Alan Riach’s The MacDiarmid Memorandum is a work of epic, category-defying scope; blending biography and national history, poetry and prose; an intimate portrait of an old friend and mentor, and a political manifesto calling for revolution. Riach’s poems begin with MacDiarmid’s childhood in Langholm and his first attempts to navigate the Scottish landscape. We travel from the Borders to Shetland, from Edinburgh to rural Lanarkshire. The poems map a nation where nature is inseparable from political history. They explore a peculiarly Scottish kind of consciousness, willing itself to be free yet bowed under the weight of self-suppression. There is confrontation on various fronts. MacDiarmid experienced trauma, divorce, breakdown, wildness and later, domestic affection. At the same time, Scotland endured two world wars, each triggering a continuing renaissance of Scottish artists and intellectuals, struggling to regenerate international recognition and self-determination. Alongside Riach’s poems, the book includes reproductions of paintings by the artists Alexander Moffat and Ruth Nicol, focusing on some of the landscapes, friends and associates MacDiarmid knew most closely through his long life, plus a frontispiece portrait by William Johnstone and a song-setting by Ronald Stevenson.

What do we mean by ‘Scottish literature’? Why does it matter? How do we engage with it? Bringing infectious enthusiasm and a lifetime’s experience to bear on this multi-faceted literary nation, Alan Riach, Professor of Scottish Literature at the University of Glasgow, sets out to guide you through the varied and ever-evolving landscape of Scottish literature. A comprehensive and extensive work designed not only for scholars but also for the generally curious, Scottish Literature: an introduction tells the tale of Scotland’s many voices across the ages, from Celtic pre-history to modern mass media. Forsaking critical jargon, Riach journeys chronologically through individual works and writers, both the famed and the forgotten, alongside broad overviews of cultural contexts which connect texts to their own times. Expanding the restrictive canon of days gone by, Riach also sets down a new core body of ‘Scottish Literature’: key writers and works in English, Scots, and Gaelic. Ranging across time and genre, Scottish Literature: an introduction invites you to hear Scotland through her own words.

Hugh MacDiarmid (born Christopher Murray Grieve) is a huge, and still controversial, figure in modern Scottish literature. Called variously "the most important figure in Scottish life in the twentieth century" and "a symbol of all that's perfectly hideous in Scotland", his poetry is of historic, and national, significance. Alan Riach's SCOTNOTE study guide outlines MacDiarmid's life and work, providing an overview of the poet's beliefs, opinions and influences, for senior school pupils and students at all levels.

What do we mean by 'Scottish literature'? Why does it matter? How do we engage with it? Bringing infectious enthusiasm and a lifetime's experience to bear on this multi-faceted literary nation, Alan Riach, Professor of Scottish Literature at the University of Glasgow, sets out to guide you through the varied and ever-evolving landscape of Scottish literature. A comprehensive and extensive work designed not only for scholars but also for the generally curious, Scottish Literature: an introduction tells the tale of Scotland's many voices across the ages, from Celtic pre-history to modern mass media. Forsaking critical jargon, Riach journeys chronologically through individual works and writers, both the famed and the forgotten, alongside broad overviews of cultural contexts which connect texts to their own times. Expanding the restrictive canon of days gone by, Riach also sets down a new core body of 'Scottish Literature': key writers and works in English, Scots, and Gaelic. Ranging across time and genre, Scottish Literature: an introduction invites you to hear Scotland through her own words.

In 1939, Scottish artist and sculptor J.D. Fergusson was commissioned to write a fully illustrated book on modern Scottish painting. The Second World War made this difficult and the first edition of Modern Scottish Painting was published in 1943 without illustrations. This new edition – edited, introduced and annotated by Alexander Moffat and Alan Riach – finally brings Fergusson’s project to fruition, illustrating the argument with colour reproductions of Fergusson’s own work. Moffat and Riach frame Fergusson’s important art manifesto for the 21st-century reader, illuminating his views on modern art as he explores questions of technique, education, form and what it means for a painting to be truly modern. Fergusson relates these aspects of modern painting to Scottishness, showing what they mean for Scottish identity, nationalism, independence and the legacy that puritanical Calvinism has left on Scottish art – a particular concern for Fergusson given his recurring subject matter of the female nude.

