The Fug o’Fame

David Goldie

  • New Selected Letters by Hugh MacDiarmid, edited by Dorian Grieve
    Carcanet, 572 pp, £39.95, August 2001, ISBN 1 85754 273 8

One day, in the early years of the 20th century, a poetically-minded young man from the Scottish borders called Christopher Murray Grieve walked to Ecclefechan, the birthplace of Thomas Carlyle. It wasn’t a long way, but his trek was a gesture of hero-worship to one of the greatest Scotsmen and largest egos of the previous century. He toured Carlyle’s house and, as some visitors did, tried on the great man’s hat. To his enormous delight, it was too small for him.

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Vol. 24 No. 11 · 6 June 2002 » David Goldie » The Fug o’Fame (print version)
pages 24-25 | 2452 words