Transcript of the National Library of Scotland's Treasures podcast, episode 1:
Julia Sutherland: Hello and welcome to National Treasures, a brand-new podcast from the National Library of Scotland. We've just opened the treasures gallery, a new permanent exhibition on George IV Bridge in Edinburgh where you can come and see some truly unique, important, and in some cases, incredibly rare and priceless artefacts. I'm Julia Sutherland and I'm here with some actual living Scottish national treasures to discuss, debate and defend some of the most amazing items that are on display. I have the privilege of being able to award a pick of the podcast prize to one particular item, but which one will it be? Here to put forward there case today we have actor, raconteur, panto star, broadcaster, and still dishing out business cards for his mobile disco, it's Grant Stott.
Grant Stott: Good afternoon and good day everyone.
Julia: Writer, actor, comedian, oh, and he cannot resist a good pun. He's best known for his roles in Still Game and River City, it's Sanjeev Kohli.
Sanjeev Kohli: Hello.
Julia: And our final national treasure is a poet, champion of the Scot's language and has become a TikTok and Twitter viral sensation, it's Len Pennie.
Len Pennie: You alright?
Julia: Hello. Hello everyone. Well, I have introduced you all as national treasures. Those are the two words I've picked, but what two words would you use to describe yourself, Grant?
Grant: Two words which could be used individually or collectively and they've followed me around for many years, been thrown at me by various individuals, but the two words I would go for would be big dafty.
Julia: [Laughter]. Well, certainly you're very tall [laughter]. Sanjeev, what about you, what two words would you use to describe yourself?
Sanjeev: Being Scottish, I would normally baulk at you calling me a national treasure because we can't take compliments because we're Scottish, but I decided this year to crank my self-esteem right up. So, I'm going actually take national treasure and run with it. So, I'm going with international booty [laughter], because it's bigger than national and booty means treasure and it also means ass, and I've got an ass that simply won't quit [laughter].
Julia: Painting pictures with words, Sanjeev. Thanks for that. What about you, Len? How would you describe yourself?
Len: I'll go for the two words I most often use to describe myself, which would be scunnered and shattered.
Julia: Right, okay [laughter]. Well, maybe you can, yeah, take a leaf out of Sanjeev's book and by the end of this podcast you will be singing your own praises as you are a national treasure to us. Right, okay. Well, over the next five years, the treasures of the National Library of Scotland exhibition will feature a rotation of items from the library's collections, and there are handwritten manuscripts, letters from people like Robert Burns, Charles Darwin and even Mary Queen of Scots, but a treasure isn't just a priceless artefact, we've also got a vast collection of leaflets, pamphlets, best selling novels, comics and short films, all helping us to understand Scotland's story and our relationship with the world. So, I've asked all three of you to have a look through some of the items that are coming up on display and pick a couple of things that have caught your attention. So, Grant, kick us off. Tell me what caught your eye.
Grant: Two that I've plumbed for have personal resonance with me and some may even be in my own loft. First of all would be the DC Thomson back catalogue, a big part of my childhood there, and a bit part of my entire life, I relate to the collection of wax cylinders that they have, with my collection … my current collection of music and everything. So, it all ties into my personal life and my professional life as well.
Julia: Yeah. Me too. I think clearing out my parents attic recently did feel like a bit of a shrine to DC Thomson up there. We'll get onto those a little bit later, but Len, what are the two things that you were drawn to from the treasures collection?
Len: So, I have a collection of artefacts and materials of the phenomenal Isobel Wylie Hutchison. So, she was an explorer, she was a botanist, she was an artist, she was a poet, she was a linguist. She pretty much did it all and there's pretty much everything about her in that collection, and my second one is a copy of the very first colour film made in Scotland and that's Where the Bens Stand Sentinel, and I've watched it and it's class.
Julia: Excellent. Two really great choices there. Sanjeev, what about you? What have you picked for us?
