Robert McLellan: Difference between revisions

Add links
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Browse history interactively
← Previous editNext edit →
Content deleted Content added
VisualWikitext
→‎References: add book, alphabeticise order of leet, add publisher details
major overhaul of article creating new sections, editing and restructuring material for clarity, and introducing some expansions
Line 61: Line 61:
{{Portal|Scotland}}
{{Portal|Scotland}}


'''Robert McLellan''' [[OBE]] (1907–1985) was a [[Scotland|Scottish]] dramatist, poet and writer of the ''[[Linmill Stories]]'', working principally in the [[Scots language]]. His plays were generally popular comedies with exceptionally well-realised historical settings, including most notably ''Toom Byres'', ''Jamie the Saxt'', ''Torwatletie'', ''The Flouers o Edinburgh'' and ''The Hypocrite''. He also wrote works of dramatic verse such as ''The Carlin Moth''. His ''Linmill'' cycle of short stories, collected posthumously in 1990, are counted with [[William Lorimer (scholar)|Lorimer]]’s Bible as being among some of the most important Twentieth Century prose in Scots.
'''Robert McLellan''' [[OBE]] (1907–1985) was a [[Scottish renaissance]] dramatist and writer and a leading figure in the twentieth century movement to recover Scotland’s distinctive theatrical traditions. He found popular success with plays and stories written in his native [[Modern Scots|Scots tongue]] and is regarded, alongside [[William Lorimer]], as one of the most important exponents of his day of [[prose|fine prose]] in the language.


In addition to his literary career, McLellan saw active service during [[World War Two]], served as an elected councillor for the [[Isle of Arran]], his adopted home after marriage, and was active variously in the [[League of Dramatists]], the [[Society of Authors]] and the [[Scots Language Society|Lallans Society]]. He served briefly in the early 1960s as elected President for the [[Local Government (Scotland) Act 1947|District Councils Association for Scotland]]. He was also a frequent campaigner in defence of local heritage and a dedicated [[beekeeper]].
McLellan was born in [[Lanarkshire]], grew up in [[Milngavie]] and attended the [[University of Glasgow]] in the 1920s. He had begun to write drama in [[Glasgow]] by the early 1930s and most of his plays in this prolific early period were first produced by the [[Curtain Theatre (Glasgow)|Curtain Theatre]]. After marriage in 1938, he moved to the Island of [[Isle of Arran|Arran]]. During [[World War Two]] McLellan served with the [[Royal Artillery]] mainly in coastal defence on postings outwith Scotland, including the [[Faroe Islands|Faeroe Islands]]. On return to Scotland in 1946 he resumed his career as a full-time playwright with hopes of a transformed culture for Scottish drama spearheaded by the likes of [[James Bridie]]’s newly founded [[Citizens Theatre]] in Glasgow. But after his rupture with Bridie in the late 1948, McLellan grew increasing dissatisfied with a Scottish theatrical culture which showed insufficient understanding of Scottish subjects and language. During the 1950s he turned increasingly to the medium of [[radio]], finding greater sympathy for his aims with the Scottish BBC drama producer [[James Crampsie]]. By the 1960s his works began to break into Scottish television while a number of his stage plays, particularly ''Flouers o Edinburgh'', were a staple part of a popular Scottish repertoire.


McLellan today, in literature, is probably best remembered for the historical comedies, ''[[Jamie the Saxt]]'' and ''[[The Flouers o Edinburgh]]'', and for his short story cycle, ''[[Linmill Stories]]'', but his stage-writing career was a long and experimental one which spanned over thirty years of crucial development for Scotland's theatrical institutions. In his later career he also wrote for radio and television. He was awarded a [[Civil List Pension]] in 1968 for "services to literature in Scotland" and received the [[Order of the British Empire]] in 1978.
McLellan was elected as an Arran District Councillor in May 1955. He also served nationally as President for the [[Local Government (Scotland) Act 1947|Scottish Association of District Councils]] (1962-4) during his tenure. He stepped down from local politics in 1965, although he continued to write. His final stage plays were ''Young Auchinleck'' (1962) and ''The Hypocrite'' (1966). In later life he turned more to non-fiction on the subject of his adopted home of Arran, and in 1971 published a full-length non-fiction account of the island's geography, history and people. Despite McLellan's importance to Scottish drama, his reputation since his death has tended to rest more on his short stories. After an abortive attempt in 1981 to collect his drama, a comprehensive edition of his principal stage plays was finally published in 2014.


