40 Facts About Hugh MacDiarmid

Hugh MacDiarmid is considered one of the principal forces behind the Scottish Renaissance and has had a lasting impact on Scottish culture and politics.

Hugh MacDiarmid joined the Communist Party of Great Britain the following year only to be expelled in 1938 for his nationalist sympathies.

The son of a postman, Hugh MacDiarmid was born in the Scottish border town of Langholm, Dumfriesshire.

Hugh MacDiarmid was educated at Langholm Academy before becoming a teacher for a brief time at Broughton Higher Grade School in Edinburgh.

Hugh MacDiarmid began his writing career as a journalist in Wales, contributing to the socialist newspaper The Merthyr Pioneer run by Labour party founder Keir Hardie before joining the Royal Army Medical Corps at the outbreak of the First World War.

Hugh MacDiarmid served in Salonica, Greece and France before developing cerebral malaria and subsequently returning to Scotland in 1918.

Hugh MacDiarmid died at his cottage Brownsbank, near Biggar, in 1978 at the age of 86.

At different times throughout his life, Hugh MacDiarmid was a supporter of Fascism, Stalinism, and Scottish nationalism, views that routinely put him at acrimonious odds with his contemporaries.

Hugh MacDiarmid was a founding member of the National Party of Scotland, forerunner to the modern Scottish National Party.

Hugh MacDiarmid stood as a candidate for the Scottish National Party in 1945 and 1950, and for the Communist Party of Great Britain in 1964.

In 1949, Hugh MacDiarmid's opinions led George Orwell to include his name in a list of "those who should not be trusted" to MI5.

Today, Hugh MacDiarmid's work is credited with inspiring a new generation of writers.

Hugh MacDiarmid's father was a postman; his family lived above the town library, giving MacDiarmid access to books from an early age.

Hugh MacDiarmid left the school on 27 January 1911, following the theft of some books and postage stamps; his father died eight days later, on 3 February 1911.

Hugh MacDiarmid went on to serve in the Royal Army Medical Corps in Salonica, Greece and France during the First World War.

Hugh MacDiarmid's first book, Annals of the Five Senses, was a mixture of prose and poetry written in English, and was published in 1923 while Hugh MacDiarmid was living in Montrose.

At about this time Hugh MacDiarmid turned to Scots for a series of books, culminating in what is probably his best known work, the book-length A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle.

From 1929 to 1930 Hugh MacDiarmid lived in London, and worked for Compton Mackenzie's magazine, Vox.

Hugh MacDiarmid lived in Liverpool from 1930 to 1931, before returning to London; he left again in 1932, and lived in the village of Thakeham in West Sussex until he returned to Scotland in 1932.

Hugh MacDiarmid lived in Sodom on the island of Whalsay, Shetland, from 1933 until 1942.

Hugh MacDiarmid often asked the local fishermen to take him out in their boats and once asked them to leave him on an uninhabited island for a night and pick him up again in the morning.

In 1942 Hugh MacDiarmid was directed to war work and moved to Glasgow, where he lived until 1949.

In 1928, Hugh MacDiarmid helped found the National Party of Scotland, but was expelled during the 1930s.

Hugh MacDiarmid was at times a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain, but he was expelled twice.

From 1931, whilst he was in London, until 1943, after he left the Shetland island of Whalsay, Hugh MacDiarmid was under surveillance by British counterintelligence operatives.

Hugh MacDiarmid stood in the Glasgow Kelvingrove constituency in the 1945 and 1950 general elections.

Hugh MacDiarmid stood against the Conservative Prime Minister Alec Douglas-Home in Kinross and Western Perthshire at the 1964 election, taking only 127 votes.

In 2010 letters were discovered showing that Hugh MacDiarmid believed a Nazi invasion of Britain would benefit Scotland.

Much of the work that Hugh MacDiarmid published in the 1920s was written in what he termed "Synthetic Scots": a version of the Scots language that "synthesised" multiple local dialects, which Hugh MacDiarmid constructed from dictionaries and other sources.

Hugh MacDiarmid's ambition was to live up to Rilke's dictum that 'the poet must know everything' and to write poetry that contained all knowledge.

Hugh MacDiarmid wrote a number of non-fiction prose works, including Scottish Eccentrics and his autobiography Lucky Poet.

Hugh MacDiarmid did a number of translations from Scottish Gaelic, including Duncan Ban MacIntyre's Praise of Ben Dorain, which were well received by native speakers, including Sorley MacLean.

Hugh MacDiarmid had a daughter, Christine, and a son, Walter, by his first wife Peggy Skinner.

Hugh MacDiarmid had a son, James Michael Trevlyn, known as Michael, by his second wife Valda Trevlyn ; Michael was a conscientious objector to post-World War II National Service and became vice chair of the Scottish National Party.

Hugh MacDiarmid grew up in the Scottish town of Langholm in Dumfriesshire.

Hugh MacDiarmid lived in Montrose for a time where he worked for the local newspaper the Montrose Review.

Hugh MacDiarmid lived on the isle of Whalsay in Shetland, in Sodom.

Hugh MacDiarmid is commemorated in Makars' Court, outside the Writers' Museum, Lawnmarket, Edinburgh.

Hugh MacDiarmid sat for sculptor Alan Thornhill and a bronze was acquired by the National Portrait Gallery.

The correspondence file relating to the Hugh MacDiarmid bust is held in the archive of the Henry Moore Foundation's Henry Moore Institute in Leeds.