From Waverley to White Hart Lane!
How Sir Walter Scott, an Edinburgh and Scottish cultural icon paved the way for one of the all-time greatest Spurs football legends.
Someone whom no other than George Best said ‘was the hardest man I ever played against’ — those really were the days.
It was late on in the 1960’s, I was 8 or 9 years old and my dad had been offered a special deal for a green Rover 90 in mint condition from a relative. The only problem was that the car and relative was located in Edinburgh! That was no deterrent and I was delighted to be offered the role of co-driver and company for my father and so early one morning we set of for South Ruislip tube station, just down the road from home and where my dad caught the Central Line daily into London’s White City to work for the BBC.
This time the destination was the ethereal Waverley Station via Kings Cross, where we purchased two one-way tickets to Edinburgh and for me what seemed like a very long journey but one that probably took about the same time as it does now with a giant ‘Deltic’ diesel locomotive playing up front!
Arriving at Waverley is an experience no child born in London who has an organically growing Hornby ‘OO’ train set wouldn’t relish. I used to film my model of the Flying Scotsman in its London North Eastern Railway or LNER livery, numbered 4472 with my Super 8 cine camera, coming to stop in its Ruislip based, miniaturised sidings but dreaming of Edinburgh. I was now ending my real journey at the end of the East Coast main line route that made it hugely iconic and famous world-wide.
The huge, almost flat glass canopies that cover the acres of platforms but at a lower height than that found at many London termini bar Waterloo and the taxi rank that enters the station along a ramp from just off Princes Street on Waverley bridge is still the same today except taxis are sadly banned. They are replaced by anti-terrorist barriers and police cars, a hugely busy train station that sits in a deep volcanic, glacial valley below the Royal Mile and the high but inactive volcanic mound that the world-famous castle sits atop with views over the station from up on high. When you leave the station via this old taxi ramp the first thing you hear are the sounds of bagpipes getting progressively louder and the first thing you see if you look to the right is the ‘Gothic Rocket’ or the impressive Walter Scott Monument in Princes Street Gardens. You can’t miss it — welcome to Edinburgh!
The drive home to London where I was born and bred was tedious in comparison and much, much longer with a stop-over at a B&B in York to ensure we didn’t overheat the old radiator but we made it!
At around the same time, Dave MacKay was leaving Spurs to join Derby County towards the end of a hugely successful and loyal playing career that would be impossible to imagine nowadays. He had made the same journey south to London a decade or so earlier than me from Heart of Midlothian FC in Edinburgh but to a place that became my spiritual footballing home in N17 and still is some 60 years or more on.
Scottish players always have a special place in the hearts of ageing and lifelong Spurs supporters, Alan Gilzean, Alfie Conn, John Duncan and Steve Archibald were my favourites who all followed after Mackay, without him they may well have stayed put — who knows.
In those days without SKY TV, fame was hard earned and these four are contemporary club legends, probably as they were fantastic goal scorers but ‘Big Dave’ was the first Scottish international to make the move south from a major Scottish club to Tottenham High Road followed shortly by inside forward ‘The Ghost’ John White and keeper Bill Brown who were all a crucial part of the 1960/61 season double winning team. I made my own Spurs ‘debut’ at White Hart Lane in 1972 against Leicester City, but that was solely standing in the Paxton Road enclosure, in the days when a very young kid was able to catch the Metropolitan Line to Kings Cross, the Victoria Line to Seven Sisters and finally the main line to White Hart Lane via Bruce Grove without your parents being shamed on social media! After all I used the London Underground to get to school daily! More on all that later…
The ‘Gothic Rocket’
So, you’ve now turned right after climbing the old taxi ramp at Waverley, the Sir Walter Scott Monument is the second thing that takes your breath away in this fantastic city, you simply can’t miss it! The first thing that hits you of course is ‘The Castle’ but I tend to avoid that tourist trap and the Royal Mile wherever possible and will do so today too. Waverley Station is like many places in this city named after either him or his works.