==Early life and education==
==Early career==
Robert McLellan began life as a dramatist in the early 1930s. Much of his early work was first produced by the short-lived [[Curtain Theatre (Glasgow)|Curtain Theatre]] in [[Glasgow]], a dynamic and ambitious subscription company founded in 1933 and based in the university district of the city.
McLellan was born in 1907 at [[Linmill]], a fruit farm in [[Kirkfieldbank]] in the [[River Clyde|Clyde]] valley, the home of his maternal grandparents. He grew up in [[Milngavie]] where his father, John McLellan, in c.1912 founded and ran the [[Allander Press]]. McLellan was educated at [[Bearsden Academy]] in [[Glasgow]] before studying philosophy at the [[University of Glasgow]], although he did not complete his degree due to ill-health. He met his future wife, Kathleen Heys while climbing in the Lake District. They were married in 1938 and settled in Arran where they lived modestly on his income as a playwright.


This early period was a prolific and experimental one for the playwright. Throughout the decade McLellan was effectively Curtain's ‘house dramatist’, trying out various genres and modes in both Scots and English for performance before a dedicated and vocal 'studio' audience. Some of these early works in short form, such as ''Jeddart Justice'' and ''The Changeling'', were also picked up by other non-professional companies around the country and entered in the annual [[Scottish Community Drama Association]] competitions of the era.
==First plays==
McLellan dedicated himself to writing in [[Scots language|Scots]], the living language of the communities he grew up in. As he himself said in an article written for [[Scottish Field]] in 1956: "When I found that what I wanted most to do in life was to write for a Scottish Theatre I knew that I should always be poor, but I consoled myself with the thought that I could at least live where I liked." Drama in [[Scotland]] was undergoing a resurgence in the early twentieth century, led initially by the short-lived [[Glasgow Repertory Theatre]] and [[Scottish National Players]].


McLellan's first notable success came in 1936 with Curtain's production of his full-length three-act comedy, ''Toom Byres'', set among the [[Border reivers]] in the early days of the reign of [[James VI and I|James VI]]. This was quickly followed in 1937 by ''Jamie the Saxt'', set in the same period but this time in an urban milieu, its action taking place in and around the court in [[Edinburgh]] and featuring the king himself in his prime. This latter production, with the young [[Duncan Macrae]] famously creating a sensation in the title role, is generally regarded as the one which confirmed McLellan's reputation as a comic dramatist of substance in Scots.
Most of McLellan's early work was first premiered by [[Curtain Theatre (Glasgow)|Curtain Theatre]] in Glasgow, and other respected amateur companies such as [[Dumbarton People's Theatre]]. His first play was the one act comedy, ''Jeddart Justice'' (Curtain, January 1933) set in the feuding Border country of the sixteenth century. ([[Jedburgh|Jeddart]] Justice is condemnation without a hearing.) This was followed by ''Toom Byres'' (''Empty Cowsheds'') in 1936. His masterpiece, ''[[Jamie the Saxt]]'', was first performed by Curtain at the [[Glasgow Lyric Theatre|Glasgow Lyric]] in 1937, making [[Duncan Macrae (actor)|Duncan Macrae]], who played Jamie, one of Scotland’s most celebrated actors, an overnight star. It was revived by the [[Citizens Theatre]], [[Glasgow]] in 1947 and by the Scottish Theatre Company on Scottish tour in 1982, and received its English premiere in 2007 at the [[Finborough Theatre]].


