Poor Things

Posted byiainlawson27Posted inUncategorizedTags:, , , , , , , , , , , ,

A guest article from Elspeth King as she reveals a lot of important information about how the history and talent of Scotland’s People has been undervalued and ignored in the past. This is our history and culture and to defend and appreciate it we need to know about it.

Elspeth wrote “The subject is Alasdair Gray’s novel Poor Things, is released as a film by Yorgos Lanthimos this Friday. It’s set in London, not in Glasgow and I’ve some inside information I want to share.”

Poor Things

In the excitement leading up to the release of Yorgos Lanthimos’s film Poor Things in Scottish cinemas on January 12, much has been written on the brilliance of the production, the performance of the actors and the award nominations. The absence of any reference to Glasgow and Scotland where the novel by Alasdair Gray was set has also been commented upon at length, with a 54 minute documentary by Ossian Scotland looking at The Poor Things Problem on the Bella Caledonia website: https://bellacaledonia.org.uk/2023/11/20/the-poor-things-problem/  While agreeing with Mike Small of Bella that ‘the book is a transcendent piece of work. It is not ‘about’ Glasgow and once it is born into the world it does not ‘belong’ to Gray’, it seems a shame not to look at the Glasgow and Scottish significances which the book holds.

Poor Things can be read on many levels. In future, there will be many film productions of Poor Things and other works by Alasdair Gray. Like Robert Burns, Gray was always confident that his work would be appreciated by later generations. Whether that will be in Scotland and by Scots is in doubt, for Gray’s talent has had less than lip-service here. It is no accident that he characterised the city of Glasgow as Unthank in his novel Lanark and twice refused the ‘honour’ of the St. Mungo Prize.

The outline narrative of Poor Things is a straight satire on colonialism and feminism. The wife of General Sir Aubrey de la Pole Blessington MP escapes to Scotland, eight months pregnant, drowns in the Clyde and is resurrected by Glasgow surgeon Dr William Godwin using the brain of her unborn child. ‘Victoria Blessington’ becomes Bella Baxter, later Bella Caledonia, the personification of Scotland as a strong woman with a passion for social justice. In the novel she trains as a doctor, runs birth control clinics, becomes a suffragette, opposes the Great War, becomes a follower of John Maclean and writes to Hugh MacDiarmid. Or does she? Another sub plot has different explanations. Gray had much fun constructing a history of battles and conquests for Blessington, providing illustrations of looting in Burma and murder in India in the end notes. He writes a praise-poem for Blessington in the style of Rudyard Kipling and provides quotations from Charles Dickens and Hillaire Belloc on the life of his fictional English hero of Empire.

Alasdair Gray had the uncanny ability to incorporate his lived experience into his fictional works. He worked as an artist recorder at the People’s Palace museum for some months in 1977 and has woven some of the events into Poor Things. As the People’s Palace has been destroyed in all but name over the last 25 years, and as the hidden references in Poor Things might be the only trace left of it in another 25 years, it is worth taking a look at this.

Thanks to a government job creation scheme, Alasdair Gray was employed at the People’s Palace, at that time ‘an unsuitable building in an undesirable area’ (Glasgow Green) and an unwanted branch museum of Glasgow Museums and Art Galleries. Its remit was Glasgow history. Within the Glasgow Museums hierarchy, Glasgow history was an insignificant sub-section of the Department of Archaeology, Ethnography and History when I first worked there in 1974. The main aim of Glasgow Museums was to see the Burrell Collection housed in a purpose-built state of the art building. 

The story of how Glasgow Museums and its predecessor and successor bodies, has been the plaything of Tory councillor William Burrell and his family from 1901 onwards is too long to be recounted here. Suffice to say that every new group of Glasgow councillors learn that Burrell “put Glasgow on the map” and if the Burrell building needs to be rebuilt for a third time thirty years from now, at the expense of every other cultural and community organisation, the Burrell Trustees will be there to see it done. Glasgow has invested in identifying culture with Burrell’s gift and art forms which come from elsewhere and consequentially, local history has always been underfunded, undervalued and interpreted in a simplistic and negative way.

When the People’s Palace first opened in 1898, the watercolour drawings of William ‘Crimea’ Simpson (1823-1899) of Glasgow in the 1840s were purchased for the People’s Palace collections. This was a first and last purchase so in 1977, Michael Donnelly, my co-worker at the People’s Palace suggested that we get some 20th century works through employing the artist Alasdair Gray on the newly available government job creation scheme. This was a tricky proposal. Living artists working in museums was not an idea that would be welcome in Glasgow, where good artists were dead artists. Even the Scottish National Portrait Gallery did not collect or commission portraits of living Scots before 1982, as to earn a portrait there, the subject had to be judged by history and safely dead. 

As I did not know the work of Alasdair Gray and anticipating the problems that this would cause with the Kelvingrove hierarchy, I telephoned a new curator who had worked with Gray to gather support in advance. I was shocked by the response, which in summary was ‘This is a really bad idea. Forget it or you will regret it. Gray is unreliable, he drinks, is impossible to work with, will make your life difficult and HE HAS ANTI-ESTABLISHMENT VIEWS’. I begged the curator to forget the conversation and set about making the project work.

