Hugh MacDiarmid

Common card · No. 364299

Christopher Murray Grieve (11 August 1892 – 9 September 1978), best known by his pen name Hugh MacDiarmid ( mək-DUR-mid; Scots: [ˈhju məkˈdjɑrmɪd]), was a Scottish poet, journalist, essayist and political figure. He is considered one of the principal forces behind the Scottish Renaissance and has had a lasting impact on Scottish culture and politics. He was a founding member of the National Party of Scotland in 1928 but left in 1933 due to his Marxist–Leninist views. He joined the Communist Party of Great Britain the following year only to be expelled in 1938 for his nationalist sympathies. He subsequently stood as a parliamentary candidate for both the Scottish National Party (1945) and Communist Party of Great Britain (1964). Grieve's earliest poetry was written in English, but he is best known for his use of "synthetic Scots", a literary version of the Scots language that he himself developed. From the early 1930s onwards MacDiarmid made greater use of English, sometimes a "synthetic...

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