Sanjeev: Well, there's a whole bunch of stuff in the collection to do with Bonnie Prince Charlie, loads of stuff, but the one that jumped out to me was a plan, an actual drawn pen and ink plan of the battle of Culloden, which apparently was compiled by, they're saying, a French artillery officer, and what's special about it is it gives a Jacobite view of the battle, because the winners normally write history, but this was one of the losers, frankly, version of history. The other thing that I've gone for is a copy of the Gutenberg Bible. So, apparently there are only about 20 of these in existence. It's incredibly valuable and basically, it's the start point of mass communication. It was the first piece of work that, certainly in Europe, was systematically sent around the world and was consistent. So, it's kind of like the start of the information age, if you like.
Julia: Well, it is your job to convince me that one of these treasures is worthy of being pick of the podcast this week, so let's start with you, Grant. You've said the DC Thomson collection and the wax cylinders. Now, you need to get behind just one of those two. Let's talk first about your connection perhaps with DC Thomson. What's special about that for you?
Grant: Well, I think my connection is possibly quite universal, particularly to those of us of a certain age. You think DC Thomson, you think Oor Wullie, you think The Broons, The Beano, The Dandy, and there are some first editions in this collection and I think if you can get … if you've still got a first edition of an Oor Wullie annual, I think one recently sold for over £25,000 or something like that. So, not just in monetary tales, but just I think in Scottish cultural history. Who did not wake up on Christmas morning expecting a copy of either Oor Wullie or The Broons in your Christmas stocking and I would get one of those, but I would also get an annual of The Beano, The Dandy, The Topper, and this all … and it wasn't until later on that I realised that they all came from Dundee, here in Scotland. So, it was a big part of my life growing up. I learned about the traditions. Oor Wullie and The Broons both collectively taught me about the Scottish tradition of Hogmanay, about turning up to somebody's house as a first foot and you had to carry some black bun and a bit of coal. Who knew?
Julia: Yes [laughter].
Grant: I mean, this is where you learn these fundamental important things. As well as those classic titles, they also gave us the like of Bunty and Twinkle and Jackie, and you think of all the pinups and the posters that were around in the days of Jackie. It's just absolutely phenomenal. So, just the amount of work that came out of DC Thomson, I'd got to go for that, and particularly because I was of that age at that time. So, I'd go DC Thomson.
Julia: Yeah, for your first one, and I do think that … I mean, part of the point of this gallery is to get to grips with our place in the world, and I don't think anything communicates the spirit of our shared experience as children growing up, reading those, reading Oor Wullie and The Broons. They feel like they are a reflection of us culturally in a way that it's difficult to pin down in other medium. There's something about these cartoons that are just so authentic and speak to everyone.
Grant: Very much so, and I've still got the annuals up in the loft and these … whenever I do look at them, they're so loved, thumbed, read through, back / forward. You knew them all off by heart but yet you would still read them and re-read them and still laugh at them.
Sanjeev: Grant, I have to jump in here. We were given Broons and Oor Wullie annuals for Christmas and absolutely devoured them and when we were … and that was how I learned about Hogmanay as a young Asian kid in Scotland. I didn't know what Hogmanay was, I didn't know what a but and ben was, but then my dad, bless him, whenever anyone went to India, he would insist that they take … from my cold dead hands, he would take comics and send them. So, my cousins in India were reading Oor Wullie and The Broons, and I had this wee fantasy that one of them would become a politician in the Punjab and then maybe get to the Indian parliament and just drop in a wee 'jings crivens, help ma boab', but it never quite happened, but it's true. There are copies of Oor Wullie annuals in India as we speak from 40 years ago and that's a true story.
Julia: How fantastic.
Len: I'm going to be in Oor Wullie next … [laughter].
Julia: What?
Sanjeev: Are you actual?
Len: Aye.
Grant: Oh my god.
Sanjeev: So, do you have any… do you know what it's going to be?
Len: No, the thing is, they approached me. They want me to do … they want me to write for them and they were like, 'Oh, on the off chance, you might consider being a character in Oor Wullie', and I was like, 'I will bite your hand off right now, yes please'.