Director Trevor Walden (1916-1979) who came from Leicester Museums to ‘get the Burrell off the ground’ was too busy to intervene, and over several weeks I let him know that Alasdair Gray was not only recording the existing art works in the collection, but painting his own, to provide a portrait of Glasgow and its citizens, known and unknown, in the 1970s. Temporary storage had been rented in part of Templeton’s Carpet Factory which was in the slow process of closing down and it was here that Alasdair and the rest of the jobs creation team were based. Alasdair put a great deal of effort into making a decent working space for all within the derelict factory, painting the walls in the style of Mondrian and helping with the tough work of moving and re-erecting shelving from a derelict warehouse on the south side.

Alasdair Gray delivered 30 paintings of Glasgow and Glaswegians for the Continuous Glasgow Show exhibition, opening 22 January 1978 and marking the 80th birthday of the People’s Palace. The subjects had been carefully chosen to reflect differing constituencies and opinions. Provost Peter McCann represented Labour Glasgow, Teddy Taylor MP the Conservatives, Jimmy Reid the Communists and Margo MacDonald was depicted wearing one of her outfits from 1973 when she won Govan for the SNP. There were many unknown Glaswegians including Frances Gordon, a teenager on the job creation team and in her first job. Writers included Archie Hind, James Kelman, Edwin Morgan, Tom Leonard, and Liz Lochhead. Among the journalists were Jack House of the Evening Times, Fidelma Cook of the BBC and Norman Ross, the popular hospital broadcaster with Radio Clyde.

This exhibition undoubtedly saved the People’s Palace at that time. The Winter Gardens were closed in 1966 pending demolition; they were opened for the first time since then for the large numbers of visitors who wanted to come to the exhibition opening on that freezing, icy January day. The museum had no fire escape, and the building was scheduled to disappear with GEAR, the Glasgow Eastern Area Renewal Scheme 1976-1987 which wiped out the rest of the community. Fortunately, Alasdair’s paintings and the logo he provided for the Friends group garnered a support network for the People’s Palace Museum & Winter Gardens, and the building still stands, but just. In later years, after Alasdair acquired a dealer, the works were shown both in Kelvingrove and the Gallery of Modern Art labelled ‘Purchased by Glasgow Museums’.

Alasdair Gray, contrary to the advice received, was a joy to work with and he delivered on time and within budget.  The difficulties we encountered, because of the negative attitude from Kelvingrove were many and painful. An empty whisky bottle was ‘found’ in the Gilders’ store, proving that ‘Gray has been drinking on the premises’ an incident which if it had not been ludicrously false, would have meant dismissal, probably for me. Most comments at Kelvingrove meetings were to the effect that Gray was ‘not a real artist’, ‘not qualified: he didn’t complete his Art School Diploma’ and had not produced ‘works worthy of the collection: a real artist paints in oils’.

During these times, several communities in Glasgow were the subject of synonymous comprehensive redevelopment and we were constantly running between sites in Springburn, Dennistoun, Govan and Partick, trying to keep ahead of the developers and rescuing objects – close tiles, shop, pub, café, church and domestic fittings – for the museum collections. We were in competition with dealers who stripped Glasgow buildings and sent container loads abroad, where Glasgow Style fitments were appreciated and earned significant prices. Often, where a company take-over was involved as in the case of Beardmore’s Parkhead Forge and the Scottish Co-operative Wholesale Society, the historical material went south to Sheffield and Manchester respectively. In the case of the demolition of the Palace Theatre of Varieties, Main Street, Gorbals which was Scotland’s largest theatre, designed by Bertie Crewe we managed to rescue the canvas from the proscenium arch and part of the ceiling, as well as claw back the wood and stained glass ticket office box which had found its way on to an illegal container bound for the USA. The adjacent Citizens Theatre management, recognising the significance of the elaborate plasterwork theatre boxes, arranged government grants for these to be cut down and transported to the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. The V & A could not handle it immediately, so for six months we housed the plasterwork in the People’s Palace Templeton store. We didn’t need to be told that Glasgow was too wee, too poor and too stupid to have theatre history in its museums. The boxes are one of the highlights of the V & A displays: https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O144912/boxes-from-the-palace-theatre-theatre-box-audience-crewe-bertie/

In his introduction to Poor Things, Alasdair Gray mentions Michael Donnelly’s rescue of paintings from the derelict Free Church College, Park Circus, then being developed for housing. The subjects were the heroes of the great Disruption of 1843 and the decades following, and the artists were the best Scottish portrait painters of the 19th century, including John Graham Gilbert and Daniel McNee. This caused massive ructions in Glasgow Art Gallery where there were already ‘more than enough works by these artists’. I argued that we needed to represent all of the Scottish churches, but was told if we took the paintings, there would be no conservation services allocated to them. One of the works was of Nathaniel Stevenson (1785-1867), second Provost of the once-separate burgh Calton, a philanthropist owner of the local cotton mills who helped Thomas Chalmers. He is commemorated in the Kelvin Stevenson Memorial Church, built by his architect son J J Stevenson. As we had so little to represent Calton where the People’s Palace is situated, I was keen to retain this work. The Stevenson family heard about the painting and claimed it through Kelvingrove. The rows over this collection were searingly painful and as on so many other occasions, our jobs were on the line.

