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"The Secret of Kells" is an anachronism many times over, and what a good thing that turned out to be. A ravishing, continually surprising example of largely hand-drawn animation in the heyday of computer-generated imagery, an inexpensive and sophisticated European production in an age of broad-stroke studio films, even a spirited defense of books and bookishness while Kindles walk the earth, "Kells" fights the tide every way it can. Yet this longshot that began as a college project for Irish director Tomm Moore edged Hayao Miyazaki's "Ponyo" for one of five feature animation Oscar nominations, and in a year without...

Author Adam Ardrey claims that instead of the romantic English king of legend who lived at Camelot – which is often said to be Tintagel in Cornwall or in Wales – Arthur was actually Arthur Mac Aedan, the sixth-century son of an ancient King of Scotland, whose Camelot was a marsh in Argyll. He also suggests that Arthur pulled the sword Excalibur from a stone at Dunadd near Kilmartin, died near Falkirk and was buried on the Hebridean island of Iona, which he declares to be Avalon. Ardrey, an amateur historian who works as an advocate in Edinburgh and previously...

An archaeological survey on the famous Scots isle of Iona -- where St Columba landed 1450 years ago to spread Christianity in Scotland -- has shown signs of ancient burials. This is the first geophysical investigation to be undertaken away from the core focus of the Columban monastic enclosure and the Benedictine Abbey... examined two areas in the fields to the south of the village - one close to the current village hall and south of the Nunnery and the other at Martyr’s Bay... where there is a mound beside the road where skeletal remains were excavated in the 1960s......

St Columba landed there in 563 AD with 13 followers and established a monastery. This isolated island, off the south-western tip of Mull, was soon to become the intellectual powerhouse of the medieval world... Pre-Columba the island was sometimes referred to as Innis nam Druidneach, the Isle of Druids. Old stories record St Columba and his followers fighting off the local Druid elders when they landed to take possession of the island... some histories have King Fergus II joining forces with Alaric the Goth to fight the Roman Empire during its decline and fall. This version of history reports that...