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Lt Hamish Henderson in a sergeant’s great coat, January 1942 |
Scottish folk songwriter who symbolised Italy’s liberation
A new book chronicles the early years of the poet Hamish Henderson. John Gulliver gives an appreciation of a great man’s extraordinary life, while Scots author Rodge Glass offers his assessment of how well the biographer fulfilled his task
THIS book is the first half of a detailed life study of Hamish Henderson, the pioneering Scottish poet, translator, folk songwriter and activist from Perthshire who died in 2002.
In the current publishing climate it is unfashionable to support this kind of serious, thorough academic biography, and Polygon should be applauded for publishing one. But Henderson deserves a better biographer than Timothy Neat, who knew his subject for more than three decades and is obviously still too close to the pain of losing him to be able to write in a way that will interest old fans and help to attract new ones, while also being honest about the subject.
Too protective to question many of Henderson’s decisions, too in awe to criticise his work, Neat has simply produced a hagiography.
But the first problem is pace. In nearly 400 pages which only cover 34 years of the poet’s existence, it is amazing that his entire childhood and adolescence (including his early life with a single mum, his years at an orphanage, then his arrival at Cambridge) is dispensed with in the first few chapters – around 50 pages.
This gives the rest of the book a lopsided feel and makes for a strange introduction, partly because the author seems to be skipping over so much information that would interest fans. A great deal is already assumed: Neat’s writing style suggests readers should already know many important details, while steering them away from the odd potentially juicy ones they cannot know.
The issue of Hamish’s unsolved paternity is dealt with quickly and then relegated to an appendix at the end of the book. His flirtations with homosexuality and apparently relaxed attitude to it are virtually ignored.
Later, not enough questions are asked about Henderson’s political opinions: the best example of this appears just as Churchill replaces Chamberlain as Prime Minister.
At this time Henderson was still at Cambridge, but was calling on Scottish workers to unite and reject the war. He wrote in a university editorial: “The working class is already, after only eight months of this second great Imperialist war, becoming restive, doubtful, many have already taken their stand against it, including the Scottish miners, 80,000 strong: the fight against the war is gathering momentum; we must not be left behind.”
These opinions at least need addressing, but Neat makes no serious attempt to question his subject here. If Hamish did something, there must have been a good reason for it.
On the occasions where the biographer steps back and allows the story to be told by others who knew Henderson well, this book has infinitely more charm. Maybe this is because Neat’s style is dry, dull, overly respectful, or maybe it’s because he just seems so keen to have Henderson to himself that readers almost feel as if they are intruding.
Here and there it is possible to detect just how incredible Hamish Henderson’s life was when he was a young man – this is particularly clear in his time serving in North Africa, also Italy, and in his brave visits to Germany shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War – but all the time it seems, though there is much information on offer, that none of it really takes readers close enough to the man himself. Rather, the biographer keeps them at a distance, as if he is afraid of losing his friend to strangers who can pick up the book and make their own judgments. As a human being, as a valued friend, that is totally understandable. As a biographer, it is unforgivable.
Rodge Glass
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THOUSANDS of infantrymen, part of the battling 51st Highlanders Division, saw an unforgettable sight as they landed on the beach in Italy in the Second World War.
It was of a tall, bespectacled officer, wearing a tam o’shanter, perched on a beautiful white stallion, waving them on with a salute as it reared up on its hind legs.
Some recognised him straight away. It was 22-year-old Hamish Henderson who had requisitioned the horse from a local farm to welcome his “boys”.
Months later, when Rome fell in 1944, Hamish, a blazing Scottish nationalist, persuaded the Allied generals to allow him to lead a massed Scottish pipe band into the capital.
By then Henderson was famous throughout the Eighth Army as the composer of massively popular bawdy ballads loved by all ranks. One, the D-Day Dodgers, became one of the biggest hits of the war.
Hamish was one of those forces of nature that cannot be kept down – poet, balladeer, political thinker.
Born in a Scottish village with no known father, his mother an object of scorn, they moved Somerset where he was sent to a good school, then on to Dulwich College and thence to Cambridge where he mingled with the left-wing set, mixing ideas of socialism with his burning sense of Scottish nationalism.
A first-class linguist, he soon found promotion in the famous Eighth Army as an Intelligence officer, his work admired by General Montgomery.
By then he had also become known as a very good war poet. After the war, he devoted his life to rescuing old Scottish folk songs.
From the 1950s his name became legendary on the folk scene, his songs sung in protest marches against nuclear weapons.
Perhaps his lasting political achievement was his translation of the letters of the Italian Marxist philosopher Gramsci who died in a Mussolini jail in the 1930s – his book influenced left-wing thought in Europe and the US.
Timothy Neat spares few details of Henderson’s life in what is the first part of a promising biography.
Envy filled me after reading it – envious of a life filled with such adventures and riches, and much of it before his mid-20s.
John Gulliver
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