Alasdair Gray’s selection of Lansdowne Parish Church, Kelvinbridge, as the place of Bella’s marriage to Archibald McCandless, an event which is disrupted by the arrival of her first husband General Blessington, was because Michael Donnelly introduced him to the building and its remarkable anti-colonial stained glass window, the master work of Alf Webster (1883-1915). The Easter-themed window shows Christ on Palm Sunday, riding into Glasgow and being welcomed by the ordinary people, contrasted with a panel of St Paul, admonishing the wicked and unrepentant wealthy of London. Part of Michael Donnelly’s work was rescuing stained glass from derelict buildings and writing the first history of Glasgow stained glass. (https://www.scotstainedglass.com/) The window was ‘rediscovered’ some 30 years later and the building was renamed ‘Webster’s’ when it was secularised as a bar, theatre and playhouse, but is no longer available to view, much like the 200 panels of Glasgow stained glass in Glasgow Museums collection. The poor treatment and obliteration of Glasgow’s material culture is shameful. 

The story of Poor Things being a manuscript discovered on the pavement and later pocketed by ‘the arch-thief Donnelly’ also holds a lot of truths for the cultural condition of Glasgow and the writing of the novel. The fact was that Michael Donnelly discovered a derelict and gutted legal office in St Vincent Street in 1977. The scattered papers indicated that most of them were historic and relating to the Cowcaddens area in the 18th and early 19th centuries. He was on holiday at the time and phoned the City Archivist to alert him to the find. Two weeks later, we learned that the Archivist had been in serious trouble for effecting a rescue and had nearly lost his job. The entire collection was removed by the law firm concerned and sent to be incinerated. We mulled over these shocking topics during the tea breaks. What was there in these papers that was so bad, that every last piece of them, including the historic documents for Cowcaddens, an area totally flattened by comprehensive redevelopment, had to be burned? Alasdair Gray had the genesis of his story.

When Poor Things was published in 1992, Michael Donnelly and I were working – again with Alasdair Gray – in Dunfermline. He had given us no clue that he had woven his People’s Palace experiences into the novel, and we howled with laughter at the nuances.

Now that Gray is safely dead, opinions have changed. Last September brought the news that ‘Glasgow Life Museums acquires famous oil painting by legendary Scottish artist Alasdair Gray’: https://www.glasgowlife.org.uk/news/glasgow-life-museums-acquires-famous-oil-painting-by-legendary-scottish-artist-alasdair-gray

The road from job creation employee to legendary Scottish artist was a long and painful one for Alasdair Gray. If he has left one lesson for Glasgow it is that the Poor Things are the Glaswegians themselves, perpetually and serially robbed of their own culture and kept in ignorance.

Elspeth King 4 January 2024

MY COMMENTS

My thanks to Elspeth for sharing this important story with Yours for Scotland. As I stated at the top of this blog post, to know and appreciate our art, culture and history we need to know about it. Clearly this story indicates great efforts are made to deny us that opportunity. I hope this article is shared widely throughout Scotland and abroad and that more question the “establishment” about the future operation and procurement priorities of those who control OUR BUDGET. Elspeth is a very well known and respected retired museum curator and worked with Alasdair Gray from 1977 onwards.

I am, as always

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68 thoughts on “Poor Things”

  1. One of the most-entertaining days out I have had in my years of “three-quarters retirement” was spent at the People’s Palace. So-many interesting things to see and examine. However, the highlight was gate-crashing a tour, by pupils of a local primary school, when the wonderful local ladies who worked there were regailing them with tales of the days of ‘The Steamie’. These ladies, who had actually used the Corpration wash houses held the kids’ attention wonderfully as they relived those days. Believe me, they were as entertaining as the legendary play and film. The Philistines in the City Chambers who appear to know best what should and should not be kept of Glasgow’s rich history are really doing the city and Scotland no favours.

    Liked by 11 people

    1. I took my both daughters to visit the Peoples Palace regularly and I have also taken my granddaughter, from her very early years. It allows a grandpa to tell the child about the time when he was growing up and the changes. My granddaughter loved the sound boxes.

      Liked by 9 people

  2. Thanks Elspeth for that account, sounds like the so called Great and Good dominated what constituted our cultural history then as now. This shows one of the many ways we have been doon hauden, our language, history and culture denigrated as either not important enough or if it is later redefined as significant, then it becomes TOO important for us and shipped off elsewhere. I don’t know if the British (sic) Museum will return the Elgin (sic) Marbles, but I guarantee they won’t return the Lewis Chessmen!

    Liked by 11 people

  3. Elspeth King is right. Alasdair Gray was, like Hugh MacDiarmid, one of Scotland’s greatest intellectuals. However, our ‘colonial functionaries’ ensure that they and many other great ‘Scottish minds’ are rarely mentioned, seldom honoured, and that the people know little about them. At the extreme, the native intellectual is debased as inadequate in any number of ways, much as Elspeth explains.

