Small islands have always been objects of desire for a certain kind of man ambitious to rule his own tiny nation. But the Republic of Eigg has gone its own way. By Patrick Barkham

A toy pirate ship launched by two young brothers in Aberdeenshire has sailed the high seas to Scandinavia. Ollie Ferguson, eight, and Harry, five, from Turriff, first launched their Playmobil ship from Peterhead at the end of May. It sailed hundreds of miles to Denmark, where a family sent it on its way. It then made it to Sweden and Norway. The boys launched the pirate ship as part of a bucket list of adventures they have put together.

The Scottish government has pledged to phase out new petrol and diesel cars and vans across Scotland by 2032, eight years ahead of the UK Government target.

If the blue (if chilly) waters of Calgary Bay don’t charm you, perhaps the delicious dread of Glencoe will. As Scotland tops a poll as the most stunning place on the planet, a local suggests the sights for which eyes were invented.

The first image generated of a scuttled German battleship at Scapa Flow after a multibeam echosounder survey has been released. The Markgraf was among dozens of ships from the German High Seas Fleet scuttled by their crews off Orkney in 1919 following the end of World War One. Data has been collected during a major maritime archaeology project.

Scotland is to lead the way in the fight against “period poverty” by giving more than 1,000 women and girls on low incomes free sanitary products for six months. The pilot project, announced on Tuesday by Equalities Secretary Angela Constance, will focus on seven regeneration areas in Aberdeen.

The giant portraits of the Big Yin have been created in his native Glasgow to mark his 75th birthday.

Nicola Sturgeon has said she would help Jeremy Corbyn become Prime Minister by ordering SNP MPs to support him on an “issue-by-issue” basis if the General Election results in a hung parliament. By Simon Johnson.

The turbines dotting the hills of Scotland had a cracking month in May, with the modern white totems to consumerism and their solar panel chums generating 95 per cent of the country's home electrical needs.

The Sun is rising on a calm and cloudy morning in late February 2017, and Jamie Sneddon and I have an important collection to make. After a short drive along the north-east coast of Scotland – passing open fields, detached bungalows, and blooming bushes of gorse that shine with a radiant yellow under the grey sky – we arrive at the muddy entrance of a farmyard. Many of the locals here in the remote Scottish Highlands are crofters: they nurture and trade certain root vegetables and small numbers of livestock and poultry, a lifestyle first developed in the 19th Century.

It’s come to a pretty pass indeed when the Telegraph is the bastion of truth.

Since the start of this month, about 40,000 images of works are available on the relaunched NGS website.

Nicola Sturgeon's call for a second referendum on independence for Scotland has been formally backed by the Scottish Parliament. MSPs voted by 69 to 59 in favour of seeking permission for a referendum before the UK leaves the EU. Ms Sturgeon says the move is needed to allow Scotland to decide what path to follow in the wake of the Brexit vote. But the UK government has already said it will block a referendum until after the Brexit process has been completed.

The pound fell against all its major peers after The Times reported that U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May’s team is preparing for Scotland to potentially call for an independence referendum. Sterling, which has been held hostage by politics since a Scottish referendum in 2014, fell as much as 0.6 percent after the newspaper cited unidentified government sources as saying May could agree to a new Scottish vote, but on condition it is held after the U.K. leaves the European Union.

A new campaign has been launched to keep the Galloway Viking Hoard for exhibition in the county where it was found. Buried in the 10th century, the hoard was discovered by a metal detectorist in field near Castle Douglas in Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland, in September of 2014. Archaeologists excavated the hoard and found more than 100 silver and gold pieces, from ingots to jewelry to fragments of Byzantine silk to an extremely rare Carolingian pot stuffed with more treasure. The Galloway Viking Hoard is the largest Viking treasure found in Scotland since 1891.

Red Bull

All of Scotland’s producers of new polymer bank notes have confirmed that their cash is free of any animal products. Royal Bank of Scotland, Bank of Scotland and the Clydesdale Bank were all asked to make statements about the contents of their notes after vegans throughout Britain reacted angrily yesterday to news that the Bank …

The president-elect left a trail of unmet promises on one of his golf courses, and lashed out at homeowners who stood in his way.

Earlier this week Atlantis Resources announced that it had placed a tidal stream turbine off the northern coastline of Scotland and generated power for the first time from the 1.5 MW installation. The company plans to install three more turbines next year and use that experience to build out the site to approximately 400MW capacity.