Hamish Handerson: A Biography

TIMOTHY NEAT'S biography of the early life of Hamish Henderson describes the poet, songwriter and political activist who was an acute commentator on life in Scotland both before and after the Second World War, and life at the battlefront in North Africa and Italy during the war itself. The biography speaks not only of a time that is now long gone, but also of a set of hopes and ideals that also seem to have vanished.

We now live in a time when worries about the mortgage crisis and the rising prices of food, petrol, electricity, gas and local authority taxes dominate the local news, and wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Africa the international news (along with crime, corruption and incompetence on a massive scale).

How different these issues seem from Henderson's belief in the brotherhood of man and the rebuilding of the world on a more equitable basis during the second half of the 1940s.

Indeed, he represents an idealism that had become discredited by the end of the twentieth century. But, as Henderson himself would surely have said (he died in 2002), this was due to the inadequacy or downright deceit of those whose job was to put the ideals into effect, not necessarily because there was anything wrong with the ideals themselves.

Henderson was born in Blairgowrie, Perthshire in 1919 and a certain amount of mystery surrounds the identity of his father. As a result, Henderson had an impoverished but not unhappy childhood, attending several schools and even spending time in an orphanage before winning a scholarship to Dulwich College in south London and then another scholarship that took him to Downing College, Cambridge.

By then, 1938, he had already become a poet, recording life as he saw it in a way that was not unlike John Betjeman (though Henderson was much more acerbic), as well as an accomplished speaker.

At Cambridge, Henderson was to further his linguistic skills by studying French and German to deepen his knowledge of European languages that were honed by visits to France and Germany in addition to his widespread travels in Britain. These included several to Scotland when he became familiar with the Gorbals and a friend of Joan Eardley.

Thus when, in 1940, Henderson was called up into the army, it was not long before he was sent to Cairo and, because of his linguistic skills, was engaged in questioning German prisoners of war.

This was a time when the battle against Rommel in the North African desert was at its most difficult. It was also a time when Henderson, already conversant with the poets of the First World War such as Wilfred Owen, added his own sometimes bawdy songs to the liturgy.

As Neat makes clear, as a very tall, young man Henderson had the ability to communicate with anyone, had a tremendous zest for life, was full of laughter and dreams of songs, and had the amazing ability to turn most situations to his advantage. So, following El Alamein and the defeat of Rommel, Henderson's next adventure was the invasion of Sicily and then the Allied landing at Anzio in Italy.

Here, his flair for using song to rouse the troops - and where possible a Scottish piper and band to lead them - continued; indeed, months later he and a piper marched into Rome.

Again, because of his linguistic skills, Henderson also organised the broadcast by Marshall Graziani that proclaimed the surrender of Italy and of all German forces fighting in the country - the first surrender by an Axis power of the Second World War.

And by this time, Neat says, Henderson had honed his skills as a poet and had become very aware of the political infighting between Communists, Partisans and others as they manoeuvered to take power once the war came to an end. This was also when Henderson became a disciple of Antonio Gramsci, a left wing prophet who had been imprisoned by the Italian fascists and died in 1936. From 1948-51, Henderson made translating Gramsci's prison letters his primary concern.

During the first ten years after the war, Henderson spent much of his time driving his Rudge motorcycle the length and breadth of Britain, "seeking poets and finding shelter wherever a sympathetic ear, pocket or friend would house him," as Neat says, as well as returning to Italy (from which he was expelled) and spending a year in Ulster.

In Glasgow, working men may have seen him as a strange creature - 'a leather-jacketed officer Marxist' - whose political leanings were shared by other poets such as Sorley MacLean, as well as by the historian, E.P. Thompson and the Scottish Convention, then pushing for a Scottish parliament.

The upsurge in Scottish nationalism led to the removal of the Stone of Destiny from Westminster Abbey and the discovery of an unexploded bomb in a letterbox in Edinburgh.

Equally left wing were Ewan MacColl and Joan Littlewood, whose Theatre Workshop played at the inaugural Edinburgh Festival of 1947, and with whom Henderson was closely associated. And he was a founder of the Fringe.

In writing the first part of his biography of Hamish Henderson, Neat has been able to use Henderson's poems as a running commentary on his life as well as drawing upon diaries, letters and the recollections of many friends and associates.

There are also aspects of Henderson's life, such as his time in the Clapham orphanage and a brief spell of teaching at Moray House in Edinburgh, which even his family did not know about.

In addition, Neat knew Henderson for more than 30 years and made films in collaboration with him. The result is a brilliant and scholarly book about a truly fascinating man.

Hamish Henderson - a Biography. Volume 1: the Making of the Poet (1919-1953) by Timothy Neat. Published by Polygon, Edinburgh, price £ 25.00