    We may contrast this with the colonizer’s often rather obscure ‘conquering heroes’, the latter placed atop plinths for an oppressed people to walk by each day, with others handed university chairs and baubles such as knighthoods for, well, for being useful ‘colonial functionaries’. In a colonial society ‘only the colonizer’s values are sovereign’ and it is only the colonialist who is lauded or revered (Memmi).

    In what has occurred with ‘our’ nations heritage we might refer here to the term ‘cultural recreation’; this is where the dominant colonizer imposes his cultural values and what he considers ‘significant’ within another peoples land, in their institutions, and also in the minds of the indigenous people and culture. Here the latter’s own native culture is pushed aside, marginalised, disregarded, and ultimately forgotten, as are our greatest ‘thinkers’. Within a colonial society there exists ‘a contested cultural environment’ (Fanon), which brings us to the realisation that independence ‘is a fight for a national culture’.

    Which is why, for an oppressed people, independence/liberation is about ‘decolonising the mind’ as much if not more than anything else (Cesaire).

    https://www.researchgate.net/publication/371131175_Ann_Rev_Resear_Decolonising_Cultural_Heritage_in_an_Independent_Scotland

    Liked by 13 people

      1. Thanks for that. I’ve been very grateful for your work since it was published. It has given people like me the research- based language with which to respond to the colonial soup through which all of us have to swim.
        I wish it had been available in 2012 when there was a great press pile-on with the publication of Alasdair Gray’s ‘Settlers and Colonists’ and almost a ban on these two words. I despised the glee with which the academics joined in, clawing themselves theses out of the clamour and advising the SNP to ‘distance’ the party from Alasdair Gray.
        Thank you for providing the key to independent thinking for all of us.

        Liked by 5 people

  4. one of the best articles i’ve read in a long time.

    Scotland just oozes such wealth which is so much more inspiring than the dead hand of the petty establishments which are blinded by their own emptiness

    Liked by 12 people

  5. What a great article and I may go and try to read one of his books as a result. I can see why Alasdair would be considered difficult to work with I mean a lefty and a a nationalist who had been known to take a drink. I for one am shocked at the thought of an artist drinking as it was and is unheard of in the art world. At least he was able to handle his fondness for a drink and did not cut off his own body parts when under the influence. If the worse anyone can say about the man is he liked a drink he had a life well lived. I suspect some of the great works of art that sell for tens of millions of pounds were fuelled by stuff a lot stronger than alcohol and even the old masters were known to favour a pint of mead while working.

    Liked by 10 people

  7. Bless Elspeth King! and bless Alasdair Gray!

    Elspeth King also, I suspect, was the force behind the Stirling Smith Gallery celebration of George Buchanan’s Quincentenary Exhibition, which included speakers and events celebrating the life and work of Scotland’s shamefully neglected Renaissance Man. Equally shamefully, even that celebration has been neglected.
    I celebrate Elspeth King!

    Liked by 11 people

    1. I too ‘celebrate Elspeth King’ for her fortitude in dealing with those ‘poor things’ intent on denying Glasgow and Glaswegians of their heritage by the destruction and fraudulent disposal of historical cultural artefacts.

      Elspeth King must also be congratulated and recognised for the past but not forgotten exhibition at the Stirling Smith depicting Polmaise Colliery 3&4, its history and the heroic struggle during the 1983/4 miners strike to save the colliery. Elspeth King, a doyenne in her field and who at all times has remained true to her working class roots!

      Liked by 10 people

      1. Thank you for remembering the Polmaise exhibition! We successfully rescued the Polmaise banner which was being used as an outdoor tarpaulin in a garden in Fallin, 30 years after the Strike.

        Liked by 2 people

    2. Thank you for remembering the George Buchanan exhibition and programme! It was one of the pure delights of my working life. We even launched a Latin class on the back of it, as a way of accessing Buchanan’s poetry and radical political thought.

      Liked by 2 people

      1. For interest, I recently picked up for £4 in a second hand bookshop a copy of George Buchanan’s ‘JEPHTHAH AND THE BAPTIST: TRANSLATIT FRAE LATIN IN SCOTS’ by Robert Garioch Sutherland (Oliver and Boyd, 1959). And amazingly indeed it was signed in blue pen by Robert Garioch himself. Here is the first page of Garioch’s PREFACE:

        “A MEMORIAL WINNOCK in Aberdeen University, burst, I’m tellt, wi a boomb, used to schaw George Buchanan groupit thegither wi Arthur Johnston, Thomas Ruddiman and Dr Melvin: the twa former being the poets, the twa latter the scholars wha keepit alive the tradition o interpreting them. Nou the important thing here is that baith in Ruddiman (d. 1757) and in Melvin (d. 1853) the study o Buchanan, side-for-side wi Horace and Virgil as a classical Latin writer was combined wi thochts o pruvin what Scots can dae, baith in itsel and as a medium for classical wark. Sae, in the decade eftir the Union, Ruddiman brocht out his editions o Buchanan and o Gavin Douglas’ Aeneid, wi the object o schawin that a Scot cud be a great makar and that a classic micht be written in Scots.

