Scotland from the Sky, James Crawford, publisher at Historic Environment Scotland, joins us at ReimagiNation: Glenrothes in just over a week. Here, he tells us what a view from above can tell us about Glenrothes, Scotland’s New Towns more broadly, and the nation at large.
This is a story about Glenrothes that you probably won’t have ever heard before. It is an origin story, and it does not begin in Fife. In fact, it does not even begin in Scotland. It begins in Paris, on the afternoon of 18 October 1909. That day marked the first time an aircraft flew over a city...
the Sunday herald
Scotland from the Sky
Ahead of a new book and BBC documentary series, Scotland from the Sky, author and presenter James Crawford shares some of his favourite highlights and aerial views.
the daily record
Scotland from the Sky pictures revealed
Scotland’s National Collection of Aerial Photography offers a unique opportunity to study how our country has changed since the early 20th century.
And while many images stand out – Hampden Park in the 1920s; the Queen Mary under construction at John Brown’s shipyard in the 30s; the photograph of the Bismarck from 1941, captured by a Spitfire flown out of Wick airfield – the whole is always greater than the sum of its parts. The earliest aerial photos were taken from giant airships in the years before – and during – World War I...