Renowned writers' legacies put at risk

ONE was a poet who became the driving force behind a Scottish literary renaissance, the other an acclaimed author whose novels are still widely read the world over.

But now the legacies of both Hugh MacDiarmid and John Buchan are under threat.

At Brownsbank Cottage, where MacDiarmid - pen name of Christopher Murray Grieve - spent the last three decades of his life, a writer-in-residence programme will end in December after 17 years, raising fears that the remote two-room building near Biggar, South Lanarkshire, will fall derelict.

Scots writer and publisher Matthew Fitt, one of several prominent former Brownsbank Fellows, said: "For 17 years there's been a writer in that cottage, literally keeping it warm but also promoting MacDiarmid's name.

"The pulse of energy, the effort that's gone into that residence, that building, it's a shame if that's lost."

Meanwhile, in the nearby village of Broughton, Peeblesshire, urgent fundraising efforts are to get under way to keep the John Buchan Centre alive. For 30 years it has been housed in the former Free Church where, as a child, the author of The Thirty-Nine Steps watched his father preach. It houses artefacts ranging from photographs and books to the kilt and dressing gown of the author who later became Governor General of Canada.

Long maintained by volunteers, the centre has fallen victim to a failure by the private landlord and Biggar Museums Trust to agree a new lease. The trust has ended its oversight of the centre, leaving Buchan relatives and enthusiasts to manage it themselves. Writers and publishers have rallied to the cause, but backers are divided over whether to keep the centre in Broughton, where the author holidayed as a boy and where key parts of the novel The Thirty-Nine Steps are set, or move it to a small high street building in nearby Peebles.

In the village itself, there's pressure to keep the museum where it is. The local Broughton Gallery, a popular art gallery, closed last year. Christopher Lambton, owner of Broughton's Laurel Bank Tea Room, said: "If we lose the centre we lose any prospect of having any public exhibition space in the village in the foreseeable future.

"It may not be the perfect building, but once it's gone, it's gone. From the village's point of view it would be a catastrophe."

Birlinn publishing chief Hugh Andrew, whose company has recently put some 17 Buchan books back in print, said Buchan's legacy should be treasured.

"Buchan wrote in a whole range of genres, a series of masterpieces from thrillers to adventure novels to historical novels to quite metaphysical novels," said Andrew."He is seen as a curiously old-fashioned figure but when you read the books there is a subtext that is very different indeed, a lot of uncertainty and darkness about the world. He is a very prescient writer and has a gift for a great story."

The two writers could hardly appear more different. Buchan was born in Perth in 1875 to a Free Church minister but spent family holidays with his grandparents in Broughton. Following the success of novels such as The Thirty-Nine Steps - famously made into a film by Alfred Hitchcock - and Greenmantle, he died Lord Tweedsmuir, Governor General of Canada, in 1940 and was seen as a patriotic, Empire-loving Conservative. In contrast, MacDiarmid, who died in 1978, was a socialist.

However, leading Scottish author James Robertson has noted surprising connections between the two.

"Buchan wrote the preface to MacDiarmid's first book of poems, and was very supportive of MacDiarmid and what he was doing," he said. "Buchan wrote in Scots very well, he used a lot of Scots in his historical novels and dialogue. MacDiarmid acknowledged him as quite an important literary figure."

Robertson was the first writer to take the residency at Brownsbank, which helped launch his career. The current occupant, Carl MacDougall, is expected to move out in December when the fellowship funding, worth 18,000 a year, runs out after South Lanarkshire Council axed funding for half the residency.

Creative Scotland, which matched that grant, tried to persuade the council to protect the fellowship because of its "iconic significance", a spokeswoman said, but had to recognise its own local priorities.

MacDiarmid lived in Brownsbank from 1952 until his death and his wife Valda lived on there until 1989. It has remained much as it was, with their collections of books, photographs and pictures.

"As far as I'm aware the cottage will be mothballed," said Robertson. "That strikes me as daft. Without somebody being there the fabric may in time deteriorate because it's so off the beaten track."

While hundreds of people came in the two years he was there, the cottage's visibility will be vastly reduced, he said. Robertson will join fellow writers in a fundraising event for the Buchan Centre on 11 November, aiming to raise around 300,000 to overhaul and possibly relocate the exhibits.

Buchan's granddaughter Lady Deborah Stewartby, who lives in Broughton, said: "Our main effort is to save it, save the museum, the legacy, the concept and everything, and then we will be in a much better position to choose where we want to be."