McLellan is known to have been briefly resident in England as a [[screenwriter]] at some point around this time, but for whatever reason he soon came back to Scotland, marrying in 1938 and settling on the Isle of Arran. He continued to write with Curtain in mind, but his last production with the company, ''Portrait of an Artist'', written this time in [[Scottish English|English]] with a contemporary setting, met with less critical acclaim. For his next works, ''The Smuggler'' and ''The Bogle'', both set in the eighteenth century, the playwright made a return to historical Scots comedy.
==War service and post-war works==
He saw wartime service in the [[Royal Artillery]] from 1940–1946 and after the war, returned to exciting new possibilities for Scottish drama. Glasgow Unity Theatre was formed in 1941 and the [[Citizens Theatre]] in 1943. His work was enthusiastically embraced by both. [[Glasgow Unity Theatre]] in 1946 saw the first performance of ''Torwatletie''. In ''The Flouers o Edinburgh'' (1948), he explicitly and hilariously explored the sociolinguistic tension between Scots and English in Scotland, but his satirical treatment was rooted in a deep love for the language of Lowland Scotland. His belief in Scots as medium for Scottish drama, and the vigour, lyricism and humour that he found in it, did much to extend the literary range of a language whose registers had been eroded since the [[Union of the Crowns]]. But in spite of his prolific output, he did not receive the acclaim he deserved because writing in Scots has in the past been perceived, however unjustly, as a barrier to widespread and frequent productions.


In the event, ''The Bogle'', later renamed ''Torwatletie'', would wait until 1946 for its debut production. By the time McLellan had completed the play, early in 1940, Curtain theatre was no more, having broken up after the [[United Kingdom declaration of war on Germany (1939)|declaration of war in 1939]].
Few dramatists have matched Robert McLellan’s skill at deploying the vigorous vocabulary of Scotland and his language is the beautifully lyrical, witty and intelligent Scots of his time. As a younger Scots playwright, Donald Campbell, said: "Robert McLellan wasn’t just a playwright, he was something else – something different, something special. He was a superb lyric poet who happened to have the additional gift of a theatrical imagination".


==War years==
In addition to plays, McLellan also wrote five radio plays, ''The Linmill Stories'', two poetic works – ''The Arran Burn'' and ''Sweet Largie Bay'' which was awarded The [[Scottish Arts Council]]’s Poetry Prize in 1956, and a history of the [[Isle of Arran]] published in 1969.
McLellan, by now a first-time father, enlisted in 1940 with the [[Royal Artillery]]. He served in [[Timeline of the United Kingdom home front during World War II|the war years]] as an anti-aircraft gunner in defence around the British Isles (outwith Scotland) and on the [[Faroe Islands]]. Having set aside playwriting, he turned instead to poetry, a mode of writing more conducive for him within the context of military life. It was also during his service years in around 1943-44, when posted on the Faroes, that he met the poet [[Hans Andrias Djurhuus|Hans Djurhuus]]. McLellan, as a writer in Scots, later publicly acknowledged the inspiration he derived from his meetings with Djurhuus, a poet engaged in a parallel effort to forge new literary use for his own native [[Faroese language|Faroese]].


In May 1945, [[End of World War II in Europe|when hostilities ended]], McLellan's unit was stationed on the south coast of England, and it was here, while still in uniform and freed of his duties, that he resumed his playwriting almost straightway, by his own account composing the [[verse drama]] ''The Carlin Moth'' in the 'hot attic' of a mansion near [[Southwold]] on the [[Suffolk Coast and Heaths|Suffolk coast]] in the fortnight after [[VE Day]].
Robert McLellan played an active part in the community as a member of [[Isle of Arran#Local government|Arran District Council]] and as a president of the [[Local Government (Scotland) Act 1947|District Councils Association of Scotland]]. He also worked in the interests of his fellow writers as chair of the Scottish Sub-Committee of the League of Dramatists, chair of the Scottish Sub-Committee of the [[Society of Authors]], Honorary Vice Preses (sic) of the [[Lallans]] Society and Honorary Vice President of the [[Scottish Society of Playwrights]].


