MacDiarmid … valued honesty and wisdom and would have saluted them in Bob Purdie … [his book] would also have won MacDiarmid’s heart for its pace, its wit, its clarity and its entertainment.’
Owen Dudley Edwards

‘Bob Purdie has analysed Hugh MacDiarmid's politics in this important new book. As the sage said, politics is 'Bairns' play' compared to poetry - but essential to get right.’
Professor Christopher Harvie

'Hugh MacDiarmid ... casts a giant sheddae ower the Scottish leeterary laundscape. Sae this new buik o Bob Purdie's is a walcome addition tae the cairn o warks written anent the great man.'
Rab Wilson, Lallans

‘shows convincingly that the most substantial and enduring of MacDiarmid's political convictions were two contradictory ideas, communism and Scottish nationalism.’
Paul Henderson Scott, Scottish Review

'Scholarly and affectionate … The first work on MacDiarmid to concentrate on his politics and deserves to be read for that reason alone … as Purdie shows, MacDiarmid was a utopian rather than a practical politician - a visionary who saw a new Scotland being forged through culture rather than party.’
George Kerevan, The Scotsman

NEW PAPERBACK EDITION

Essential reading for all those with an interest in contemporary Scotland, this is the first study of Hugh MacDiarmid (1892-1978) by a political historian and provides a unique contribution to the understanding of MacDiarmid’s politics.

Bob Purdie’s groundbreaking study outlines why MacDiarmid, the most important literary figure of twentieth century Scotland, believed that the Scottish culture of his day was making the nation satisfied with its subordinate status within the UK, and why he strove for a self-reliant and independent European nation.

Purdie also explains why MacDiarmid was a man in constant revolt, against what he viewed as a stiflingly narrow Scottish culture, against all that was provincial and philistine in Scottish society, and against Scotland’s dependency on England.

Dr. Bob Purdie (1940-2014) was an Honorary Research Fellow in the Research Institute of Irish and Scottish Studies, University of Aberdeen.