A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle: Hugh MacDiarmid and a Hundred Years of the Scottish Renaissance
As the Centenary Conference 1926–2026 marks the 100th anniversary of A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle, Scotland’s leading historians, writers and performers will examine Hugh MacDiarmid’s enduring and contested legacy.
Date: Saturday 21 November 2026
Time: 09:45 - 15:30
Venue: Royal Concert Hall Glasgow, Strathclyde Suite.
Category: Conferences, Public lectures, Academic events, Alumni events,
The Centenary Conference 1926 - 2026
A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle: Hugh MacDiarmid and a Hundred Years of the Scottish Renaissance
Opened by Sir Tom Devine
Presented by Sally Magnusson
Doors: 9am
Conference: 9:45am - 3:30pm
"A centenary that comes not to praise MacDiarmid, but to argue with him. "
On 22 November 1926, Hugh MacDiarmid published the wildest, most ambitious, most controversial poem in Scottish literature: A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle - 2,685 lines in which a drunk man on a moonlit hillside takes on the thistle, the nation and the universe.
It lit the fuse of a "Scottish Renaissance" and helped inspire a national movement. Now, on the eve of the poem's hundredth birthday, that movement comes under review: a hundred years of argument about culture, politics and nationhood - from the 1920s to the 2020s.
Join Scotland's leading historians, writers and performers, not to applaud MacDiarmid's legacy, but to argue over it. Sir Tom Devine opens on the Scotland of the 1920s. UofG's Professor Murray Pittock and Professor Gerard Carruthers along with David Torrance, Pat Kane and Gerda Stevenson, Maureen Beattie, W.N. Herbert and Deirdre Grieve will talk part in the conference. Sally Magnusson presents the day.
Please note: A light lunch is included in the ticket price.