==Post-war career==
He was awarded a Civil List Pension in 1968 for "services to literature in Scotland" and received the [[Order of the British Empire]] in 1978.


==Assessment==
He died in 1985 and is buried on the [[Isle of Arran]].


==Personal life==
⚫
==Works by Robert McLellan==
Robert McLellan was born in 1907 at the home of his maternal grandparents in [[Linmill]], a fruit farm close to [[Kirkfieldbank]] in the prosperous fruit-growing [[Clyde Valley]] region of [[Lanarkshire]]. His father was John McLellan, a printer by trade, who circa 1912 founded, and thereafter ran, the [[Allander Press]] in [[Milngavie]], still at that time a detached township to the north of [[Glasgow]]. Although the young McLellan grew up in Milngavie, he generally spent his summer holidays the Lanarkshire farm of his grandparents, and it was those times in the immediate pre-First World War period, which later became the inspiration for his ''Linmill Stories''.

After attending [[Bearsden Academy]] in Glasgow, McLellan entered the [[University of Glasgow]] as an undergraduate in moral philosophy in 1925. He did not complete his degree, possibly abandoning his studies after the death of his mother from tuberculosis in 1928.

McLellan met his future wife, Kathleen Heys from [[Grindleton]], [[Lancashire]], sometime before 1933 while rambling in the [[Lake District]]. They married in 1938, settling in Arran where they lived modestly on McLelllan's income as a playwright, latterly supplemented in the post-war years by the produce of his [[beekeeping]] and Kathleen’s [[handicraft|hand crafts]].

McLellan died suddenly at home in High Corrie on the day before his 78th birthday in January 1985. He is buried on Arran.

⚫
==List of works by Robert McLellan==


===Stage plays===
===Stage plays===
Line 115: Line 123:
===Work on Radio===
===Work on Radio===
* 1944 - '''''Perrie Becomes Captain''''', short story (BBC Home Service)
* 1944 - '''''Perrie Becomes Captain''''', short story (BBC Home Service)
* 1946 - '''''The Carlin Moth, An Island Fairy Tale in Four Scenes''''', verse drama originally written for stage but first produced on radio (Scottish Home Service)
* 1946 - '''''The Carlin Moth, An Island Fairy Tale in Four Scenes''''', verse drama originally conceived for the stage but first produced on radio (Scottish Home Service)
* 1951 - first radio adaptation of '''''The Flouers o Edinburgh''''' (Scottish Home Service)
* 1951 - first radio adaptation of '''''The Flouers o Edinburgh''''' (Scottish Home Service)
* 1954 - '''''As Ithers See Us''''', documentary drama about [[James Currie (physician)|James Currie]], first biographer of Robert Burns (Scottish Home Service, produced by [[James Crampsey]])
* 1954 - '''''As Ithers See Us''''', documentary drama about [[James Currie (physician)|James Currie]], first biographer of Robert Burns (Scottish Home Service, produced by [[James Crampsey]])
Line 139: Line 147:


===Unproduced work===
===Unproduced work===
* 1959 - '''''Kirstan and the Vikar''''', drama in Scots set on a fictional island under German occupation in World War Two (completed in stage and radio versions)
* 1959 - '''''Kirstan and the Vikar, A Parable in Scots''''', drama in Scots set on a fictional island under German occupation in World War Two (completed in stage and radio versions)
* 1960 - '''''Kilellan''''', series of completed television [[Situational comedy|sit-com]] episodes set on Arran (offered to the new [[STV (TV channel)|STV]] company in Glasgow but never produced)
* 1960 - '''''Kilellan''''', series of completed television [[Situational comedy|sit-com]] episodes set on Arran (offered to the new [[STV (TV channel)|STV]] company in Glasgow but never produced)
* 1964 - '''''A Cure for the Colonel''''', episode for ''[[Dr. Finlay's Casebook (TV and radio)|Dr Finlay’s Casebook]]'' (completed but not produced)
* 1964 - '''''A Cure for the Colonel''''', episode for ''[[Dr. Finlay's Casebook (TV and radio)|Dr Finlay’s Casebook]]'' (completed but not produced)
Line 148: Line 156:
===Posthumous collections===
===Posthumous collections===
Although individual plays and stories were regularly published throughout McLellan's lifetime, collected editions of his works only appeared posthumously:
Although individual plays and stories were regularly published throughout McLellan's lifetime, collected editions of his works only appeared posthumously:
* 1990 - '''''Linmill Stories''''', McLellan's short-story cycle in Scots
* 1990 - '''''[[Linmill Stories]]''''', McLellan's short-story cycle in Scots
* 2014 - '''''Playing Scotland’s Story: Collected Dramatic Works''''', McLellan's principal plays
* 2014 - '''''Playing Scotland’s Story: Collected Dramatic Works''''', McLellan's principal plays


