By Susan Swarbrick and Teddy Jamieson

RICHARD RANKIN, ACTOR

It has seen a global casting search spanning copious months and much feverish speculation.

Names in the frame have included Matthew Goode, aka dashing lawyer Finley Polmar in The Good Wife, as well as Game of Thrones stars Gethin Anthony and Richard Madden. On an almost daily basis the cry has gone up from the loyal Outlander fan base: who will play Roger Wakefield?

At last we have an answer with Glasgow-born actor Richard Rankin named last month to play the character who has a pivotal role in season two of the hit US television series based on the bestselling books of Diana Gabaldon.

Rankin, 32, who grew up in Rutherglen, has garnered an impressive body of work in recent years including starring opposite Bradley Cooper, Uma Thurman and Sienna Miller in John Wells’ Burnt.

He most recently appeared in the BBC drama From Darkness with Anne-Marie Duff, and is among the cast for the forthcoming Thirteen. His other television credits include BBC shows The Syndicate, Silent Witness and The Crimson Field as well as NBC thriller American Odyssey.

Early roles include being a regular on cult Scottish comedy series Burnistoun and the obligatory walk-on part in Taggart.

Rankin follows in the footsteps of fellow Scot Sam Heughan in joining the Outlander cast. If Heughan’s soaring profile as charismatic Highlander Jamie Fraser is anything to go by, Rankin looks set to become a popular figure among the show’s followers (already several fan groups have sprung up including tribute Twitter accounts to his striking blue eyes, and, erm, majestic eyebrows).

Outlander, made by Sony Pictures Television, charts the adventures of Fraser and Claire Randall, a former Second World War nurse who is played Irish actor Caitriona Balfe.

Randall is on a second honeymoon to Scotland with her husband Frank in 1945 when she is transported back to 1743 courtesy of a mysterious set of standing stones. It is here, on the brink of the Jacobite rising, that she meets Fraser and a mesmerising love story unfolds.

Filming locations have included Doune Castle, Rannoch Moor, Bo'ness and Kinneil Railway, Linlithgow Palace, George Square and Pollok Country Park in Glasgow, the Fife town of Falkland and Aberdour Castle.

The second series, scheduled to air this spring, has also made extensive use of Scottish locations including a purpose-built studio in Cumbernauld.

DAVID BOWIE, SINGER

Well, this time it won’t be a surprise. At the start of 2013, following a long period of radio silence, pop’s last great prince caught everyone out when he released the quietly gorgeous single Where Are We Now? out of the blue. We had all assumed he’d retired. Oh, and there was an album to come too.

But when the new David Bowie long-player Blackstar appears on Friday we will have been well warned. We’ll have seen the cover (designed by Jonathan Barnbrook), heard the single Lazarus and watched the nine-minute sci-fi video of the gloriously proggy title track a thousand times.

We may even have an idea what to expect. Sort of. “We were listening to a lot of Kendrick Lamar,” producer Tony Visconti told Rolling Stone in November. “We wound up with nothing like that, but we loved the fact Kendrick was so open-minded and he didn’t do a straight-up hip-hop record. He threw everything on there, and that’s exactly what we wanted to do. The goal, in many, many ways, was to avoid rock and roll.”

That should whet the appetite for Bowie’s 25th album. But if you want to see the new stage show Lazarus (a kind of sequel to the film The Man Who Fell to Earth in which Bowie played – what else? – an alien) you’ll have to go to New York. It’s on until January 20.

And don’t expect to see Bowie sing live on stage himself. He doesn’t do that any more. Then again, we once thought he’d stopped making records too.

GILES LAMB, COMPOSER

While we’re on the subject of extra-terrestrials, if one were to land on these fair shores, they would be forgiven for thinking I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles) by the Proclaimers is the official song of Scotland.

In the coming weeks, that rousing classic will have some company. VisitScotland has commissioned Glasgow-based composer Giles Lamb to create a new score recorded with the RSNO that will be used to promote our nation on a global stage from next month.

Tourist chiefs say they hope the “evocative” new music, which will replace the theme tune it has deployed for the last 14 years on television and radio, will “give goosebumps to all who hear it”.

The one-minute long piece of music – to be unveiled in spring – was recorded at the RSNO’s new £19m HQ in Glasgow.

Lamb has worked on a host of film and TV productions, including Taggart, Asylum, Valhalla Rising and Hawaii Five-O.

His work for VisitScotland aims to capture the beauty of Scottish charms from the Highlands and Islands to the Borders.

SOPHIE LAPLANE, DANCER AND CHOREOGRAPHER AT SCOTTISH BALLET

Right at the beginning of a video for the singer Kathryn Joseph's song The Bird made in conjunction with Scottish Ballet, Sophie Laplane stirs, I choose to think, like a newly born chick. To run with this idea there is a sense that the Scottish Ballet dancer is now stretching her wings. The performer is now transforming herself into a choreographer.

Having trained at the Paris Opera Ballet School and the Conservatoire National Superieur de Paris before joining Scottish Ballet in 2004, Laplane was promoted to coryphee (leading dancer) in 2011.

Over the years she has worked on everything from The Nutcracker to Matthew Bourne's Highland Fling and has performed works by Balanchine, Twyla Tharp and Christopher Hampson among many others.

But increasingly she is creating rather than interpreting. As well as choreographing and performing in Joseph's video, last autumn saw Scottish Ballet perform her work Maze as part of its autumn season. It was promising enough to draw lip-licking reviews in the Sunday Herald and The Times.

And now she's working on a Scottish Ballet commission for a new work - her first piece for a large scale theatre – to debut this autumn. Scottish Ballet's artistic director Christopher Hampson says she's a "real rising star." Time, then, for her to take wing.

DAVID DUNBAR, CHAIR OF THE FESTIVAL OF ARCHITECTURE

Here's a man with a busy 12 months ahead of him. David Dunbar is the chair of this year's Festival of Architecture celebrating the best of Scottish architecture.

Organised by the Royal Incorporation of Architects in Scotland, which is also celebrating its centenary year, the festival will be home (ahem) to garden huts, Lego blocks, "blushing" buildings, sci-fi architecture on film and a world cities expo in Edinburgh in the summer.

And then there's the chance to rediscover Scotland's greatest modernist ruin, St Peter's Seminary in March when it becomes the setting for NVA's latest light-and-sound extravaganza Hinterland.

Rory Boyle has created a soundscape for the building recorded by the St Salvator's Chapel Choir of the University of St Andrews.

And we've only just scratched the surface of a year of events. For more details visit foa2016.com.

Presumably Mr Dunbar will manage to get a day off at some point. Possibly in December.

The Herald is the media partner for the Festival of Architecture.

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