Sanjeev: Oh, you are joking. Oh, that's fantastic.
Julia: Well, Grant, that was an excellent first choice. What's your second choice for us today?
Grant: Well, the second choice is this collection of wax cylinders. Now, someone who's worked in radio for over 30 years now and been playing records on air for all that time, but also been an avid collector of music, this is one that really stuck with me, particularly because these cylinders are so important into the way that we now devour and listen to music, and this was the real origins of listening to music at home, before your downloads, your mp3s, your CDs, your minidisks, your vinyl, even your 78s. The one that I'm going to talk about was from a gentleman who was a fiddle player called James Scott Skinner and he was born in 1843, and this recording they have dates back to about 1909. Now, James Scott Skinner was a huge star of his time. I mean, we're talking he was up there with Ed Sheeran and Calvin Harris of the day. Him and Sir Harry Lauder, they were absolutely huge stars and people would flock to go and see him when he was on tour around the country and such like, and that's how they would hear the music. That's how they would hear his Strathspey fiddle music, which is what's on these wax cylinders. He played for Queen Victoria at Balmoral and, as I say, toured the country far and wide with his famous fiddle playing, then there came this technology which allowed us to listen to this music at home, and this was the very first way that music was commercially available, and you would buy this little wax cylinder about the size of a toilet roll, there or there abouts. It had the groove in it, much like a vinyl album does now. You would take that home, place it into the machine and listen to it, and unless you were talented enough to play the music yourself on piano or fiddle or whatever instrument, you could actually hear the music at home and it was the first way of doing it, and I'm absolutely fascinated by this. I think you can actually … we can hear it, because I think … have you got some audio here, Julia?
Julia: Yeah. We can hear some of it now, which you can also hear obviously in the treasure exhibition, but let's have a little listen now to a click of James Scott Skinner and this song is Cradle Song Medley.
[Audio clip playing]
Julia: Isn't that amazing?
Sanjeev: Calvin Harris will remix that and ruin it [laughter].
Julia: I think it's incredible and the impact that that had on what we listen to now in terms of singles, because these were the first recordings of songs and they were three minutes long because that was the size of the cylinder, and modern pop songs now are the same length because of this.
Grant: That's what I love about it, because it ties it right back into the music that we listen to today, and back in the day, if you bought enough of these cylinders, they were stored individually in these beautiful what were called albums. So, therefore you would go to your album to then listen to your individual three-and-a-half-minute piece of music, and these are all words and images that we still use and encompass today and it all started with these wonderful wax cylinders. So, that's why I'm absolutely fascinated by this and it's something that really strikes a chord with me.
Julia: Grant, what was your first … what did you first buy on … was it vinyl, was it … ?
Grant: Yeah, it was vinyl and it was … and actually I've recently been working with my vinyl collection quite a lot over the last few years with the show I'm doing on Radio Scotland and so I've been moving all my vinyl back into the house again and going through it all I actually discovered the very first record that I bought myself with my own money. Up until then I'd been given a couple of albums, as you do when you're a kid growing up, but this was the one that I purposely used my pocket money to go out and buy and I must have been about five years of age because it was from 1972 and it was Little Jimmy Osmond and Tweedle Dee. It wasn't long haired lover from Liverpool. I think this was the successful follow up, but I can remember because you devoured these things so much as a kid, and it had my own initial with a felt tip pen on it, GS, in case anyone was going to possibly steal my Little Jimmy Osmond record. The middle is missing. The centrepiece has been pushed out, and I'm too scared to actually put it on my turntable, but I still have it, and that's what I think is so brilliant about records and record collections, as opposed to the download and everything now. There is something that took me right back to being five years of age by holding that seven-inch single again. So, for me that was it.
Julia: And Len, what about you? What was the first … what was the medium and what was the single?
Len: I'm massively into CDs, I've got hundreds of CDs and I remember my dad buying me the Reservoir Dogs soundtrack, and then the next year buying me the Reservoir Dogs soundtrack [laughter].