        “Melvin, umquhile Rector o Aberdeen Grammar Schule, was the last in a lang line o the auld Scottish Latinists – men wha spoke Scots, wrote in Latin, and haunnlit English as a fremmit tongue, wha, in keeping wi the peculiar Scottish tradition o literary criticism, prelectit on Buchanan wi muckle fervour and by their skeelie analysis o his warks garred ilka generation luke upon poetry as a makar’s weill-wrocht wark, naething in the nature o rhapsodical whigmaleerie being likely to impress them. True til his type, Melvin was weill acquent wi Scots, and helpit Jamieson wi the twa-volume supplement to the Dictionary.

        “D. Masson (Memories of Two Cities) discryves Melvin’s admiration for Buchanan, whase Psalms were amang the bukes read in his schule, and tells hou the pupils mindit aa throu their lives thae douce lessons in poetics. He tells forbye hou Melvin, wantan to illustrate a passage in Horace, wad mak ready use o som parallel passage frae Burns. This wad come naiterally til a Scottish Latinist o the auld schule, and Melvin wad think naething o’d; but already in his day the Scottish men o ingyne, nae langer citizens o Europe, as Buchanan and the lave had been as a matter o course, were lukan til England, blate o their fancied provincialism: the mycelium o this dry-rot was creepan throu the haill fabric o Scottish culture. Masson tells hou he and a section o ither laddies at Melvin’s schule (the maist forrit-lukan section, as it turned out) wad be startlit to hear their Rector “suddenly quoting Scotch.” It wad seem that they thocht it wasna juist the thing. The rot has gaed on for a hunner years sinsyne.

        “Thae Scottish Latinists, sae lang as they were able, keepit alive the memory o Scots as ane o the classic tongues, and makars wha had sat in their schules, and in the Humanity class rooms, were aye ettlin to translate in Scots the pairts o Virgil left untranslatit by Gavin Douglas.”

        Liked by 4 people

  8. Internal tears – of sadness and rage – reading this excellent piece by Elsbeth . Whilst admiring the writing ( and the writer’s deep passion & commitment for/to the subject matter ) it’s literally painful to be reminded of the philistine savagery that has been visited upon my home city by a succession of GCC head-nodders , City Planners aka ” Modernist ” iconoclasts – all those beautiful buildings deliberately left to fall into ruin , subsequently declared ” unsafe ” ( what a surprise , eh ? ! ) and sentenced to death-by-wrecking-ball ; and that’s when any pretext for their destruction was presented at all : a lot of the time there was no consultation or opportunity for conservation on aesthetic grounds , the heavy machinery moved in and the architecture that brought beauty and distinction to the city was razed to the ground .

    Ask the citizens , enquire what they think , what they might like to see happen to/with THEIR city ?

    Don’t be stupid . They only live there ; these are questions that can only be determined by * Professionals * .

    Likewise with our artistic culture . Never really given it’s due or held in the same esteem ( by the self-appointed guardians of the English literary/artistic canon ) it deserves .

    If the ” Glasgow Boys ” had been the ” London Boys ” – producing the same work – they’d be revered on the same level as the Pre-Raphaelites .

    Similarly , if Alasdair Gray had been an English writer , not only would his work be much more widely known/read , his reputation would be on a par with all the great 20th Century writers eg Greene , Elliot , Woolf , Faulkner , Conrad et al . Ditto James Kelman .

    ” Lanark ” , alone , should have placed Alasdair in the pantheon of literary greats . Ditto ” How Late It Was , How Late ” . Towering literary masterpieces .

    To see the Scottishness of this exemplary Scottish author’s work being completely excised from this cinematic adaption is just one more slap in the face to our indigenous culture .

    No surprise then to read these weaselly-words – ‘the book is a transcendent piece of work. It is not ‘about’ Glasgow and once it is born into the world it does not ‘belong’ to Gray’ – issuing from that dormouse of Civic Nationalism ..ie.. Mike – Bellend Catatonia – Small .

    Thanks for publishing this article , Iain . Painful , but necessary . Thank * god * we still have people like Elsbeth to – attempt to – conserve vitally important aspects of our culture which appear to under constant assault by vested financial / Establishment ( civic & artistic ) interests .

    Liked by 11 people

    2. Thanks for this response. As an outsider, I couldn’t see why the Bella Caledonia website failed, in discussing the book and film, to mention that their website took its name from the central character in the book, Bella ‘Caledonia’ Baxter.

      Liked by 2 people

  9. Pingback: Poor Things | Of Men and Markets

  11. Wonderful and thoroughly enjoyed!
    The only thing I now have of the National ‘newspaper’ is the front page designed by Alasdair Gray.

    Liked by 6 people

  12. While Gray’s work was being discussed in European universities, at home the good man was signing-on the dole. That, in the context of British cultural imperialism, says it all for me!