Scott was colloquially known as the ‘Wizard of the North’ and certainly the most influential Scottish writer of the 19th Century. His memorial was funded internationally which speaks volumes and is covered in sculptures and artefacts from his works. His style of incorporating historical events, places and real people with imagined characters was a trademark that made him hugely popular. His works such as The Lady of the Lake and the Waverley Novels, from where the station got its name and is a series of seven titles including Ivanhoe, Rob Roy and Heart of Mid-Lothian were often reproduced in paintings, plays and operas. However, this is not intended to be a literary review of his writing, more of a Walter Scott ‘did you know’!
These paintings are still an integral part of the tourist pull to the National Gallery of Scotland and National Portrait Gallery, where you can take a pictorial tour of Scott’s life, rather than reading the books. It’s your call. However, his slightly less famous but bulky tome simply called ‘The Heart of Mid-Lothian’ is the direction that I’m taking you in after we pay homage to some more of Scott’s legacy to Edinburgh and Scotland.
The building of the monument was commissioned by way of a competition and it’s not that well known that this was won by an imposter! George Meikle Kemp, was actually a joiner and not an architect and entered his designs under a false name. He was very fond of medieval cathedrals and gothic architecture; his plans delighted the organisers and was judged the best. It has proven to be a very popular design with locals and tourists alike where the views from the top are sought after. It was finished in 1846 and for some time was the largest memorial to a writer in the world.
Born in Edinburgh in 1771, Scott had to leave the city due to ill health when a child and went to live at his grandfather’s farm in the Borders. He was diagnosed with polio and because his maternal side of the family were ‘medically qualified’ his leg was treated with a new form of therapy where chemical reagents reacted to create electric currents in the affected muscles.
Galvanism is a term conceived by the 18th-century physicist and chemist Alessandro Volta referring to the generation of electric current by chemical action. Even today you can have ‘galvanic treatments’ in most of the trendy health spa’s that claim it rejuvenates the skin by using electrodes to directly create the current. It’s not for me.
For those readers involved in cancer treatment, I always want to get an update in and have seen in the news recently that a genetically modified polio virus has now been injected into brain tumours such as glioblastoma with interesting, positive results and producing an anti-tumour response that completes a virtuous medical circle in this blog!
His exposure to ‘Border Tales and Ballads’ played a huge part in his development as a writer and poet but with added twists. Rob Roy, a Highlander who was called a ‘kind and gentle robber’ took from the rich but also when it suited him, from the poor too. An ‘anti-hero’ in today’s parlance but typical of Scott’s detailed and often mischievous focus on his characters. You can still visit Abbotsford, his salubrious but gothic mansion home on the banks of the river Tweed today and purchased with his literary earnings.
However, even his prolific writing talent didn’t prevent him from insolvency in 1826 due to a series of poor business decisions and in his efforts to pay back creditors, led him to further ill health and he suffered a series of strokes. He decided that a more Mediterranean climate would help and so with the assistance of the Royal Navy he headed to Naples and then Rome to recuperate. Sadly, he had a further stroke on his way back to Scotland and died shortly afterwards at Abbotsford in 1832.
It’s been said that Scott was a closet ‘Unionist’ in the way he perceived what was best politically for his native Scotland and while not formally part of the ‘Scottish Enlightenment’ an intellectual and philosophical movement that started in the middle of the 18th century in Edinburgh, he was probably inspired by it, in the same way that the ‘Romantic’ period impacted on his words.
As with people of his stature, the most famous artists lined up to paint him. This picture below, painted by Sir Henry Raeburn around 1822, shows Scott at the hight of his popularity and is located in the National Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh where my photo is kindly taken from. I often visit this gallery to see just one painting after some research for my writing now I live here for part of the year as it’s good to take some time focusing on one piece of work for a long time rather than ‘scan viewing’ hundreds of images — try it!
I found out today that even infamous artist Andy Warhol owns a bust of Scott created by leading sculptor Sir Francis Chantrey and made in 1820, fame indeed!
I’ll leave you to look up and or read his famous books but as suggested I want to return to just one.