Julia: Okay, maybe he just forgot he'd already got it for you?
Len: I was like, do you know what, this is pretty niche as it is. I don't understand how I've now got two, but …
Julia: I think the first album that I had, it wasn't … it was bought for me, so I didn't buy it, was Bros Push. So, that's not terribly cool.
Grant: That's more like it. You're in my camp, Julia.
Julia: There you go.
Len: I just think when you listen to those wax cylinders, it has a certain tone that you don't get from digital music or even vinyl. It just sounds amazing. You can't not tap your feet to it.
Grant: And to think that it was also recorded live. Obviously, there were no multitrack studios or anything like that. It was a case of everybody that featured on that piece of music was collectively in that room at that time at that moment, and they recorded it. So, what you hear is a moment in time that actually happened.
Julia: Yeah, it's like being in the room.
Sanjeev: It's news to me as well that that's why the three-minute pop song, that's why that parameter came about. I had no idea that's where that came from, and I guess it's just … I'm glad there was no Genesis at the time because that would … Dad's come home with six wax cylinders, what's he brought home now? [Laughter]
Julia: Oh dear. Yeah, and this technology, that was the main commercial format for 30 years, from the late 1880s until the 1910s. So, they were around a long time. So, having something from right back in the beginning and to be able to listen to such a superstar of Scottish music is really quite something special, and you can of course listen to that recording in the exhibition. It is a strong start, but will it be pick of the podcast? Hmm. Len, which items from the treasures caught your eye?
Len: So, I've got a recording of the very first colour film made in Scotland actually by a Glaswegian called Ronald L Jay, around 1932, and it details hillwalking as a major part of Scottish culture, and the interesting thing about this is instead of colouring the film itself, it was projected through different colours of film in order to the colours appear.
Julia: Yeah.
Sanjeev: Wow.
Len: When you watch it, it doesn't have the same feel as watching a digital film or watching anything artificially coloured. It genuinely has such a really lovely tone to it. It's like the wax cylinders. It gives you a sense of what actually was there.
Julia: Yeah, an authentic look at the place and the time.
Len: Yeah.
Julia: And I think there's something about seeing these coloured images of something from so long ago in 1932 that make … sometimes the olden days seems like not real. When you see black and white it's like of a different time, of a different universe, but when you see people in colour somehow they come to life in a way that they don't in black and white, and I love the slides that you get throughout this film. The first one it's, 'It's northward ho! And the vagabonds are early astir'. I love that whole vibe of it. It's really lovely to see, and of course of all the things to be the first colour film made in Scotland to showcase our beautiful landscapes, what better choice really of subject matter. So, a great choice. What was your second choice? What was your main pick for the podcast?
Len: My main choice was a collection of works by Isobel Wylie Hutchison and she pretty much did it all. She was a solo explorer, a botanist, an artist, a writer. She was a linguist. She was just completely amazing and when I was doing some research on her I came across a quote that I think probably just summed up her entire experience which is something from the Scotsman which said, 'Miss Hutchison is, you feel, much too fragile and gentle for the rigours of the arctic exploration. Dispensing tea in her sunlit sitting room or sketching in the glowing colours of her garden, she seems far more content in her correct setting than battling against cold and hardship and half-civilised lands'.
Julia: Yes. Well, she was pretty hardy, wasn't she?
Len: She was amazing.
Julia: She was. I don't know about you, Len, but I felt pretty ashamed that I'd never heard of her before…
Len: Me too.
Julia: Yeah, coming across this exhibit, and I'm so glad that I have because she's an absolute superwoman and I can understand why you would pick her because she wanted to be a poet from a child, as you are, and of course you, a champion of the Scots language with your Scots word of the day which went viral during lockdown. She was a polyglot herself. She could speak Italian, Gaelic, Greek, Hebrew, Danish, Icelandic, Greenlandic and some Inuit words by the time she was an adult. How many languages can you speak, Len? I've got two, I think, probably, just about.