Revision as of 16:09, 20 March 2020

For the Australian footballer, see Bob McLellan.

Robert McLellan
BornRobert McLellan
(1907-01-28)28 January 1907
Linmill Farm, Kirkfieldbank, Lanarkshire, Scotland
Died27 January 1985(1985-01-27) (aged 77)
High Corrie, Isle of Arran, Scotland
Occupation
  • playwright
  • writer
  • poet
  • elected representative (Arran District Council)
LanguageScots and English
NationalityScottish
Alma materUniversity of Glasgow (1925-1928)
Genre
  • comic drama
  • verse drama
  • poetry
  • radio drama
  • short fiction
  • non-fiction
Subject
  • Scottish character
  • Scottish history
  • notable historical figures
  • Scotland's languages
  • enlightenment era Edinburgh
  • childhood experience
  • island community life
Literary movementScottish renaissance
Notable works
Notable awards
  • Arts Council of Great Britain Poetry Award
  • Civil list pension for services to Scottish literature
  • OBE
SpouseKathleen Heys
Relatives
  • Elizabeth McLellan, née Hannah (d.1928), mother
  • John McLellan (d.1962), founder of the Allander Press, father
  • Sadie McLellan, married surname, Pritchard (b.1914), stained glass artist, sister

Robert McLellan OBE (1907–1985) was a Scottish renaissance dramatist and writer and a leading figure in the twentieth century movement to recover Scotland’s distinctive theatrical traditions. He found popular success with plays and stories written in his native Scots tongue and is regarded, alongside William Lorimer, as one of the most important exponents of his day of fine prose in the language.

In addition to his literary career, McLellan saw active service during World War Two, served as an elected councillor for the Isle of Arran, his adopted home after marriage, and was active variously in the League of Dramatists, the Society of Authors and the Lallans Society. He served briefly in the early 1960s as elected President for the District Councils Association for Scotland. He was also a frequent campaigner in defence of local heritage and a dedicated beekeeper.

McLellan today, in literature, is probably best remembered for the historical comedies, Jamie the Saxt and The Flouers o Edinburgh, and for his short story cycle, Linmill Stories, but his stage-writing career was a long and experimental one which spanned over thirty years of crucial development for Scotland's theatrical institutions. In his later career he also wrote for radio and television. He was awarded a Civil List Pension in 1968 for "services to literature in Scotland" and received the Order of the British Empire in 1978.

Early career

Robert McLellan began life as a dramatist in the early 1930s. Much of his early work was first produced by the short-lived Curtain Theatre in Glasgow, a dynamic and ambitious subscription company founded in 1933 and based in the university district of the city.

This early period was a prolific and experimental one for the playwright. Throughout the decade McLellan was effectively Curtain's ‘house dramatist’, trying out various genres and modes in both Scots and English for performance before a dedicated and vocal 'studio' audience. Some of these early works in short form, such as Jeddart Justice and The Changeling, were also picked up by other non-professional companies around the country and entered in the annual Scottish Community Drama Association competitions of the era.

