Our principal writers have nearly all been fortunate in escaping regular education.

Politics and later career
In 1928 MacDiarmid helped found the National Party of Scotland. He included MacDiarmid in this list. He wrote both in English and in literary Scots (often referred to as Lallans).

He was instrumental in creating a Scottish version of modernism and was a leading light in the Scottish Renaissance of the 20th century. Unusually for a first generation modernist he was a communist; unusually for a communist however he was a committed Scottish nationalist. Hugh MacDiarmid is the pen name of Christopher Murray Grieve (11 August 1892 – 9 September 1978) a significant Scottish poet of the 20th century.