Len: I can't really do any perfectly. I'm still working on English at the minute [laughter].
Julia: But obviously really language was a big part of what she did and describing the places, these incredible places that she travelled to, and even as a child she edited this magazine called The Scribbler and kept diaries assiduously from a very young age. Tell us about your interest in language because Scots language, you've really brought it into the modern world by getting on TikTok. Tell us a little bit about your Scots word of the day.
Len: I just started it because I was saying all these words and half of my friends didn't really know what I was saying, and I thought, I might as well remove the language barrier. So, I just… I thought it would last about two weeks, three weeks. I'm not really very committed to anything, but it's been 640 days now and it's still going [laughter].
Julia: Good for you, sharing the Scots language with people all around the world, and that was something as … that global … that sense of bringing all these different parts of the world to life for us back here in Scotland, what Isobel did with her various different medium. So, writing, poetry obviously, drawing, painting, photographs, filming things. She just seemed to really embrace the cultures, didn't she? She really got involved.
Len: Absolutely. I mean, some of the pictures you can see of her with the indigenous populations of the places that she visited. She's just sitting having a piece with them. She's just … there's no … she really approached culture in a really sensitive way and it's, as you say, a really sad indictment of the education system the fact that this is the first time I'm hearing about her, because we hear about the great explorers but she's up there with the greatest and yet there's such a lack of information about her and I'm really glad that we're getting to hear her story and see her poetry and the pictures that she took and the films that she made, and yeah, really learn about her life.
Julia: Yeah.
Len: The thing is that she's got … there's a part in the collection called the record of earnings from writings. She had to fund herself by writing and making money. I just really respect the fact that she lived her life for her passions.
Julia: Before we go any further, Grant, do you have a favourite Scots word?
Grant: Yeah, my go to and being on the east coast, I think it's predominantly an east coast word, would have to be radge because it can be used in so many different ways, in so many different circumstances and you can use some other words just to beef it up a little bit. So, radge is a great word and …
Julia: Put it in a sentence for any of our listeners who are perhaps not familiar with it.
Grant: Oh, that Sanjeev Kohli, he went absolutely radge, the big radge [laughter]. So, do you know what I mean, you can use it for different reasons in the same sentence. I think it's brilliant.
Julia: It's a verb, it's a noun. Sanjeev, what's your favourite Scots word?
Sanjeev: Well, I did a show and it was actually about the Scots language. So, I did a bit of research and I found that … I guess it's like all the Inuit words for snow. There are so many insults in Scots because we're so good at insulting each other, and there are a couple of crackers I'd never heard of. One was buck sturdy skilliquiter and the other one was carnaptious scroosh, and it just sounds like an insult, those muscular syllables. 'You carnaptious scroosh'. It couldn't be a compliment, could it?
Julia: Oh my goodness, I love that.
Sanjeev: So, I think carnaptious means miserly, I think, and I think scroosh just means a diddy. I think, I don't know.
Grant: Radge.
Sanjeev: But a carnaptious scroosh is mental.
Julia: A diddy. That really clears it up for our international listeners. Len, what … do you know either of those two, have they been word of the day yet?
Len: I think I did carnaptious as the word of the day a while ago. Just … I mean, I did it as the definition of bad tempered and argumentative, but the good thing about Scots is when you go different places, you get different definitions.
Julia: Well, another excellent pick there and I would urge anyone who, like all of us, had previously been sadly unaware of this incredible woman to go and check out this collection and do a little more a deeper dive into some of her amazing work. A formidable woman, Len, thank you. I think that's got quite a good chance of being my pick of the week, but Sanjeev, we've still got a couple of items to go from you. You've chosen something for your first item from the heart of Scottish history, an ink drawn battle plan from the Battle of Culloden in 1746. Goodness me, that is an old piece of paper, isn't it? What was it that you particularly found fascinating about that?
