An autobiography first published in 1997. He had bad TB, smoked from the age of 12, was rather shy, and "was hooked on drink for thirty years or more" (p.61). He didn't like travelling. He was content to be thought a layabout, a ne'er-do-weel. He got a degree in Edinburgh but otherwise didn't leave his island much. To enjoy the book I think one might need be interested in his writing and know something about the literary characters of the time. His descriptions of people are engaging though.
- These historical events form the backdrop to much of the narrative and verse that I have written. Without the violent beauty of those happenings eight and a half centuries ago, my writing would have been quite different (p.3)
- tinkers and drinkers entered frequently into my stories and poems - too frequently, for many readers (p.19)
- Only a few books, only a few authors, alas, make one feel the way Keats did when he first opened Chapman's Homer. I can never forget my first reading of Forster's A Passage to India (I must have read it ten or twelve times, since) (p.57)
- The first few glasses of beer were a revelation; they flushed my veins with happiness; they washed away all cares and shyness and worries (p.59)
- [drinking] gave me a kind of insight into the workings of the mind: how under the drab surface complexities, there exists a ritualistically simple world of joy and anger (p.60)
- I never fell in love with anybody, and no woman ever fell in love with me (p.70)
- MacDiarmid is certainly one of the major figures of all Scottish literature, and I think probably our greatest poet since Burns (p.119)
- I have relied often on the seven-faceted poem or story (p.157)
- A Calendar of Love got extraordinarily good reviews (p.157)
- Greenvoe had, on the whole, a favourable reception ... It has proved to be the most popular of all my books (p.164)
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