In this first critical biography of Hugh MacDiarmid, Alan Bold explores the life and work of a great poet. During his long life (1892-1978), MacDiarmid revitalized the Scots language and in A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle produced one of the masterpieces of world poetry. He also wrote delicate lyrics in Scots, powerful political poems in English, and worked on an epic sequence, Cornish Heroic Song for Valda Trevlyn. MacDiarmid served in Salonika...