In partnership with
👋 Good morning! It’s Saturday 3 October 2026. I’m Neil McIntosh, editor of The Early Line, and it’s great to have you here.
📣 You’re reading the weekend edition of The Early Line. Paying subscribers get the full version, with six talking points and film, TV and sporting recommendations for the weekend.
They also have my huge thanks for making the whole newsletter possible, six days a week. If you’d like to join their ranks - thankyou! - you can upgrade here.
A reminder to readers: I'm taking a holiday. Normally, I enjoy keeping things running even wthen I'm away, which is why service has been uninterrupted since the New Year. But timezones and visa regulations make this trip impossible: I'm going to the US as a tourist. Your Early Line will be back, refreshed and raring to go, on Tuesday 13 October. Thank you for your understanding.
Have a wonderful weekend, all!
☀️ The weekend’s weather: A bright, sunny day for all today. Tomorrow, Glasgow and Inverness will have showers all day, while Edinburgh, Dundee and Aberdeen will see more isolated showers. London is set for a fine weekend. (Here’s the UK forecast).
SIX THINGS TO TALK ABOUT
The islanders rewriting Scotland's holy story
🍸 Piece by piece, members of a local historical society on a Scottish island are gradually re-writing the story of the spread of Christianity. The residents of Lismore, near Oban, know their island is steeped in religious history, but “apart from a few fragments of an early carved cross, there was almost nothing to see from this period of history.
“A group of local people from the island’s historical society were determined to look a bit harder, however,” reports Esther Addley.
Locals scraped together funding from a variety of sources and started excavating the site of a medieval cathedral. What they’ve found has sent shockwaves through Scottish archeology.
“What the islanders discovered were extensive burial grounds, decorated stonework and early buildings – all the features belonging to a major sixth-century monastery, comparable to the much better known site of Iona a little to the south-west.” They’ve also uncovered a vast number of small crucibles, indicating high-end craftsmanship.
“Their ‘hugely exciting’ findings have not only rewritten the story of the island but cast new light on the spread of Christianity in the period, according to archaeologists,” reports Addley.
It’s a lovely tale of locals getting involved in archaeology - and uncovering extraordinary new truths about the place they live. It would, surely, make for an excellent Sunday evening ITV drama… (Guardian)
Upgrade to read the full Party Line, including
Why Andy Burnham’s facing a huge test of his mettle over Manchester City
The clever dog breed that’ll cost you £22,000 a pooch
(Just don’t take them anywhere you might meet a bear)
The Grand Design cliches becoming hilarious memes
No traitors lurking in this week’s home: a modern castle retreat
PLUS: find top TV, film and sporting picks for the weekend.
Privacy-first email. Built for real protection.
Proton Mail offers what others won’t:
End-to-end encryption by default
Zero access to your data
Open-source and independently audited
Based in Switzerland with strong privacy laws
Free to start, no ads
We don’t scan your emails. We don’t sell your data. And we don’t make you dig through settings to find basic security. Proton is built for people who want control, not compromise.
Simple, secure, and free.
Subscribe to The Early Line to read the rest
To enjoy the rest of today's Party Line, become a paying subscriber. You'll get web access to the rest of this post immediately, and the full edition emailed to you every Saturday from next week. Paid members also have full archive and commenting permission on The Early Line's website and, of course, my huge gratitude - because they sustain The Early Line for all.
Upgrade today