Working title – "Antagonist: the life behind Hugh MacDiarmid" scholarcommons.sc.edu/cgi/vi…
Joined March 2014
- Tweets 10,403
- Following 1,187
- Followers 1,113
- Likes 8,313
140 Photos and videos
Pinned Tweet
28 Mar 2023
William Collins scoops biography of 'contentious and politically influential poet' MacDiarmid thebookseller.com/rights/wil…
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Dylan on being 80 with no illusions: "You’re an old king from some vanished country. You’re harder to program. You’re not rushing to become anything and you’re not haunted by things that you did. You’re haunted by how little of it really mattered in the way you thought it would"
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Alexander Linklater retweeted
Dollan Aqua Centre, East Kilbride, designed by Alexander Buchanan Campbell, built 1963–1965.
Pic: Simon Phipps
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Alexander Linklater retweeted
Sensible piece here by @David_Goodhart on Novak and EDI.
davidgoodhart.substack.com/p…
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Alexander Linklater retweeted
Communism: "Great idea; wrong species."
–E. O. Wilson, ant expert.
More great E. O. Wilson quotes here: stevestewartwilliams.com/p/t…
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Yup, my bad, should have listened before jock-falling for @dcsandbrook's provocation. (Well played, I concede!) Fascinating stuff from @holland_tom on how "God Save the King" was probably first written for James VII & II. And, lo, there's quite a lot of Jacobite context, too.
Couple of nitpicks: referring to the (post-Mary) Episcopalian Stuart kings as "Catholic" (James VII was a convert); and dismissing the notion that the Jacobite rebellion was opposed to the 1707 Union. (It's complicated, surely; Tom himself describes it as an "invasion".) The big point, though, is that defeat of the Jacobites cemented the union and the idea of a joint venture – with highland regiments going on to become emblems of Empire. (Ironies abound.)
The 1707 Acts of Union, the 1745Jacobite Rebellion, the Seven Years' War, the Scottish Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution: there's the British foundation story. Surely the @TheRestHistory can tell it?
Why does @dcsandbrook hate Britain?
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Begins with James VI and I, of course (raised Presbyterian, became Episcopalian for chess-playing reasons)
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Robert Louis Stevenson:
"The Bell Rock stands monument for my grandfather; the Skerry Vohr for my Uncle Alan; and when the lights come out at sundown along the shores of Scotland, I am proud to think they burn more brightly for the genius of my father... I might write books till 1900 and not serve humanity so well; and it moves me to a certain impatience to see the little, frothy bubble that attends the author his son, and compare it with the obscurity in which that better man finds his reward."
On this day in 1778: Pioneering lighthouse builder Robert Stevenson was born in Glasgow. He designed and engineered numerous lighthouses including The Bell Rock Lighthouse (pictured), the world's oldest surviving sea-washed lighthouse, situated 11 miles off the coast of Angus.
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Why does @dcsandbrook hate Britain?
By the way, we do also talk about Scotland, but AS A SUBSET OF ENGLAND.
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Gearing up to apologise to @dcsandbrook and @holland_tom for reckless, reactive tweeting... hoping to be wrong
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It was a poem composed by James Murray (1837-1915)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_…
“Don’t you love the Oxford Dictionary? When I first read it, I thought it was a really really long poem about everything.”
- David Bowie
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Best political interview I've seen in years. Gloriously, Lammy is too stuffed with cognitive dysentery to fully appreciate the baroque splendour of the skewering he's being subjected to. Masterful from @TrevorPTweets, if only all the media were like this.
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Alexander Linklater retweeted
Jun 7
This is the first lecture in @michaelpforan’s series
Apparently some students at @UniofOxford think it shouldn’t be heard
open.substack.com/pub/knowin…
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Alexander Linklater retweeted
Jun 7
Listen to how @michaelpforan *encourages* students with dissenting views to stay, listen and challenge him.
Isn’t this a model of what the academic & student relationship should be?
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Low-rent cultural revolution juvenilia
Jun 7
Here are the utter bellends, doing their usual social justice warrior, Complex PTSD schtick, sent to me by a disgusted student who wanted to LISTEN TO @michaelpforan
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And the UK is not complicit
Jun 7
Let's not forget the Russian shadow fleet, half of which was sold to Putin by Greece's shipping oligarchs. Or huge and ongoing transshipment of Western goods to Russia via out-of-the-way places like Kyrgyzstan. All of the EU is complicit in enabling the Russian war machine...
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Alexander Linklater retweeted
Jun 7
It is unfortunate that these protesters have chosen disruption over genuine intellectual engagement grounded in academic charity and rigour. In attempting to shame students into deplatforming these lectures, they manifest the antithesis of what a university stands for.
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