    As an admirer of Alasdair Gray’s writings, with my own wee collection of his first-editions (including Poor Things but minus Lanark, unfortunately), I take much more than a passing interest in Gray’s legacy within Scottish and Glaswegian cultural history. If my powers of observation are to be relied upon, in these my later years, earlier this week I noted that someone at Waterstones bookshop in Glasgow’s Argyle Street had decided to remove Gray’s blown-up, photographic portrait from the stairwell. Upset rather than disappointed, I continued to the first-floor, fiction-section where his work is normally displayed, but could find nothing at all bearing the man’s name. With the pressing matter of a train to catch, not to mention the maintenance of my blood-pressure, I left the shop even further convinced of our subjugation by a colonial power which sees its mission in the Scottish-colony as that of turning us all into one-size-fits-all British subjects. Because I’m still in a state of disbelief, if anyone would like to visit Waterstones and tell me that I’m completely wrong about Gray’s “disappearance”, I would, needless to say, be mightily grateful. Gray, as Elspeth King ponts out above, was quite right in believing that his time was yet to come.

    Liked by 7 people

    1. Aye, anti-colonial literature is seldom welcome in a colony for risk the people might begin to better understand their ‘condition’.

      Which is no doubt one of the reasons certain books such as mine (‘Doun-Hauden: The Socio-Political Determinants of Scottish Independence’) are still not ‘available in all good bookshops’.

      Liked by 11 people

  15. If I remember rightly, one of the main themes of Poor Things was Bella running away to anywhere that wasn’t Scotland to shag senseless. Anyway, RIP Alisdair Gray, a literary asshole and a Glaswegian take on William Burroughs (with ectoplasmic dragon skin). Good article. Gray’s artwork is lovely in the Rennie MacIntosh style, but apart from his short stories and cartoons his writing is way too wierd for the general public.

    Liked by 1 person

    2. Speak for yourself, but don’t insult the rest of us, who are the Scottish general public. Gray was a great Scottish writer and artist, with a unique cultural and literary style which is revered by those who know it and across Europe.
      imaginative, iconoclastic, innovative, humorous and deeply political is not ‘weird’ unless you are judging it by cheap airport novel standards.

      Liked by 8 people

  16. The reckless hatred of Scotland and the Scots, they are not of us, they are not devoted to us, they will not defend us, they are not committed to us, they will not stand for us, they do not care for us. Scotland is not safe in the hands of todays politicians, or their lackeys or their appointee’s. Scotland has become an unsafe place for the indigenous population, where expressing or standing up for our own history and culture is deemed offensive.
    A WARNING FROM HISTORY
    A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and. carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys heard in the very halls of government itself
    Marcus Tullius Cicero

    Liked by 10 people

    1. Wullie, that warning from history continues to be ignored by Scots hence the ‘traitors’ the maist o’ them wha we have sent tae Westminsters guilded ha’s, thrive at their maisters table, wi’ nae heed o’ the message we sent them oan.

      Liked by 6 people

  17. This is a great piece. Thankyou Elspeth, and Iain for hosting it. It is painful to read of the wanton destruction and disinterest in the cultural heritage of Glasgow and thus of Scotland by the high and mighty. But thank goodness for those unheralded fighters for the cause, like Elspeth and other of her colleagues.
    I have seen Poor Things and it is a rip roaring extravaganza of a movie which will attract a huge amount of attention and praise in the coming months. Yes, it has stripped out its Scottish heritage and the more complex politics in favour of a ripping yarn. However, it is worth pointing that the director, Yorge Lanthimos, met Alisdair Gray before he died and received his blessing to make this film – Gray was impressed after watching one of his earlier films – maybe Dogtooth, which would have appealed to his surrealist humour with social commentary.
    It has been known for a long time this film was coming, so it would have been a huge opportunity to launch a major cultural event in glasgow around the film, in order to educate people the way Elspeth has, about the origins of the story and its context, and its connection to Scotland – celebrating Gray and Glasgow – maybe and exhibition, documentary, events etc around a Glasgow premier. i don’t know if anything is planned, but these highly paid worthies are asleep at the wheel if they didn’s see a golden opportunity to put Glasgow on an international stage and draw attention to our literary and cultural heritage.As the People’s Palace ought to be doing, if the authorities had the taintest idea of its worth and value to Scotland.
    Imagine a small percentage of the millions wasted by the SNP on their failed schemes and cronyism diverted to actual Scottish cultural institutions and their archives. We can only dream.
    The excellent Alisdair Gray Archive does have a project on Poor Things, so that is at least something, although it deserves to reach a wider public:
    https://thealasdairgrayarchive.org/news/poor-things-a-novel-guide-digital-project-launch-14-09-23/

    Liked by 7 people

  18. Every area in Scotland has it’s own story and I love finding Scots who go out investigating and searching. If we look around our areas where we live it would seem that it’s not confined to only Glasgow that folk are agreeing to or have to destroy to the detriment of us all.

