Stornoway - Stornoway in Popular Media and Culture

Stornoway in Popular Media and Culture

Stornoway became immortalised in the song "Lovely Stornoway" by Calum Kennedy and Bob Halfin.

The 4AD Records folk-rock band Stornoway took their name from the town, after seeing it on the BBC weather report. They signed their record deal outside the Woodlands Centre in Lews Castle Grounds, Stornoway, after performing in the town for the first time in April 2010. Their second concert there was as headliners on the main stage of the Hebridean Celtic Festival, on Thursday 13th July 2011.

The cult, bestselling novel The Stornoway Way by Lewisman Kevin MacNeil is largely set in Stornoway.

RAF Stornoway is featured in the Tom Clancy novel Red Storm Rising as a base for Allied air operations over the North Atlantic and against Soviet-held Iceland.

Stornoway features heavily in the initial stages of the X-Men comics Dark Phoenix Saga due to its proximity to the ficitonal Muir Island and Proteus' attempts to find a new host body.

In the motion picture "Latitude Zero" by Toho Productions (1969), Stornoway Harbour is featured on a wall plaque as the construction site of the submarine "Alpha".

In 2007 the British car manufacturer Land Rover introduced Stornoway Grey as a colour choice for its vehicle line-up. In response, Stornoway's councillor Angus Nicolson appealed to Land Rover to relabel the colour as Silvery Stornoway, fearing that the association of grey with dull and boring would hurt the image of the town with tourists; Mr Nicolson said: "This is deeply insulting and is offensive, inaccurate and inherently degrading. This will hit tourism as it subliminally implants adverse connotations in the minds of those who have never experienced the reality of these beautiful islands." Land Rover replied that the colour in question is one of the most popular ones and the use of Stornoway in its name will instead "keep it on the map".

Read more about this topic:  Stornoway

Famous quotes containing the words popular, media and/or culture:

    Heroes are created by popular demand, sometimes out of the scantiest materials, or none at all.
    Gerald W. Johnson (1890–1980)

    Today the discredit of words is very great. Most of the time the media transmit lies. In the face of an intolerable world, words appear to change very little. State power has become congenitally deaf, which is why—but the editorialists forget it—terrorists are reduced to bombs and hijacking.
    John Berger (b. 1926)

    If mass communications blend together harmoniously, and often unnoticeably, art, politics, religion, and philosophy with commercials, they bring these realms of culture to their common denominator—the commodity form. The music of the soul is also the music of salesmanship. Exchange value, not truth value, counts.
    Herbert Marcuse (1898–1979)