You have still missed out the First World War - just as you did with the 'Groat. I don't understand why.

Thank you for digitising some of this newspaper. However I was disappointed that despite your stated intention of publishing more about the period of the First World War, you have so far missed out those years, which are of particular interest to me. I can assure you that the pages you have published have been of interest to a number of people in the Caithness Family History Group on Facebook.

I agree with these comments about the Northern Ensign. I've found numerous references to important and widely varied local history published in this newspaper not found anywhere else. Not having access to it is frustrating. Please consider this addition.

The Obit in the Northern Ensign 1897 for Alexander Gunn, born in Badbea in 1820, states: "Mr. Gunn became a correspondent of the Ensign over 40 years ago, since which time he was a faithful and more or less regular correspondent. His subjects were most varied, from steam for fishing boats, tramways, or light railways for Caithness, evictions, recollections of Badbea and Berriedale, recollections of his schools and school days, to politics and religion." Gunn's letters to the Ed of the Northern Ensign, often under the nom-de-plume A Native of Badbea leave a remarkable record of life in the Highlands during a time of great change. This correspondence is important and should be available for all to access.

One more vote, it was the chief venue for some of the most nuanced debates at the time of the 'land wars'.

The Northern Ensign is a newspaper with a particularly salient claim to inclusion in the British Newspaper Archive. Two stand out.

The Northern Ensign provides the main radical counterpoint to the two Highland titles which you currently offer in greatest abundance: the Inverness Courier and the Ensign's immediate neighbour, the John O'Groat Journal. These two represented the landed interest and the Archive's collection of them covers the years 1817-1892 and 1836-1872. It was within this period that a middle and working class would emerge in the Highlands as the north Scottish fishing industry became the most important in Europe. Those classes' confrontations with the landlords are a crucial part of the period's history. It was the Northern Ensign which provided them with a forum.

These were also the years in which the Gaelic speaking crofting communities of the West Highlands and Hebrides became integrated into the mainstream of British social and economic life following the potato famine of the 1840s. This is an event of epochal significance to both their history and that of the expansion of the British state. The Northern Ensign is the most important journalistic source for these communities in the decades before they developed a press of their own in the form of the Oban Times, Stornoway Gazette, and a variety of other less enduring titles.

It was the go-to newspaper for Caithness back in the day and had many genealogy & family history and other historical items. Many people contributed articles and letters of a genealogical nature. The other Caithness neswspapers were not like that, they are a waste oif time in comparison. It is a tragedy that you haven't put this paper online years ago.

Please digitise this one, it covers a remote and neglected area of the country.