    Liked by 5 people

      1. Aye Iain, I have saw one of the ladies who have been battling to save the High Street mention those funds. This man’s video I liked in particular was that he did it based upon not believing the narrative we have been told, his conclusion was the coal companies wanted to mine underneath the Palace so took advantage of the Duke’s debt situation. There’s a lot of wee ruins to be found, we used to go everywhere and play in old bomb shelters and found a headless horseman statue in bushes near a wee burn. I have to say it was great for the imagination being us growing up. Nowadays weans are stuck to computers and some might not even bother about common good funds and their actual history.
        The state of all our towns, cities is a disgrace and really quite sad but am beginning to think that this is a pattern that’s being repeated for resources land etc.

        Liked by 4 people

  19. A sad and informative commentary by the heroic Elspeth on behalf of the equally heroic Michael Donnelly and genius Alasdair Gray on their trials and tribulations with the brown envelope rustling class of philistine dead beats and chancers that comprised the Glasgow city council then and continues to this day.

    This sorry tale of the trio’s combined efforts to rescue cultural artefacts from the destruction by vested interests of Glasgow’ faux socialist cabal and establish a proud ‘People’s Palace’ for the ordinary folk of this great city stymied and spurned at every turn inspires rage and disgust at a horrifying tale of civic vandalism.

    As a great fan of the ‘Palace’ in the heyday of the late last century, it was obvious to even the untrained eye of the loving care being lavished on it by its protectors. The feeling of experiencing the ‘real Glasgow’ was inspiring and sitting with friends and family under the vast glass dome in the gardens was a wonderful sensory experience enclosed with all the exotic plants and trees.

    The story exemplifies all that is wrong with the Scottish colony that we inhabit: Outsiders from the Dominant Culture i.e. England parachuted into a culture they neither care about or are interested in by indigenous tenth rate philistines ingrained with the self loathing of their country and their class that is the hallmark of the municipal deadbeats that infected Glasgow (and elsewhere in Scotland) particularly at that time. Pathetic toadies who despised any independent thinkers, particularly Scottish working class aesthetes like the trio that created the unique Glasgow icon that was the ‘Palace’.

    Malice combined with total disregard allowed the plunder of Glasgow’s treasures listed by Elspeth in her account. Despicable and enraging. Even more so, as it continues. The SNP council a mirror image of its Labour counterparts….myopic and corrupt. As the inevitability of the ‘Palace’ s complete demise is nigh, so it was inevitable that Alasdair Gray’s novel would be hijacked, like all the artefact were,, by the Colonisers’ media and all traces of Glasgow and Scotland expunged from the narrative.
    Therefore, let us not permit Elspeth King, Michael Donnelly and Alasdair Gray’s legacy similarly be written out of history.

    Liked by 8 people

  20. Hello

    Thank you so much for that information. I was born not far from People’s Palace in James Street bridgeton, served my apprenticeship very near in Mavor avenue. To be told about this confirms my dislike of the people who pull the strings in Glasgow Council. Thanks again Willie McDonald

    Liked by 6 people

  24. One can only wonder why E. King chose to eradicate Gordon Adams from the history of her time at The People’s Palace? His tenure was significant with A. Gray taking time to draw him, twice. Appalling treatment, but somewhat expected, given E. King’s temperament.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. I’ve never “chosen to eradicate Gordon Adam’s”. I’ve always appreciated his work as a historian and photographer, and have always been delighted with Alasdair Gray’s drawings of him.

      Liked by 3 people

  26. Great article. AG did portraits of my sister and I when we were kids(early 70’s)
    Lovely drawings that looked absolutely nothing like us (we both looked like Margo macdonald!)
    I still treasure them though….off to see Poor Things

    Liked by 3 people

    2. I found this article fascinating and tried to share it on Facebook but didn’t succeed- just comments? Not sure why I’m finding difficulties recently
      Anne-Lynne McCabe

      Liked by 2 people

  28. “Alasdair Gray was not a real artist’, ‘not qualified: he didn’t complete his Art School Diploma’ and had not produced ‘works worthy of the collection: a real artist paints in oils’ – a comment told to her or overherd by Elspeth King. All but the last aspect of that statement is true.

    Gray was an author and illustrator. I doubt he had had ambition to be a painter exhibited in major museums of art internationally. King’s description of him makes him sound as if his daily life was in constant disarray, a clutter of his own mind. He himself said he had an annoying way of starting multi-projects simultaneously but never finishing them. A glance around his studio confirms he was honest on that topic. The great artists have an in-built discipline and drive.

    Artists (painters and printmakers) use all sorts of materials and media for their work, not only oils, but I’ve never heard anybody describe Gray as an artist first and foremost. His writing dominated. As for his illustrations and murals, I found too much wistful and couthy, often shallow and unsurprising, but his writing was his strength, a superb talent.

    Scotland has a way of seeing talent overlooked, our artistic institutions run by incomers with no knowledge or interest in Scottish art. The late John Byrne was never given a major exhibition by a national gallery in all the years of an extensive output.

    I had a BBC producer working on a Gray documentary patronise in discussion by telling me Scots should “appreciate” him more. I asked the producer how he thought we could do that when we did not own the machinery of promotion. Even our great publishing houses had been bought and sold.

