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The Herald Scotland

Nicola Sturgeon believed Alasdair Gray was a 'bright light'

His 1981 novel, Lanark, was hugely influential. In a newspaper obituary, writer and friend James Campbell described him as 'the father figure of the renaissance in Scottish literature and art'. However, he began life, like most people, as an infant, in Glasgow on 28 December 1934. He had a traditional Scottish upbringing on a council estate. His father, Alexander, was a factory worker, builder's labourer, and remover of damaged chocolate bicuits from a conveyor belt. Wounded in the First World War, he helped found the Scottish Youth Hostels Association. Alasdair's mother Amy worked in a clothing warehouse. A 'good housewife who never grumbled', she loved music, particularly opera. Both parents leaned Left (Amy's father had been blacklisted in England for trade union membership). During the Second World War, Alasdair was evacuated to Auchterarder in Perthshire and Stonehouse in Lanarkshire. From 1942 until 1945, the family lived in Wetherby, Yorkshire, where his father ran a hostel for munitions workers. Back in Glasgow, Gray frequented the public library, enjoying Winnie-the-Pooh, The Beano and The Dandy, plus all manner of 'escapist crap' before discovering 'the good stuff' such as Edgar Allan Poe. He attended Whitehill Secondary School, in Dennistoun, where he edited the school magazine. Aged 11, he appeared on BBC children's radio reading his own poems and one of yon Aesop's Fables. He also read his own poems, 'very poor A.A. Milne' stuff initially, until he found his own voice and started writing short stories. Alasdair Gray Creative poverty Having previously encouraged him, his parents feared poverty and humiliation if he pursued a creative career, which fears proved largely correct (at the turn of the century, Alasdair was reduced to applying to the Scottish Artists' Benevolent Fund for money). In 1957, Gray graduated from art school with a useful degree in Design and Mural Painting. From 1958–1962, he was a part-time art teacher, undergoing pedagogical training at Jordanhill College. Gray also painted theatrical scenery for the Glasgow Pavilion and Citizens Theatre. His first mural was "Horrors of War" for the Scottish-USSR Friendship Society. He received a commission (unpaid, apart from expenses) to paint Creation murals for Greenhead church, this becoming 'my best and biggest mural painting'. Alas, the building – and the mural with it – was demolished in 1970. Indeed, many of his bold and distinctive murals have been lost, though surviving examples can be found at the Ubiquitous Chip restaurant and the entrance to Hillhead subway station. A collaborative ceiling mural at the Òran Mór arts venue depicts Adam, Eve, the Creation and sundry Glaswegians against a stunning, star-streaked, inky blue background. In 1977–78, Gray worked for the People's Palace museum as an 'artist recorder", producing hundreds of streetscapes and portraits of politicians, artists, punters and workers. These are now in the collection at Kelvingrove Art Gallery. In 2023, also for the Kelvingrove, Glasgow Museums acquired Grey's 1964 mural Cowcaddens Streetscape in the Fifties. With distorted perspectives reminiscent of Cézanne, Gray described it as 'my best big oil painting'. Ga-ga for radio His first plays were broadcast on radio (Quiet People) and television (The Fall of Kelvin Walker) in 1968, the latter transmogrifying in 1985 into his third novel. McGrotty and Ludmilla (1990) and Mavis Belfrage (1996) began life similarly. However, his best-known work was his first novel, Lanark, published in 1981 to widespread acclaim. The Observer called it 'probably the greatest novel of the [20th] century', while James Campbell described it as 'an almost preposterously ambitious concoction of thinly disguised autobiography, science fiction, formal playfulness … and graphic design'. Comprising jumbled chapters (four), prologue and epilogue, Lanark came with an erratum slip on which was printed: 'THIS ERRATUM SLIP HAS BEEN INSERTED BY MISTAKE.' The epilogue, four chapters before the end, lists the book's supposed plagiarisms, some from non-existent works. The book tells two parallel stories, the first a Bildungsroman – aye – of a young artist (roughly himself) growing up in 1950s Glasgow. The other is a dystopia set in Unthank (roughly Glasgow). In an oft-quoted passage, the main character says cities gain a positive identity only when so depicted in art: 'Imaginatively Glasgow exists as a music-hall song and a few bad novels. That's all we've given to the world outside. It's all we've given to ourselves.' Despite Lanark's success, Gray preferred his second novel 1982, Janine, published in 1984. The stream-of-consciousness narrative has a more pornographic theme. Anthony Burgess, who'd previously called Gray 'the most important Scottish writer since Sir Walter Scott', described it as 'juvenile'. Of Gray's other novels, Poor Things (1992), a Frankenstein-style tale about a scientist seeking to create the perfect companion, received the most attention, acclaim and income after Lanark. His first short-story collection, Unlikely Stories, won the Cheltenham Prize for Literature in 1983, and he published three poetry collections, often featuring big themes – not always treated seriously – like love, God and language. READ MORE Rab McNeil's Scottish Icons: Don't be a whinging windbag – our bagpipes are braw RAB MCNEIL'S SCOTTISH ICONS: John Knox – the fiery preacher whose pal got burnt at the stake Scottish icons: Saint Mungo – the Fifer with a Welsh name who became patron saint of Glasgow Scottish icons: the midge, vicious little beasties that bite you in the Cairngorms Dear unseen place In appearance likened to a nutty professor with a hysteria-tinged high-pitched laugh, Gray consequently supported socialism and Scottish independence. He popularised the epigram 'Work as if you live in the early days of a better nation', which was engraved hopefully on a wall of the new Scottish Parliament Building. In May 2014, he designed The Sunday Herald's front page, supporting Yes in the indie referendum. In 1992, he'd written that 'by Scots I mean everyone in Scotland who is eligible to vote', a strategy that doomed the referendum to failure. Elsewhere, Gray described English arts administrators in Scotland as 'settlers' and 'colonists'. This led to comically inaccurate accusations of anglophobia by leading nutters. Usually backing the SNP or the Scottish Socialist Party, Gray voted Liberal Democrat at the 2010 general election in an effort to unseat 'corrupted' Labour, and voted Labour in 2019 as a protest against the SNP's timidity. Politics. It's complicated. As is life. After a short illness, Alasdair Gray died at Glasgow's Queen Elizabeth University Hospital on 29 December 2019, one day after his 85th birthday. Among many tributes, Nicola Sturgeon, then First Minister, remembered him as 'one of the brightest intellectual and creative lights Scotland has known in modern times'.