Historic Ally: Reviving Scotland’s Spirit Through Storytelling

Alistair Heather, otherwise known as 'Historic Ally', is a Scottish tour guide, writer, presenter, and as we've learned through chatting with him for this Q&A, a fantastic story teller. We first stumbled across his Instagram page @historic_ally, through a video explaining the story behind the quirky art in a Glasgow restaurant we've all enjoyed frequenting, but never had a clue about the fascinating history of the place. From then, we were hooked. Ally has made learning about Scottish history accessible to all, and has had us learning something new about our country weekly. So, you can imagine we were delighted when we got the opportunity to find out even more from Ally.

Read on to hear what ignited Ally's love for Scottish history, his favourite historical anecdotes, and how you can now learn even more from him in his newly launched Scottish tours.

I would say that history started out as more than a subject and didn't become a subject until university. My family are pretty historically conscious, as I like to describe them. I lived with my grandad till I was one, and he was a very big part of my life. Him and my granny loved story telling, and I grew up being told stories about the old days of Glasgow. He told me stories about his experiences in the war, his experiences of the past, and even though he never studied history, he was just genuinely interested in it. Social history poured out of him, like how my great granny was involved in the Glasgow rent strikes, and my granny would tell me stories about her life on a farm in Lanarkshire. 

When I went to primary school this continued, and I was very well nurtured in history. I still remember the primary headmaster would bring in local older people to tell us about the history of their village, and the history of their language. I even remember people coming in with these big historic maps showing us where the roman camps were, and where the Pictish stones were, and how they connected to us. So history is very much in a way, I suppose, a building of identity, and a kind of family and community belonging. Long before it became a subject, it was a material for story telling, and building a sense of belonging.

It's really important. It's all about how you can use research skills and academic history to help people better understand the world around them in a way that's not misleading. History is often used to mislead, and the key thing I've tried to do in the videos is to be loyal to what the evidence actually tells us. So I keep it fun. It's joyful, it's light, but is, as far as I can always make it, always true and based on a piece of quality research. And if it's not, it's just for fun, and I make that really clear in the video. So it's about the training, academic training that is, to help me make sure that everything I say is cognisant of its impact and it's cognisant of good quality research. 

There have been a few. I remember when I was really young and learning that Captain Kidd, a famous pirate, had run away from Dundee as a young boy. At the age of 14, he worked as a crew mate on a ship for years, then became a pirate, and then after pirating in the 7 seas went to New Amsterdam, which became New York, and married into one of the wealthiest families. He's also recorded as helping build The Trinity Church that still stands opposite Wall Street. I thought, "What?! That's unbelievable!". And so, I've told everyone that story ever since. 

One thing I quite like is that Isla, Campbelltown, and Ireland have their own distinctive whiskey industries. And that's partly because those different areas tried to clamp down on elicit distilling at different periods. So, there'd be times when in Isla, it was really hard for people to make illegal whiskey, so they'd all just ship over to Campbelltown, and they'd work on it there instead! And when they would get clamped down there, they'd then all nip over to Ireland. It was like playing whack a mole trying to nail down these illicit distillers. Instead what they did was breed a kind of interconnected, across the water community of illicit distillers who were all helping each other out. I quite like that clumsy hand of government. 

Making it relevant is the key thing, I don't just tell stories to young people. I just try to find stories that are very human, are surprising, are fun, and hopefully connect to folk. I appreciate that for young people today, there's a huge identity crisis, there's a huge masculinity crisis, and there's a gendered violence crisis. Identity, belonging, a sense of continuity, and a sense of coming from somewhere can be really helpful in grounding people and giving them certain guidelines about who they are and potential modes of being good examples of behaviour. So I try to keep it pretty light, and pretty informative, but really look for those human interest things, and if that speaks to young people, good!

I did a very quick one, just on my phone in the middle of Glasgow, talking about Nelson Mandela Place, which is a wee square just off Buchanan Street. I thought it was a story that absolutely everyone knew in Glasgow, but it turned out to be huge. The reel has a million views, and over 100,000 likes. Nelson Mandela was officially labeled as a terrorist by the British state and was in jail in South Africa for trying to end the system of apartheid. 