McLellan's first notable success came in 1936 with Curtain's production of his full-length three-act comedy, Toom Byres, set among the Border reivers in the early days of the reign of James VI. This was quickly followed in 1937 by Jamie the Saxt, set in the same period but this time in an urban milieu, its action taking place in and around the court in Edinburgh and featuring the king himself in his prime. This latter production, with the young Duncan Macrae famously creating a sensation in the title role, is generally regarded as the one which confirmed McLellan's reputation as a comic dramatist of substance in Scots.

McLellan is known to have been briefly resident in England as a screenwriter at some point around this time, but for whatever reason he soon came back to Scotland, marrying in 1938 and settling on the Isle of Arran. He continued to write with Curtain in mind, but his last production with the company, Portrait of an Artist, written this time in English with a contemporary setting, met with less critical acclaim. For his next works, The Smuggler and The Bogle, both set in the eighteenth century, the playwright made a return to historical Scots comedy.

In the event, The Bogle, later renamed Torwatletie, would wait until 1946 for its debut production. By the time McLellan had completed the play, early in 1940, Curtain theatre was no more, having broken up after the declaration of war in 1939.

War years

McLellan, by now a first-time father, enlisted in 1940 with the Royal Artillery. He served in the war years as an anti-aircraft gunner in defence around the British Isles (outwith Scotland) and on the Faroe Islands. Having set aside playwriting, he turned instead to poetry, a mode of writing more conducive for him within the context of military life. It was also during his service years in around 1943-44, when posted on the Faroes, that he met the poet Hans Djurhuus. McLellan, as a writer in Scots, later publicly acknowledged the inspiration he derived from his meetings with Djurhuus, a poet engaged in a parallel effort to forge new literary use for his own native Faroese.

In May 1945, when hostilities ended, McLellan's unit was stationed on the south coast of England, and it was here, while still in uniform and freed of his duties, that he resumed his playwriting almost straightway, by his own account composing the verse drama The Carlin Moth in the 'hot attic' of a mansion near Southwold on the Suffolk coast in the fortnight after VE Day.

Post-war career

Assessment

Personal life

Robert McLellan was born in 1907 at the home of his maternal grandparents in Linmill, a fruit farm close to Kirkfieldbank in the prosperous fruit-growing Clyde Valley region of Lanarkshire. His father was John McLellan, a printer by trade, who circa 1912 founded, and thereafter ran, the Allander Press in Milngavie, still at that time a detached township to the north of Glasgow. Although the young McLellan grew up in Milngavie, he generally spent his summer holidays the Lanarkshire farm of his grandparents, and it was those times in the immediate pre-First World War period, which later became the inspiration for his Linmill Stories.

After attending Bearsden Academy in Glasgow, McLellan entered the University of Glasgow as an undergraduate in moral philosophy in 1925. He did not complete his degree, possibly abandoning his studies after the death of his mother from tuberculosis in 1928.

McLellan met his future wife, Kathleen Heys from Grindleton, Lancashire, sometime before 1933 while rambling in the Lake District. They married in 1938, settling in Arran where they lived modestly on McLelllan's income as a playwright, latterly supplemented in the post-war years by the produce of his beekeeping and Kathleen’s hand crafts.

McLellan died suddenly at home in High Corrie on the day before his 78th birthday in January 1985. He is buried on Arran.

List of works by Robert McLellan

Stage plays

Dates of first productions:

