During many years as a performer, author and lecturer on a range of Scottish cultural topics, Stuart McHardy has developed strong storytelling skills and a gift to entertain.

With considerable experience of Scots language traditions, he draws his material from urban and rural aspects of these and has published several books derived directly from Scotland’s oral traditions, in which he has explored many aspects of storytelling. Stuart is equally at home with adults or children as his audience. He is always happy to work around specific themes such as whisky and smuggling, urban stories, myths and legends of place, or Scots language stories.

Stuart has been using storytelling as part of lectures on a variety of folklore subjects for over ten years. He also worked for many years telling stories on BBC Radio Scotland’s McGregor’s Gathering, and as a performer in pubs and folk clubs. Much of the research Stuart has undertaken over the past decade and a half is based upon material originally from the oral tradition, making the point that oral tradition can provide relevant and otherwise unavailable historical material over remarkable periods of time.

Stuart McHardy has been a key collector of traditional Scots stories since winning a Scots language storytelling bursary in 1999 and has devoted increasing time and energy to sharing this work through live storytelling. He also brings these stories to a reading audience through his books, including ‘Pictish Tales and Legends’, ‘On the Trail of Scotland’s Myth and Legends’ and ‘The White Cockade and other Jacobite Tales’.

Full details of his work are available from www.birlinn.co.uk and www.luath.co.uk.

He has told widely at festivals, in schools, clubs, museums, visitor centres and at corporate events.

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