Christopher Murray Grieve HRSA (Hugh MacDiarmid)
Born1892 in the Scottish Borders town of Langholm, Christopher Murray Grieve was better known by his pen name Hugh MacDiarmid.
Having served in the Royal Army Medical Corps during WWI he returned to Scotland after contracting Cerebral Malaria. Settling in Montrose he started working as a journalist and acting as a Justice of the Peace. He also began to write poetry, edit anthologies and literary magazines.
His first collection of poems, Snagschaw, was printed in 1925 and notably written in Scots and his epic A Drunk Man Looks at a Thistle followed in 1926. Thus, his reputation as the father of the Scottish Literary Renaissance started to emerge.
He spent much of the 1930s on the island of Whalsay, Shetland Isles, writing and corresponding with the world. He was ordered to return to the mainland and serve in a munitions factory in Glasgow as part of the WWII effort.
His last home was Brownsbank Cottage, near Biggar, where he lived with his second wife Valda, and their son Michael. They welcomed many visitors including artists, writers, musicians, academic scholars and thinkers, national and international alike until his death in 1978.
He was elected as HRSA Prof of Literature in 1974.
Banner image: Calum Colvin RSA, Portrait of Hugh MacDiarmid, 2018, archival digital print on stretched canvas.
