His Bonnet Akimbo

• Hamish Henderson: A Biography. Vol. I: The Making of the Poet (1919-53) by Timothy Neat
  Polygon, 416 pp, £14.99, May 2009, ISBN 978 1 84697 132 7
• Hamish Henderson: A Biography. Vol. II: Poetry Becomes People (1954-2002) by Timothy Neat
  Polygon, 395 pp, £25.00, November 2009, ISBN 978 1 84697 063 4

There are those, even among his friends, who remember Hamish Henderson as a chaotic figure who could most often be found soliloquising in Sandy Bell’s, a favourite pub near Edinburgh University. Was he one of the ‘lowest of men’, spilling whisky and sliding off his stool as he launched into another ballad? Or was he a seer, defying body and convention to ‘soar like an eagle’ in the way of the blessed inebriate in Richard Thompson’s song ‘God Loves a Drunk’ (‘His shouts and his curses they are just hymns and praises/To kick-start his mind now and then’)?