2012 was the year of the bicentenary of Henry Bell's Comet steamship, and the Comet Bicentenary Committee set up by Helensburgh Heritage Trust organised first a website and then the celebrations themselves.

It has been agreed to keep the Comet website online until 2015, but all the material which is on that website, including many heritage articles about Bell himself and the vessel, an excerpt from the 1897 book 'Annals of Garelochside' by W.C.Maughan, and a feature by Bell's biographer, the late Brian D.Osborne, has been copied to the Henry Bell section of this website.

All appropriate images from the past and the celebrations have also been copied to the Photo Gallery on this website, with an album devoted to the subject.

The Trust is in the process of preparing a dvd of Henry Bell material for use in local schools.

TWO Helensburgh writers have contributed to a new book published by Clydebank Life Story Group.

Entitled 'Write on Time', it contains 87 pages of stories, rhymes and poems, many of them illustrated, from members and associate members of the group, and it is their fifth book.

A FASCINATING piece of literary history was uncovered during renovations at a popular Helensburgh hostelry, the Ashton in West Princes Street, in December 2011.

The removal of panelling in the front of the public house to open up the windows revealed a set of ten sepia-toned ceramic tiles, each featuring characters from the Waverley Novels by Sir Walter Scott.