Why I want to be feminist icon and theatre lighting head Bethia Cassie

While women of my generation still battle with imposter syndrome and the guilt of being working mothers, Bethia apparently had no such worries, despite doing what she admits was an "unusual job for a woman" back then at the King’s Theatre.

Known to her numerous friends and acquaintances in the theatre world as Bertha, her name, as she was not afraid to admit herself, became "something of a by-word in the theatrical profession", where she hobnobbed with stage stars of the time.

In an article she wrote in the People's Journal, she was not afraid to explain her status.

“Hence the reason why the name Bertha, as everyone calls me, is known to all artistes who have ever visited the King’s and who, when they return to the city after an absence of years, invariably voice the query, ‘Is Bertha still here?'" she wrote.

Go Bethia. Her full story, as uncovered by researchers at the King's, which is due to open next year after an extensive refurbishment, is told here.

Vintage news

Sometimes at Scotsman Towers, we receive a special delivery. A few times a year, one or other of my colleagues will be researching a piece which requires them to consult a vintage edition of the paper. A huge, fabric-backed tome, containing a certain few weeks or months' worth of copies of The Scotsman, will be delivered from our storage archive and will be kicking about the office for a few weeks.

I can't stop reading them. I love finding the differences and the similarities in how we put together the paper now compared with 100 or 200 years ago. One of my main takeaways is just how focused readers used to have to be: the text is dense and tightly packed; there are few pictures to break up the page, and that white space much-lauded today by page designers is non-existent.

I'm looking forward to an exhibition at Wigtown Book Festival which displays original newspapers from across the decades, showing how different titles covered key stories and offering a fascinating insight into how news was covered in the past.

A copy of The Scotsman is included - natch - from the day Louis Bleriot flew across the Channel. Our report is verbose compared to modern day equivalents and offers opinion in a way that a news piece now would not. Even the phrase a "plucky aviator" would be unlikely to make it into a modern broadsheet news piece these days. Who am I, as an independent news reporter, to say he's plucky? What evidence do I have to back that up? He might have been terrified for all we know. My colleagues of the past had no such fears.

Wigtown is in full flow - and I'm excited that I'm lucky enough to be able to spend a few days there, taking my festivals diary on tour.