Publisher's Synopsis
Hugh MacDiarmid's biographies of the eccentric, impulsive Scottish genius is one of his most enthralling prose works.
Macdiarmid's study of both famous and forgotten eccentrics becomes a study of individualism and national identity. He focuses on ten characters from the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; shorter sketches of otehr individuals are also included. The book culminates in an epilogue: the 'Strange Procession' of men and women whose characteristic qualities display the unpredictable energies, the extremes of human behaviour, associated with 'The Caledonian Antisyzgy' - the close association of gargoyle and saint.
Written in the Shetlands and first in 1936, Scottish Eccentrics was reprinted in 1972 in a limited edition whcih quickly went out of print. This timely new edition, prepared by Alan Riach, includes Norman MacCaig's eloquent essay on MacDiarmid
