Great Scot! Past

Eric Liddell: The Flying Scotsman

Who can forget the peculiarly haunting theme tune that permeated the 1981 Oscar-winning movie, Chariots of Fire. Throughout, the music by Greek composer Vangelis imprinted on the viewer’s mind a deep sense of the physical, especially after watching the splashing, panting coterie of knees-up runners tearing along the sands of the Eden estuary at St Andrews.

Among the group was a slim but powerful sprinter, Eric Liddell, born on January 16, 1902, in Tianjin, China. Liddell, later dubbed the ‘Flying Scotsman’, was the second son of the Reverend and Mrs James Dunlop Liddell, representatives of the London Missionary Society in China…