Glasgow changed that street to Nelson Mandela as a sign of solidarity, but the key thing is that the square is where the South African consulate was, so anytime the consulate got mail, they received it at ‘South African consulate, Nelson Mandela Place’. It was a very clear way of letting the diplomat in the building know whose side Glasgow was on. I think that's a really powerful thing, and that absolutely took off and has really ignited a fresh perspective on radical Glasgow, which I think is good. 

The declaration of Arbroath was Scotland's first declaration of independence, where Robert the Bruce, and all the barons and religious leaders of Scotland wrote to the pope to argue that he should recognise Scotland's formal independence. It started the chain reaction that led to Scotland actually being formally recognised within the medieval European system as being independent. It's definitely the biggest part of Arbroath's history, so I would've loved to have been part of the group, drafting the letter, and then sailing across the Avignon, to where the pope was at the time and make that presentation to him. That would've been so interesting to see.

Personally, it's something I was really raised with and raised in the value of, but I sort of moved away from it in my teens. When I was 17, I moved to New Zealand, and saw how culturally rejuvenating the place was, because it had been so British and been such a colony, and we'd abandoned them in the 80s. They were kind of finding their feet again, and a lot of that was tying into Maori Culture, Maori language, their nation's place in the South Pacific, helping women's voices come to the fore, and reshaping what their country is all about.

Seeing that happen, and seeing middle class white people with entirely English backgrounds learning Maori, and helping it form part of their new identity, I thought, hold on, Scotland could do all this, you know, it was a pretty bleak time in Scotland, we were at a time of austerity. So when I came home, I thought, we've got such a strong culture here to build anew. And for me, i's a tool of empowerment, it's a tool of helping people of all backgrounds realise what powerful inheritance they have, and what a contribution they could make.

I read a lot of poetry, but I've never really been interested in writing it. But poets are all about saying everything you need to say in the most distilled, short fashion possible. Like tight bundles of phrases that have resonances beyond their initial meaning. And I love that, and it's something I definitely try and do, because with a reel you've got 30 seconds to communicate something. You've got to distill it down and down. When I first think of a script, it'll be about three minutes long, and I've got to find a way to get all that meaning, and everything I'm trying to say, into the shortest and snappiest phrasing possible. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, but there's certainly something of the poetic exercise embedded in that for sure.

Well, next year is the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. A lot of people have said it was modelled on the declaration of Arbroath - a declaration from 700 years ago with the help of four Scots that signed that declaration. And with America being a big part of our culture and a big part of our way of seeing the world, I'd love to explore a history documentary looking at the interrelation between the States and Scotland over the last 250 years, since its founding. It would be fascinating. When it comes to a dream guest, I think it would have to be JD Vance, who's talked a lot about his Scottish heritage. I'd love to interrogate that further. I'll say no more.

Yes, Historic Ally & Friends tours has officially launched. It's pretty straightforward; my family and friends are so culturally rich, and I so enjoy history, that I just thought there's a unique offer for a few weeks of the summer for me to take small groups of culturally engaged people around to meet people in amazing places. So in Edinburgh, I'll do the historical tour of the city, but we'll also meet my cousin, who's an amazing Scots fiddle player. He'll play some tunes in a pub and we'll chat about the Scottish traditional music scene, how it evolves in the pub setting, what that role is in Scottish life, and we'll share questions and tunes. 

Then, I'll head up to Dunkeld to my mate, who is the fifth generation piper in his family, and handmakes bagpipes in Dunkeld. We'll visit his workshop, and visit the great nature. After that, we'll head out to the West Coast, where my friends are Gaelic singers, and one is a forager who will take us out foraging for food so we can learn more about the natural world and the older Gaelic relationship with the land. I'll be doing the history stuff, and my friends and family will be doing the incredible cultural experience, which I hope will connect visitors to what I consider to be Scotland's real depths.

Thank you so much to Ally for taking the time to chat with us. Go ahead and check out his fantastic Instagram page @historic_ally here, we highly recommend you drop him a follow! You can also find out more about Ally's newly launched Scottish tours here. Be sure to let us know if you are lucky enough to attend one!