Sanjeev: I think just the whole notion of the Battle of Culloden, for any Scots that don't know, I mean I have my own theories as to why Scottish people are the way they are. You asked us earlier to describe ourselves in two words and if you describe Scotland in two words a lot of the time it's glorious failure, isn't it?
Julia: Yeah.
Sanjeev: And that's basically … the Battle of Culloden, that's exactly what this was, it was the pinnacle of a glorious failure. So, Grant and I are both old enough to remember many, especially on the football pitch, glorious failures. Like, for example, 1978, when I was eight years old, I was being told by the manager of Scotland at the time that Scotland was actually going to come home with the World Cup and we actually had world class players in our side. So, we were buoyed with this very un-Scottish optimism, and I guess in sports terms this is what the Battle of Culloden was, because Bonnie Prince Charlie and his army, they made it very far down south. They were rampaging through Scotland, they got through the north of England, they got as far as Derby. Now, Derby's pretty far south, and that was when they had to start retreating. Now, I did go to a wedding recently in Derby and I get it, I get why they retreated [laughter], but that wasn't the reason, but that … I mean, they got pretty far and then had to double back, chasing back. I think they stopped in Tebay for lovely organic bridie and then they came back up and they were absolutely annihilated at the Battle of Culloden, like I say. I think that's why that … it's in our DNA as Scots. The plucky Scots, we win the first game and we draw the second one, we lose the last one. Culloden was very much us getting gubbed 15 nil in the last game, but I think it's important that Scottish folk know about Culloden and also know how far … because it would have been a very, very different story had Bonnie Prince Charlie got past Derby, I think.
Julia: Well, it is quite something to see that and to be so close to something from all that time ago that was written, drawn up, pen and ink with a colour wash by a French officer who was present at the Battle of Culloden back in 1746. A rare Jacobite view of the battle in contrast to the large number of government battle plans which do exist, of course. So, that is a fascinating choice. What was your other pick from the collection, Sanjeev?
Sanjeev: Well, the other thing I've gone for is the Gutenberg Bible. So, this was the first book of any substance to be printed with movable metal type in Europe. I think I remember it saying maybe in Korea they'd done it before, but this was the first time they'd done it in Europe, and this is important because really, it's the start of the information age. Now, we take this for granted now. So, Julia, as you know, I'm veracious with my word play on Twitter and I feel it's important that as many people as possible are exposed to my word play. So, I built up a following on Twitter and sitting here now, or buying a pineapple in Sainsbury's, or frankly, on the toilet, I can on my phone dispense a really disastrous and torturous pun to over 100,000 people at one time and think nothing of it. This is not to be taken for granted because back in the day there was no formal text for anything. The Gutenberg Bible is, really in Europe, the first mass produced text and this was important for science because it meant that you could have formalise texts being sent to different universities and different seats of learning. So, rather than different scientists in different cities coming up with their own conclusions independently of each other, they could all cross-verify and come up with a standard text that all the universities could use. This was the first time that science could be formalised that … because I'm a maths graduate, I believe in experimentation and empiricism and working things out and coming to conclusions, and that's what science is. This is why the Gutenberg Bible is incredibly important. Now, I'm saying science. This is a bible, okay?
Julia: Yes.
Sanjeev: The bible is amongst the worst works of fiction ever written. Multiple writers, all contradicting each other. Annoyingly it spawned a religion. Now, in terms of a text spawning a religion, it may as well have been the autobiography of Jordan or … do you know what, a Broon's annual would be a better basis for a religion than the bible, and apparently Gutenberg himself was a humanist. The reason that he'd gone for the bible was because for demand. So, so many monasteries and churches needed a formalised bible and they were thin on the ground. So, he thought, oh, I could make my money here if I can sell the bible onto all these different ecclesiastical entities and make my money back. Unfortunately he didn't. Apparently, Gutenberg died in penury because it was so damned expensive. I think he was taking loans left, right and centre. I think the guy that he went into business with actually ended up suing him and getting all the machinery off him.
