Alan Riach

Professor of Scottish Literature at Glasgow University

Latest articles from Alan Riach

ESSAY The ‘Citz’ in the sixties: Performance never-to-be-forgotten

JOHN Purser today begins a new intermittent series of – what shall we call them? – vignettes, bagatelles, a collection of observations, moments, anecdotes, memorable instances, portraits of characters, people in a history on the point of disappearing over a horizon and into a past that may be irrecoverable without some account of them.

'Scotland's unending renaissance': Alan Riach speaks to Kenneth Munro

ALAN: Over the last two weeks, our conversation has centred mainly on Bill Douglas but also bringing in a range of film-makers whose lives and work have been eclipsed, one might say, by the commercial world. I’m thinking of Bill’s friend Peter Jewell, or Harry Watt, as well as Margaret Tait, Helen Biggar, Ruby Grierson, Marion Grierson. We talked of them a little last week but there’s more to be said ...

ESSAY Alan Riach: A journey into the centre of New Zealand's literary universe

WHEN I first went to New Zealand, in 1986, the Rainbow Warrior had just been blown up by French spies, with murderous loss of life. The prime minister, David Lange, was standing up to the world’s nuclear authority and saying NO in thunder: NO to nuclear weaponry, NO to nuclear power and NO to nuclear-powered ships arriving in any New Zealand ports. America was repulsed.