The Heart of Mid-Lothian — a novel by Scott and said to be his best (and longest)
Scott’s book ‘The Heart of Mid-Lothian’ describes within it and towards the start a very violent episode in Edinburgh called the ‘Porteous Riots’ where Captain John Porteous, the head of the Edinburgh city guard, was killed by a rioting mob close to the Grassmarket and under the shadow of the Castle. The scene was captured by painter James Drummond and hangs in the brand-new extension of the National Gallery, recently opened this Autumn. As ever, I have included my own photograph below, it’s an amazingly detailed painting of a famous part of the city when viewed close up.
What does the ‘Heart of Mid-Lothian’ refer to?
Part of the ‘Waverley seven’ series, the title of the book refers to the Old Tolbooth prison, just off the Royal Mile in Edinburgh. It was the centre of the old city, the centre of the county of Midlothian and the city’s centre for government and justice. Scott arranges the story lines and characters so that the reader lives the lives of people caught up in often violent and dramatic, life-changing circumstances.
The actual heart is a stone-based mosaic located just outside St Giles’ Cathedral. This heart marks the location of the entrance to the prison which was demolished in 1817. It was a spot where the public historically paid taxes; it was also a legendary but daunting prison, an administration centre for the city and a site of some brutal executions. Body parts and severed heads of those executed were impaled on nearby spikes to warn people off! Even Mary — Queen of Scots decided that the jail was one step to far for her and so a new version was built during her brief lifetime until she was executed by beheading herself in 1587 at Fotheringhay Castle, in Northamptonshire.
One quaint but rather odious habit is that locals and now probably tourists alike will often spit on the heart today hoping for good luck. This was not popular during the Covid-19 pandemic I’m sure and only slightly worse than lining up with many others to kiss the Blarney Stone in Cork, Ireland that I admit to having done.
In 1736, a riot broke out after the execution of an infamous smuggler when a mob decided to recover the body from the gallows. Captain John Porteous, ordered the soldiers to fire into the crowd, killing many people.
Following his brutal suppression of the rioters Porteous was charged with murder and locked up himself in the prison. When news comes out that he had likely been absolved, an angry crowd secure the city walls, break into the jail, liberating its inmates and killing Porteous, partly by hanging.
But one inmate who fails to take this chance to escape is Effie Deans, who, wrongly convicted of the murder of her new born child, has been incarcerated, awaiting trial. Jeanie, her older sister, sets off to London on foot to beg for a royal pardon.
The book showcases the differing fortunes of the two sisters and is a tale of religious devotion and the vagaries of the letter of the law, and as with many of Scott’s works looks at social and cultural disparities along with the religious and political conflicts of the day, the cost of these to the people and their impact on Scottish lives. An early day ‘Thelma and Louise’, perhaps!
Jeanie Deans is said to be one of Scott’s first and finest female lead characters and certainly the first to come from a working-class background. He knowingly admires her strong religious faith and his writing presciently touches on the potential for the emancipation of women.
However, one theme as ever is the early 18th century Jacobite cause, a topic found in many of Scott’s novels and in this book Scott’s sympathies seem to lie with the Duke of Argyll, whose private army fought for the British government at Culloden. However, he certainly didn’t want to crush the rebels post Culloden nor be any part of the future Highland clearances. This is obviously not common knowledge among nationalists in Scotland and the SNP as if it were, I am sure Scott would have been ‘cancelled’ on X, formerly twitter now by the Nat-bots and places like Waverley Station rapidly renamed Edinburgh Central!
A stage adaption of the book has been performed regularly at the Theatre Royal in Edinburgh from 1820 onwards and up until today! As part of the research for this blog I am undertaking reading the circa 900-page Penguin Classic of the 1818 novel, to avail myself a little more as to why Scott became a world-wide, writing phenomena. With various English language styles and some very basic Scots (the dialect not the man) to understand, this is not an easy read and a case of — ‘Dae ye ken yer Scots’?