Arts of Resistance is an original exploration that extends beyond the arts into the context of politics and political change. In three wide-ranging exchanges prompted by American blues singer Linda MacDonald-Lewis, artist Alexander Moffat and poet Alan Riach, discuss cultural, political and artistic movements, the role of the artist in society and the effect of environment on artists from all disciplines. Arts of Resistance examines the lives and work of leading figures from Scotland's arts world in the twentieth century, concentrating on poets and artists but also including writers, musicians and architectural visionaries such as Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Patrick Geddes. Poets studied include Hugh MacDiarmid, Sorley MacLean, Iain Crichton Smith, Edwin Morgan and Liz Lochhead; artists include William McTaggart, William Johnstone and the Scottish Colourists. The investigation into the connection between the arts and political culture includes historical issues, from British imperialism to a devolved Scotland. Finally, the contribution to poetry and art of each major Scottish city is discussed: Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen, Dundee. Highly illustrated with paintings and poems, Arts of Resistance is a beautifully produced book providing facts and controversial opinions.

There is only one argument for Scottish independence: the cultural argument. It was there long before North Sea oil was discovered, and it will be here long after the oil has run out… We believe, as teachers, artists, a painter and a poet, both of us travellers in other lands, both of us residents in Scotland, that Scotland should be an independent nation. ALEXANDER MOFFAT AND ALAN RIACH Arts of Independence takes a hard look at the most neglected aspect of the argument for Scotland’s distinctive national identity: the arts. The proposition is that music, painting, architecture, and, pre-eminently, literature are the fuel and fire of political change. Following the success of Arts of Resistance, this new work by the same authors takes the argument over Scottish independence out of the hands of politicians and economists and beyond the petty squabbles of party politics.

Thali Katori brings together two words that celebrate difference, acknowledge the need for the sensitive appreciation of difference, the virtues of complementarity and the nourishment that poetry and the arts, as vitally as savoury and sweet dishes, dal and other vegetables, gives us, to keep us alive, to refuse, in Hugh MacDiarmid’s phrase, ‘a life deprived of its salt.’ Thali Katori is a feast of many flavours. Thali, literally means a plate on which a selection of many dishes is served. Katori signifies the bowls which accompany the thali. Together, the dishes are all different, but they complement each other, bringing out each other’s flavours and unique identities. Featuring poems and extracts from writers such as Sir Walter Scott, Vikram Seth and Hugh MacDiarmid, Thali Katori is a collection of poetry and prose that celebrates the difference and the diversity of the Indian sub-continent and Scotland. Through a diverse collection of poetry that explores the unique history of the relationship between India and Scotland and the ways in which it has affected the lives of many since, both Scottish and Indian writers alike are brought together in this anthology to create a feast of appreciation for the diversity of culture and identity of the two nations. Thali Katori provides a platform for a multitude of voices… if one is searching for a synergy then it surely must be that of the experience of the Diaspora and the formation of attachments to the Motherland. – Amrit Khan

In 1939, Scottish artist and sculptor J.D. Fergusson was commissioned to write a fully illustrated book on modern Scottish painting. The Second World War made this difficult and the first edition of Modern Scottish Painting was published in 1943 without illustrations. This new edition – edited, introduced and annotated by Alexander Moffat and Alan Riach – finally brings Fergusson’s project to fruition, illustrating the argument with colour reproductions of Fergusson’s own work. Moffat and Riach frame Fergusson’s important art manifesto for the 21st-century reader, illuminating his views on modern art as he explores questions of technique, education, form and what it means for a painting to be truly modern. Fergusson relates these aspects of modern painting to Scottishness, showing what they mean for Scottish identity, nationalism, independence and the legacy that puritanical Calvinism has left on Scottish art – a particular concern for Fergusson given his recurring subject matter of the female nude.

