Im Auftrag der Company of Scotland machen sich im Jahr 1698 die Rising Sun und 4 weitere Handelsschiffe auf den Weg nach Mittelamerika. Der geheime Plan der mehr als 1000 schottischen Kolonisten ist es, an der Atlantikküste Panamas eine Handelsstation aufzubauen und eine Strasse anzulegen, die beide Ozeane miteinander verbindet. Doch bald gefährden Tropenkrankheiten, ein Handelsembargo und spanische Angriffe das verwegene Unternehmen.
Just down from Cambridge in the summer of 1937, Sally Marsden contemplates her future without enthusiasm. So many have assumed she will marry Hugh Jerrold it is, practically, an engagement. When Hugh returns from his diplomatic posting to China there will be a wedding and a thoroughly respectable settling down. But before submitting to the strictures of upper-middle-class life, Sally embarks on one last adventure travelling to China herself, where she will spend the winter before returning with Hugh. The Sino-Japanese war begins shortly after Sally's arrival and a disastrous miscalculation separates her from Hugh and leaves her trapped in Nanking, one of two dozen Europeans and Americans to witness the capture and sack of the city by the Japanese Imperial Army. The experience is shared with Peter Moss, an American photo-journalist and friend of Hugh. Bystanders in a racial war, Sally and Peter emerge physically unscathed but utterly changed, and all their attempts to carry on as before quickly founder.
Assist Our Song combines accessible teaching about the theology and shape of worship with essential information about the forms of music used, including congregational hymns, songs, canticles and psalm chant, and music performed by choirs and musicians. It explores the range of resources available, how to extend repertoire, blending the old with the new, changing patterns of church life, and other practical issues. Its aims are the heightening of the profile of music within the church, increasing the skills and understanding on the part of musicians and choirs, assisting leaders of worship and empowering congregations to see themselves also as ‘ministers of music’ It offers practical assistance for the ‘delivery’ of music – choosing music, making the most of choirs and working with musicians. It will be welcomed by all who lead, provide or curate music in worship, as well as clergy and ordinands who lack musical expertise or confidence.
Alla fine del Seicento, un gruppo di avventurieri scozzesi parte da Edimburgo alla conquista del Darien, un territorio del Mar delle Antille. Della spedizione fa parte Roderick Mackenzie, un giovane in cerca di fortuna, pieno di ambizione e di coraggio, che racconta, in forma di diario, non solo le vicende della fiabesca impresa dei colonizzatori ma anche, alternando ricordi e riflessioni, la sua vita passata.