Gordon is a renowned public speaker and regularly gives talks to organisations and groups. Subjects include a talk on his translations, and talks on Doric in General, the life and works of Charles Murray, the life and works of Huntly’s Victorian author George MacDonald, the History of Scottish Communion tokens and a Year in a Buchan Garden, a fully illustrated tour of his four acre garden over the course of a year.

Portrait of George MacDonald
George MacDonald
Illustration of Scottish Communion Tokens
Scottish Communion Tokens
Portrait of Charles Murray
Charles Murray

In conjunction with Aberdeen University’s Elphinstone Institute, he has translated Handel’s Messiah into Doric, excerpts of which were performed in 2018 in St Machar’s Cathedral under the direction of Paul Mealor. He was commissioned by the Aberdeen branch of the Dickens Federation to translate a passage from Dickens into Doric for the Federation’s World Conference in 2016. Several of his plays in Doric have been performed by local groups. He was commissioned to translate a song into Doric for the special service in St Giles Cathedral in 2023 at which King Charles III was presented with the Honours of Scotland.
In 2021, he published his translation of well known nursery rhymes into Doric in conjunction with illustrator Rosie Cunningham. The book went on to win the Scots Language Awards’ “Bairns Beuk o the Year 2022”. And in 2024 he published “Green Corn i the Breer”, a collection of original short stories mainly in Doric.
He was commissioned by The Scottish National Jazz Orchestra to translate the text of Prokofiev’s “Peter and the Wolf” into Doric for a performance of that work as part of the 2023 Aberdeen Jazz Festival.