That brings us neatly to Gorgie, a neighbourhood in Edinburgh’s West End and the home of Heart of Midlothian FC or Hearts, whose nickname the ‘Jam Tarts’ is a nod to cockney rhyming slang and whose club name is based directly on Scott’s work. The club’s motif or badge is the actual ‘heart’ as described above.
Heart of Midlothian Football Club
Hearts, the oldest and most successful football club in the Scottish capital, was formed in 1874 and has a great historical museum that is free to enter, and run by some extremely knowledgeable and very friendly local football supporters. You also get a brief stadium viewing thrown in from where you get wonderful and largely unobscured views of the just under 20,000 seats of ‘Tynecastle Park’.
The first thing they ask you when you arrive is ‘what team do you support’ and my reply of ‘Tottenham Hotspur’ had them drooling in anticipation of what they were about to tell me. I had no idea that Dave Mackay was their most famous son who took the long journey south to join Spurs in 1959 and went on to win the double with the most celebrated group of players ever to grace the green, green grass of N17. Although when I started attending games, the pitch was more like a sandy beach in a London mid-winter.
As above, out of my four favourite Spurs Scottish imports, Alfie Conn was my guilty pleasure and famously Bill Nicolson’s last signing in 1974. Conn assumed he was on his way to Old Trafford but Spurs stepped in and signed a true maverick, in the long line of Spurs traditions and someone who bridged the great Glasgow divide between Rangers and Celtic. His greatest performance was saved for the must win game versus then European Cup finalists Leeds United in 1975. I recall the gates being locked early with around 50,000 of us crammed in and winning 4 v 2 to stay up. Conn scored and made two goals and booked his ticket that evening to appear as a full international for Scotland a few times with a game at Wembley versus the auld enemy, if I recall. He was the original and proclaimed ‘King of White Hart Lane’ but surprisingly only made 38 appearances.
A week or so earlier we had beaten Chelsea 2 v 0 at the Lane to condemn them to relegation, with a crowd this time around 51,000 in a match where the Spurs fans unveiled a huge banner with the words ‘Bye-Bye Chelsea’ in a nod to the Bay City Rollers classic song and where goalkeeping legend Pat Jennings was kicked by a Chelsea fan but gave back more than he got! These were largely happy days even though we finally ran out of luck in 1977 and dropped down a division but for just one season.
Anyway, I learned at Tynecastle Park on my visit to the museum that Alfie Conn’s dad played for Hearts, who knew but great stuff! The other ex-Hearts player to join Spurs was Gordon ‘Duke-Box’ Durie who also crossed a divide, this time between North and West London from Chelsea.
Hearts have won the Scottish league championship four times, most recently in 1959–60, when they also retained the Scottish League Cup to complete a League and League Cup double, the only club outside of the Old Firm to achieve such a feat. Hearts have also won the Scottish Cup eight times, most recently in 2012 after a 5–1 victory over Hibernian, their local rivals in Leith.
In 1958, Hearts became the third Scottish and fifth British team to compete in Europe. The club reached the quarter-finals of the 1988–89 UEFA Cup, losing to Bayern Munich.
The Jam Tarts
Rumour has it that Hearts are known by the nickname ‘Jam Tarts’ because it was apparently devised by returning Scottish soldiers who had learned rhyming slang from Cockney soldiers in the trenches of World War One. They are also referred to as the Jambos or the Gorgie Boys!
There has been a new dawn for the club in recent years after being trapped in what has been called a ‘new owner-new hope-increased debt-disillusionment’ death spiral since 1981 and is now a supporter owned Trust.
A ‘sell the stadium crisis’ in 2004 and the ‘Vladimir Romanov crisis’ of 2012 left the club on the brink of having to sell its stadium for a housing development to survive on both occasions due to extreme mis-management but in 2013 Hearts was rescued by investor Ann Budge and a new ‘Foundation of Hearts’ supporters Trust, set up by fans to purchase the club through supporter’s shares and completely change how it was run and with a say at board level.