Edwin Morgan (1920-2010) is one of the giants of modern poetry. Scotland's national poet from 2004 to his death in 2010, in his long life he produced an incredible range of work, from the playful to the profound. This International Companion gives a comprehensive overview of Morgan's poetry and drama. A range of expert contributors guide the reader along Morgan's astonishing, multi-faceted trajectory through space and time, and provide students with an essential and accessible general introduction to his life and work.

The latent liability in energy is anarchy, but when it's working in a direction with a sense of purpose like the independence movement, and according to the priorities of the arts, and not violence, there's a lot you can do. There's a lot of self-respect to be regained. There's a lot of fun to be had. There’s a lot to be learned. A panorama of ideas about nationality and culture, Arts and the Nation arose from the conviction that Scotland can never be really democratic until it gives the arts the priority of place and attention they demand. This book is a fresh take on subjects new and old, with multifaceted ideas of nationality and culture. Those featured include: William Dunbar, Duncan Ban MacIntyre and Elizabeth Melville are read alongside international authors such as Wole Soyinka and Edward Dorn. J.D. Fergusson, Joan Eardley and John Bellany are considered with American Alice Neel and the art of the ancient Celts. Composers like John Blackwood McEwen, Cecil Coles and Helen Hopekirk are introduced, amongst discussions of education, politics, social priorities, the mass media and different genres of writing.

This is a new collection of Alan Riach’s poetry, the first since 2009. It is highly relevant to these politically charged times, covering themes of hope and grief and exploring borders both personal and physical.

What do we mean by 'Scottish literature'? Why does it matter? How do we engage with it? Bringing infectious enthusiasm and a lifetime's experience to bear on this multi-faceted literary nation, Alan Riach, Professor of Scottish Literature at the University of Glasgow, sets out to guide you through the varied and ever-evolving landscape of Scottish literature. A comprehensive and extensive work designed not only for scholars but also for the generally curious, Scottish Literature: an introduction tells the tale of Scotland's many voices across the ages, from Celtic pre-history to modern mass media. Forsaking critical jargon, Riach journeys chronologically through individual works and writers, both the famed and the forgotten, alongside broad overviews of cultural contexts which connect texts to their own times. Expanding the restrictive canon of days gone by, Riach also sets down a new core body of 'Scottish Literature': key writers and works in English, Scots, and Gaelic. Ranging across time and genre, Scottish Literature: an introduction invites you to hear Scotland through her own words.

'Poetry was always a natural thing to me, part of letter-writing and simply another way of responding to the world'. Thus the author prefaces this substantial new collection of poems, in strict form and in free verse, including a number published previously - in 'The Counting Stick', 'A Share of the Wind', and 'Amoretti', all published by Aquila Press, or in anthologies and magazines - some of them 're-appearing' here with revisions. Informing this fresh view of his work are three of his father's 'Six Sea Poems'. The collection is introduced by Alan Riach, who describes 'the world John Purser makes for us in his poems, as in his music and his scholarship' as 'archipelagic, characterised by diversity and depths, bright sunlit perceptions and profundities of insight into the nature of the earth itself, and as far out as the music of the spheres permits us ...'.

John Manson's collection of letters to MacDiarmid, or to Christopher Grieve, or to Hugh or Chris or Christie or Hughie, is a major work. It is the fruit of a lifetime of dedicated scholarly research, meticulous, self-effacing study in libraries, most deeply in the National Library of Scotland and Edinburgh University Library, and follows his initial co-editorship with David Craig of the first Penguin paperback edition of MacDiarmid's Selected Poems (1970), and his later co-editorship of The Revolutionary Art of the Future: Rediscovered Poems, with Dorian Grieve and Alan Riach (2003). 'He is a fine poet and translator himself, and his small-press publications are to be sought out and read closely. However, this is a monumental achievement: a collection so rich in diversity, covering historical epochs, strata of human character, social engagement, political motivation and accomplishment, that it will take some time before its impact and value really sinks in and embeds itself in modern literary and political culture - especially in Scotland!' - from the Introduction by Alan Riach, Professor of Scottish Literature, University of Glasgow.