Lot 240
£3,250
Rare Books, Manuscripts, Maps & Photographs
Auction: 13 July 2022 from 10:00 BST
all written on rectos only unless stated, mainly on foolscap sheets, secured with paperclips, and comprising:
[Autobiographical reflections], begins 'From my earliest childhood I was sure I was going to be a poet', mentions Chaucer, Charles Doughty, Robert Burns, 4 ff.;
[Reflections on haggis and Burns Night], 5 ff., apparently incomplete at end ('What is a haggis? It is not a wild animal hunted in the Scottish mountains ... It is, in fact, an excellent dish, but it looks barbarous, and that is probably the secret of its function ... The annual Burns Supper is a peculiarly Scottish phenomenon which has nothing to do with love of poetry ...');
[Reflections on Robert Burns and the 'Burns cult', possibly a Burns Supper speech], c.1960, 3 pp., rectos and versos, annotations in another hand;
[Speech in Scots, on an unidentified occasion, possibly held in MacDiarmid's honour], c.1950, begins 'Sae faur as the feck o' my feelins are concerned ... I feel like the Yankee millionaire risen frae the gutter', 12 ff;
[A critique of the Tory party with reference to Karl Popper], c.1970?, 4 ff., newspaper cutting referring to Ted Heath's Vietnam policy taped to final leaf;
[Short piece on Scottish poetry], ('Attention has been concentrated on the rebirth of poetry in Lallans, and it is not sufficiently realised that along this there has been a notable development of poetry in Gaelic ...', 2 ff.;
'Mackintosh Memorial Trust. Statement regarding the future of the Cranston Tearoom in Ingram Street' ('Glasgow City Council has a worse record and reputation in regard to cultural matters than any other corporation in the United Kingdom'), 4 ff.;
'Address by Hugh McDiarmid [sic], President of the Dunedin Society, at the Annual General Meeting, 5/8/47', 21 ff., in pencil;
[Speech to the 1320 Club], 5 pp., rectos and versos, with MacDiarmid's autograph corrections;
'Hugh MacDiarmid on BBC TV and Radio from Scotland', begins 'In my preview of BBC TV and Radio from Scotland in the Radio Times on 18th September I commented on the upsurge of a new creative spirit in Scottish arts ...', 4 ff.;
(1 folder)
Note: Many if not all of these pieces appear to be unpublished.