As far as I know this was a first in Scotland and is working very well. It’s been adopted by many other Scottish Clubs and also down south where ‘FC United of Manchester’ became a new born version of Manchester United when fans decided they had had enough of the Glazer family running it. It’s well supported but struggles to match its neighbour’s pull! I’ve been to see them a few times in Moston, where Man Utd originally started off when they’ve played Brackley Town FC, a club that I was involved as a fan and commercial director. FC United is a thriving community-based venture.
The Spurs legend that was Dave Mackay — and where both our journey’s end
Dave Mackay was always annoyed that he was often portrayed as a ‘hard-man’ as he felt that it betrayed his true nature and made him look like a bully. George Best at the start of this piece said similarly that he ‘was the hardest man I ever played against’.
A lasting image of him is often the one of him holding the collar of Leeds and Scotland’s Billy Bremner and lifting him the air in a game at White Hart Lane in 1966. He said that the issue was not with Bremner, also renowned as being tempestuous but that Mackay had just returned from a broken leg, the same one he had broken earlier in his career and that Billy has chosen to kick that one. He suggested that everything would have been OK if only he had he kicked the other one! I love that anecdote.
Mackay was born in Edinburgh in 1934, some 163 years later than Walter Scott and sadly died in 2015. He played at left half but would be a sweeper in today’s parlance or the central player of a back three. He played for Hearts 135 times, made 268 appearances for Spurs, turned out 122 times for Derby County and 22 times for Scotland, at a time when international matches were a scarcity compared to today and was most famously part of the double-winning Tottenham Hotspur side of 1961 but also winning the old First Division with Derby County as their manager.
Tottenham Hotspur F.C. 1960. From left to right, standing: Johnny Hills, Bobby Smith, John Ryden, Maurice Norman, Mell Hopkins, Peter Baker, Dave MacKay; middle row, sitting: Cliff Jones, Tony Marchi, Bill Brown, John Hollowbread, Ron Henry, Les Allen; front row, sitting: Tom Harmer, Cecil Poynton (trainer), Danny Blanchflower, Bill Nicholson (manager) and Terry Dyson.
Inducted to the English and Scottish Football Halls of Fame he was as described, by Spurs, as one of their greatest players and was known as ‘the heartbeat’ of their most successful ever team.
Mackay supported Hearts as a boy. He signed as a professional in 1952, initially on a part-time basis as he also worked as joiner. Mackay was given his first team debut in November 1953 and was never booked in his whole career with them.
According to Wikipedia, Hearts won their first trophy since 1906 as they beat Motherwell 4–2 in the 1954 Scottish League Cup Final. This would be the first of seven trophies over nine seasons between 1954 and 1963. After signing Alex Young and Bobby Kirk, Walker’s side proceeded to win the 1955–56 Scottish Cup.[11] They thrashed Rangers 4–0 in the quarter-finals with goals from Crawford, Alfie Conn and a Bauld double. Mackay completed the set of Scottish domestic honours by winning the league championship in 1957–58.
He had joined Spurs in 1959 and left for Derby in 1968, 3 years before my love affair in N17 started. Old Big ‘Ed, namely Brian Clough had heard that Spurs were probably selling him back to Hearts and so stepped in with a bid he couldn’t turn down and another chapter in his career began! Clough described Mackay as the greatest player Spurs ever had, very high praise indeed!
When he died Hearts said ‘It is with deep regret that we have to advise of the death of Dave Mackay who was possibly the most complete midfield player that Scotland has ever produced’.
Tottenham suggested that ‘Dave Mackay will certainly always be remembered here as one of our greatest ever players and a man who never failed to inspire those around him. In short, a Spurs legend’
At his funeral his coffin was borne by John Robertson, Gordon Marshall, Pat Jennings, Cliff Jones, Roy McFarland and John McGovern while a eulogy was given by Sir Alex Ferguson.
I never saw him play in the flesh and I regret that. However, I now have an affinity for the very special city of Edinburgh where he was born and started his career as I have a home here. So, it seems like I have completed my own personal journey, this time back from White Hart Lane to Waverley but a few years ‘better late than never’.
Duncan Hynd — December 2023 blog
