The Empire Strikes Back

Thanks to everyone for their kind responses to yesterday’s blip about our dying friend George.

This is Fort George, photographed across the narrows today from Chanonry Point. On his first visit we took George to see it, because it was named after him. Asked what it was really about, we reminded him of the Jacobite uprising (we had not long been at Culloden battlefield). Whatever the rights and wrongs of Bonnie Prince Charlie’s personal agenda, the indiscriminate revenge and repression which followed leaves a dark stain, not forgotten.

George said later he could never look at the fort again, without hearing the Darth Vader march from Star Wars. Neither, now, can I.

George died this morning at 3am, his daughter at his bedside. A good and kind friend, a good and caring life generously lived.