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London Review of Books

The Fug o’Fame subscriber-only content

David Goldie

  • New Selected Letters by Hugh MacDiarmid, edited by Dorian Grieve

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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David Goldie, who teaches in the Department of English Studies at the University of Strathclyde, is an editor of Beyond Scotland: Scottish Literature in the 20th Century, due later this year.