Julia: A sad tale, yes, but an incredible invention. As you say, yes, he chose the bible because obviously it had the best chance of having the demand there. As you say, this invention essentially democratises information in a way and enables everyone to be on the same page, quite literally. The Gutenberg Bible itself is still a very beautiful thing and, I don't know, there's something about seeing it in the exhibition and just being there and being so close to it, there are still some painted panels, the first letter at the top of the page is very ornate and very beautiful.
Sanjeev: Who doesn't love the first letter on the page. Who doesn't love those massive letters? Actually I do them now when I do emails [laughter].
Julia: I think we should bring those back.
Sanjeev: Bring them back.
Julia: Yeah, but yes, an incredible thing, and before they had these movable metal types, they would have to carve out an entire page.
Sanjeev: He still did … I think, did he have to hire six people, was it? I think it was six men to do the work still and that was, what … I think paying them was what ruined him.
Julia: Yes, because it still took a long time.
Sanjeev: Funnily enough, the same thing happened to MC Hammer. I don't know if you know this [laughter]. When MC Hammer used to go on tour, he would take his prayer group with him so he could do a prayer before he went on stage, and he paid them all, and that is what ruined MC Hammer. That's just a wee side track. That's a true story.
Julia: MC Hammer and the Gutenberg Bible, so often mentioned in the same breath.
Sanjeev: So often conflated, Julia.
Julia: Conflated, great word. Great word. Give it a big giant C. Add some guilt, love it. The Gutenberg Bible is incredible. I mean, it changed the world. So valuable as well. I think, as you said in the beginning, only 48 survived, 20 are complete copies with all printed pages, several are incomplete. So, incredible to have this copy at the National Library of Scotland.
Sanjeev: And a lot of them are incomplete because, you know like you hear stories about how they've taped over old episodes of Doctor Who, that same thing happened with these. They also had these guys that were selling single pages. They were page dealers. 'You fancy a bit of Corinthians? I've got some Corinthians for you. You want some ecclesiastics? I've got some of that for you'. So, they were all getting ripped and … so yeah, to have a complete one is quite something.
Julia: A real treasure, that is for sure the absolute definition. You'll have to go and check it out for yourself if you can. Well, we're just about out of time for today. So, I need to decide who has been the most convincing and who will get this week's pick of the podcast. I think this week the pick of the podcast I'm going to give to Sanjeev and the Gutenberg Bible. Hard not to choose that one given the effect it's had on all of our lives, just absolutely profound and a beautiful item to boot. Sanjeev, you have made an excellent point there just about the impact that that particular treasure has had on the world and indeed all of us to this day.
Sanjeev: And I'll be honest, I would rather it had been even something like Mr Tickle rather than the bible, but it was a beautiful looking thing and it had words in it.
Julia: Obviously the subject matter is not quite to your taste, but the level of perfection is actually unbelievable in the Gutenberg Bible.
Grant: I'm not trying to hide my disappointment or anything, but I'm just wanting to throw in, how many people woke up on Christmas morning with a Gutenberg Bible in their stocking?
Sanjeev: I got … I had an audio version of the Gutenberg Bible; it was I think 20,000 wax cylinders. Took me ages to listen to them [laughter].
Julia: Who was it narrated by?
Sanjeev: Oh, it was Stephen Fry, obviously.
Julia: Obviously, who else. Well, thank you so much to all three of you. The pick of the podcast this week is indeed the Gutenberg Bible and you can go and check that out if you are able to at the National Library of Scotland in the treasures gallery but thank you so much for listening and thanks so much to Grant Stott, the Sanjeev Kohli and to Len Pennie for being great guests today. We've covered battles, endurance music, comics and the very invention of books, but yet we've still hardly scratched the surface of the treasures that will be displayed at the library over the coming years. So, for more information you can visit nls.uk. You can of course watch that film, the first Scottish film that Len was telling us about on there, on the website. So, check that out, and follow us on Twitter and Facebook and subscribe to this podcast so you can get the next episode with more national treasures. I was Julia Sutherland and this was National Treasures from the National Library of Scotland.