In 1698 more than 2,500 Scots sailed into the unknown, inspired by the promise of a new life which would transform their own fortunes and those of their famine-struck country. This was the Darien Scheme, a bold attempt to profit from trading the wealth of the world’s two great oceans across the narrow Isthmus of Panama. The outcome of this audacious gamble would change the course of the nation’s history. In 2026 Geographer Royal for Scotland, Professor Jo Sharp, and bestselling author, Val McDermid, co-wrote a novelisation of the story, This Door of the Seas, written as a series of letters from Dr James Wallace to his wife and the first Geographer Royal, Sir Robert Sibbald. Jo and Val will be in conversation with BBC Special Correspondent Allan Little who visited Darien in 2014.

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