    Personally, I owe Alasdair Gray a lot – and told him so – for his seminal essay ‘Settlers and Colonists’ that arrived at a time people were mocking me for daring to suggest Scotland was a colonised country run by racists. Gray got treatment more intensified than the occasional hits to which I was subjected. For his controversial essay “Let’s get the bastard!” said one red top hack to his editor on the phone. And the paper duly rubbished his existence.

    Gray was vilified by the press and our nationalist party did not lift a finger to help him. Sadly he was so stricken by the response he rewrote the piece to mute its claims. Months before his death he left the SNP and rejoined the Labour party. The SNP praised him after he was dead.

    Liked by 3 people

  29. “As for his illustrations and murals, I found too much wistful and couthy, often shallow and unsurprising, but his writing was his strength, a superb talent.”

    Without dissenting of course from your rating of Gray’s writing as by far his preeminent achievement, I must say that I have found the inventiveness and draughtsmanship of much of his linear illustration work absorbing to the point of mesmerizing.

    Liked by 3 people

    1. In which case, we agree he was an illustrator. My view of the quality of that work is not necessarily my own alone, however, it is extremely well-informed. Telling me your opinion does not correct mine. Happily, we both admired his commitment to Scotland.

      Liked by 3 people

      1. Yes we agree he was an illustrator. And that he was primarily a writer. It wasn’t in my mind to “correct” you. I just felt I owed it to Alasdair Gray to voice my own historic “lived” appreciation of many of his illustrations, even if that ran the slight risk of ruffling you (which I had really hoped it wouldn’t). In my career I have stood in front of countless paintings agreeing and disagreeing with the varied views of groups of colleagues. I was often wrong no doubt, but perhaps not always. I do listen to consensus (am intimidated by it in fact), but I also do try to muster enough courage to politely share my honestly held opinion. Silence can be disloyal.

        Liked by 3 people

      2. I understand why you do that, Fearghas, but the praise I read of Gray’s accomplishments is way over the top. and embarrassing. It demeans his contemporaries, disloging standards. It ill serves his legacy to exaggerate the quality of his work or his status as an alleged ‘Scots icon’. I’ve seen this type of sentiment before. Ian Hamilton Findlay’s garden in the Pentlands, ‘Little Sparta’, was often hailed as a ‘great work of art’, he a fine artist. The media said so. The garden is actually an interesting example of the landscaper’s craft. Art it aint. Incidentally, to make it clear, my view of the source quote that states Gray was unreliable and didn’t deserve a place in the pantheon of Scottish art, is pompous, but taken carefully, contains some truth.

        Liked by 2 people

      3. Thanks Grouse Beater for further response. Appreciated. Points taken. Though your absolutist dismissal of Ian Hamilton Finlay is surely rather merciless! (Actually the thought of his neo-classicism neatly brings to mind the latinate George Buchanan mentioned above, without pushing any further correspondences…)

        Liked by 1 person

    2. Fearghas, Lawson has posted a long rambling rebuttal by Elspeth King, but alas, not added the mechanism to reply, so forgive me for using this portal, as it were.

      King’s reponse is extremely odd, made as if I have denounced Gray’s very existence when I went to great pains to write the polar opposite but without idolatry hyperbole. And I dislike reading attempts to raise an artist’s status by demeaning other artists as of no great interest because allegedly they did not engage with the masses. That sort of remark is lazy, insulting and incoherent, the way of myth making. Many I know share Gray’s outlook. Other are solitary, driven and obsessive.

      Gray’s integrity, that he ‘cared deeply’ about his work, was not questioned by me. I don’t understand who King answers. She quotes Gray profusely to shut down critical thought. This is unhelpful. To claim working with him determines one knows better is risky. Standing back to assess standards and styles is an impartial stance. I will stay with that methodology and not be told what to think.

      In reply, I will lift only one aspect from her comments.

      “Gray was an illustrator, like Giotto and Mantegna before him.”

      No, and no again. Gray’s images issued from the Beardsley school of illustration. There is illustration that works well, some that does not. One has to be educated in art to make accurate assessment.

      Perhaps my reply can be placed after Elspeth King’s.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. Couple of comments on this firstly Elspeth’s comment could not be published under comments because it had too many words, therefore I decided to publish it as a stand alone piece. Having praised the initial reply from yourself as being polite I found this latest reply insulting and unnecessarily personalised. Therefore I will not be adding it to the end of Elspeth’s reply. You of course have your own platform should you wish what now appears to be an argument, to continue.

        Liked by 2 people

  30. Wonderful piece by Elspeth King. Notwithstanding its deracination from Glasgow, I look forward to seeing “Poor Things” after re-reading the novel, with its generous, lengthy, signed dedication by Alasdair to my wife for whom it was a gift.

    Liked by 2 people

  31. Is it normal practice for you to omit/overlook the contribution of someone you now claim to ‘appre ciate’? For G. Adams to be overlooked during this specific time in The People’s Palace’s history is history rewritten. I appreciate you took the time to reply. I’ll make no further comment.

    Liked by 1 person

  32. Apologies to Elspeth for misspelling her name . As usual , thoughts provoked by an article tumbling out faster than any * proofreading * afterwords/wards .

    Liked by 1 person

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