The nonconformist: Ben Shahn is honoured in a ‘homecoming’ show at New York's Jewish Museum https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2025/04/30/the-nonconformist-ben-shahn-is-honoured-in-a-homecoming-show-at-new-yorks-jewish-museum?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=mastodon #Exhibitions #20thCentury
Nae man wha loves the lawland tongue
But warsles wi’ the thocht—
There are mair sangs that bide unsung
Nor a’ that hae been wrocht…
—“The Makar”, by William Soutar (1898–1943) – born #OTD, 28 April
A 
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https://asls.org.uk/publications/books/volumes/a-kist-o-skinlan-things/
Poet, the flowers are open
even when we are dead
even when the power has gone
from our right arms…
—Iain Crichton Smith, “At the Funeral of Robert Garioch”
in DEER ON THE HIGH HILLS, Carcanet 2021, ed. John Greening
Robert Garioch (1909–1981), one of the greatest figures in 20th-century Scottish poetry, died #OTD, 26 April
“…rather than a locked-room mystery in which the murder is an impossible crime, the detective is in (and becomes) the locked room, using cerebral means to reason his way into a solution to a genuine historical conundrum”
“A Mystery Novel Like No Other Before” – @sarahweinman on the fiction of Josephine Tey
https://lithub.com/a-mystery-novel-like-no-other-before-on-josephine-teys-the-daughter-of-time/
The Company One Keeps: Ian Hamilton Finlay & the Concrete Poets
14 May, National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh & online
Dr Greg Thomas explores Iain Hamilton Finlay’s aesthetic & cultural ties with the international concrete poetry movement, & to figures such as Edwin Morgan & Dom Sylvester Houédard
“At a time of global ecological crisis, when the greed and short-sightedness of humans threatens an increasingly fragile environment, her intuitive understanding of the landscape and the rhythms of nature is both a clarion call and a balm for the soul.”
—Dr Scott Lyall on Nan Shepherd’s THE LIVING MOUNTAIN
Soillse air Alasdair MacIlleathain, ùghdar fìor shoirbheachail eadarnàiseanta le Gàidhlig
MacLean was a Gael who thought he could have written better in Gaelic than English. Currently available on the BBC iPlayer, “Alistair MacLean – An Sgeulaiche” celebrates his work & laments his loss to Gaelic literature
5/5
“MacLean was interested in writing stories with unreliable narrators which could lead to double and triple-twists in the storyline […] From 1963–1971, Maclean wrote a series of near-perfect thrillers–Ice Station Zebra, When Eight Bells Toll, Where Eagles Dare, Force 10 From Navarone, Puppet on a Chain, Caravan to Vaccarès, and Bear Island–which established him as the most successful author on the planet.”
3/5
https://flashbak.com/the-pioneering-novels-and-kick-ass-thrills-of-alistair-maclean-428930/
“MacLean was Scottish and another thing I intuitively liked was that his heroes were mostly rough-hewed social nobodies formed by World War II and not on the playing fields of Eton like James Bond. I didn’t know much about British class snobbery then, but I sided with outsiders.”
—Alessandra Stanley, “In Praise of Alistair MacLean & the Male Romance”
2/5
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/13/books/in-praise-of-alistair-maclean-and-the-male-romance.html
Alistair MacLean (1922–1987) – author of The Guns of Navarone, Ice Station Zebra, Where Eagles Dare, etc. – was born #OTD, 21 April, 1922. A native #Gaelic speaker, he grew up near Inverness. @NeilDrysdale looks at MacLean’s remarkable life:
1/5
The Worm Queen Turns: Helen Adam
From Dundee Manse to California Coven
23 April, Edinburgh University & online – free
The poet Helen Adam (1909-1993) had two careers on two continents: first as a child in post-WW1 Scotland, second in America as the “bardic matriarch” of the San Francisco Beats. Adam’s bipartite career explodes literary historical periodisation & tangles its sequential logic
Betsy Whyte’s autobiography – “a beautiful book, shining with honesty, a classic” – is a fascinating insight into the life & customs of traveller people in the 1920s and 1930s, & is available as an ebook from Birlinn
2/3
6/8
CAMPBELL OF KILMOHR
a play in one act
J.A. Ferguson
J.A. Ferguson’s CAMPBELL OF KILMOHR is set during the bloody aftermath of the battle of Culloden. Written on the eve of the First World War, CAMPBELL OF KILMOHR revolves around themes of loyalty, sacrifice, & betrayal, the power of the State & the potential for the corruption of that power
Free PDF download:
https://asls.org.uk/publications/books/free-publications/campbell-of-kilmohr/
Gaelic & Scots: Cultural Connections & Inspirations in the 20th Century
6 May, free online
Five ten-minute presentations, each followed by discussion, exploring the rich cultural connections & inspirations between Gaelic & Scots in the 20th century. All welcome!
To have carved on the days of our vanity
A sun
A ship
A star
A cornstalk
Also a few marks
From an ancient forgotten time
A child may read…
—“A Work for Poets”: the final poem written by George Mackay Brown (1921–1996), who died #OTD, 13 April
Published in CARVE THE RUNES: Selected Poems (Polygon, 2021)
The Shah of Thorgill and His £26 Rebellion
This is Thorgill: a tributary of the River Seven, the main drainage for Rosedale. While technically a watercourse, it is perhaps better known as a hamlet, once even managing to sustain a Methodist Chapel.
Thorgill briefly staggered into the national spotlight in the 1950s, not through any great achievement, b ...
http://www.fhithich.uk/2025/04/12/the-shah-of-thorgill-and-his-26-rebellion/
The documentary artist & illustrator Jenny Soep attended the 2007 festival & captured “The Burning of Scotland” as it happened – visit her website to see the sketch
5/5
Alastair Reid performed “Scotland” for the last time at the StAnza Poetry Festival in St Andrews in 2007, in an event now known as “The Burning of Scotland”
4/5
https://web.archive.org/web/20210515104933/past.stanzapoetry.org/stanza07_archive/burnscot.htm
The whole documentary is available to watch online from the Leman Productions archive: Alastair Reid reflects on 30 years of writing for the NEW YORKER magazine, & his remarkable literary friendships with Robert Graves, Jorge Luis Borges & Pablo Neruda
3/5
In this extract from A Restless Content (1996), made to celebrate his 70th birthday, Alastair Reid – reclining on a hammock in his Greenwich Village apartment – delivers his poem “Scotland”:
2/5
