News about Hugh MacDiarmid
STEPHEN DAISLEY: Scotland saw Salmond's vision - big, romantic and brimming with ideas - and still said 'No'. He could make his people dream, but he couldn't stop them waking up
www.dailymail.co.uk,
October 13, 2024
Alex Salmond was a big man with a big vision for a country that, to him, was the biggest the world had to offer. Addressing Holyrood for the first time after his thundering victory in 2011, he said: 'Scotland is not small. It is not small in imagination, and it is not short on ambition. It is infinite in its diversity, and it is alive with possibility.' That speech, which I have always considered his finest, reflected the generous scope of his worldview. It quoted Donald Dewar and Michael Foot, Hugh MacDiarmid and Norman MacCaig, The Corries and Fletcher of Saltoun, and its lyrical flourish that 'this land is their land, from the sparkling sands of the islands to the glittering granite of our cities' perhaps owes some royalties to the estate of Woody Guthrie.