  • 1934 - Jeddart Justice, A Border Comedy in One Act (Curtain Theatre, Glasgow)
  • 1934 - Tarfessock, A Tragedy in Three Acts, set in the Kilsyth Hills; a play which McLellan subsequently rejected (Curtain Theatre, Glasgow)
  • 1934 - Flight of Graidhne, A Celtic Folk-tale in One Act, drama set in 3rd century Ireland at Tara (first production details not traced)
  • 1935 - The Changeling, A Border Comedy in One Act (Clydebank Little Theatre)
  • 1935 - Cian and Ethlin, A Play in Five Scenes, a 'Druid allegory' (Curtain Theatre, Glasgow)
  • 1936 - Toom Byres, A Comedy of the Scottish Borders, McLellan's first successful full-length play (Curtain Theatre, Glasgow)
  • 1937 - Jamie the Saxt, or English Siller, A Historical Comedy in Four Acts (Curtain Theatre, Glasgow; Duncan Macrae in the title role)
  • 1939 - Portrait of an Artist, contemporary drama of bohemian life set in Glasgow (Curtain Theatre, Glasgow)
  • 1939 - The Smuggler, A Folk Play in One Act, set on Arran (Whiting Bay Drama Club)
  • 1946 - Torwatletie, or The Apothecary, A Comedy in Three Acts, originally completed in 1940 under the title The Bogle; set on the Scottish Solway Coast (Unity Players at the Queen's Theatre, Glasgow; subsequent tour to London)
  • c.1946 - The Cailleach, A Tragedy in One Act, set on Arran under the Cromwellian occupation (first production details uncertain)
  • 1948 - The Flouers o Edinburgh, A Comedy of the Eighteenth Century in Three Acts, (Unity Players at the Kings Theatre, Edinburgh, as part of a 'Fringe' event during the second Edinburgh International Festival)
  • 1950 - Mary Stewart, A Historical Drama in Five Acts (Citizens Theatre, Glasgow; Lennox Milne in the title role)
  • 1950 - An Tàcharan translation of The Changeling into Gaelic (pamphlet)
  • 1950 - A’ Chailleach, translation of The Cailleach into Gaelic (pamphlet)
  • 1954 - The Road to the Isles, A Modern Comedy in Three Acts, set in the contemporary Scottish Highlands (Citizens Theatre, Glasgow; cast included actors Roddy McMillan and Fulton Mackay)
  • 1962 - Young Auchinleck, A Comedy in Three Acts, Edinburgh International Festival production; biographical drama of the young James Boswell, (Gateway Theatre, Edinburgh)
  • 1964 - Pageant for the Burgh of Kirkintilloch (community production mounted in Kirkintilloch)
  • 1967 - The Hypocrite, historical drama (Edinburgh Lyceum; cast included actors Walter Carr, Leonard Maguire, Tom Conti, Richard Wilson)
  • 1972 - A Pageant of Dumbarton, (community production mounted in Dumbarton, adapted from commission completed by McLellan in 1970)

Work on Radio

  • 1944 - Perrie Becomes Captain, short story (BBC Home Service)
  • 1946 - The Carlin Moth, An Island Fairy Tale in Four Scenes, verse drama originally conceived for the stage but first produced on radio (Scottish Home Service)
  • 1951 - first radio adaptation of The Flouers o Edinburgh (Scottish Home Service)
  • 1954 - As Ithers See Us, documentary drama about James Currie, first biographer of Robert Burns (Scottish Home Service, produced by James Crampsey)
  • 1954 - This is My Country, first of a number of series of historical dramatisations which McLellan wrote for schools radio over the next ten years (Scottish Home Service)
  • 1956 - Sweet Largie Bay, A Dramatic Poem, verse drama for radio, awarded the 1956 Arts Council of Great Britain Award for Poetry (Scottish Home Service)
  • 1959 - Rab Mossgiel, A Play in Three Acts, biographical drama commissioned by the BBC for the Burns bicentenary (Scottish Home Service)
  • 1960 - first series of Linmill Stories broadcast on radio (Scottish Home Service)
  • 1962 - Balloon Tytler biographical radio drama in Scots about Scottish polymath James Tytler (Scottish Home Service, produced by James Crampsey)
  • 1964 - Waverley Gallery, series of stories from Scott dramatised for radio (Scottish Home Service)
  • 1965 - The Old Byre at Clashmore, set in the Scottish Highlands (Scottish Home Service, produced by Stewart Conn)

Work on Television

  • 1959 - television adaptation of Rab Mossgiel, the palay first broadcast on radio earlier that year (BBC TV)
  • 1965 - television adaptation of Young Auchinleck, the play first produced at the 1962 Edinburgh International Festival (BBC TV)
  • 1965 - Arran Burn, A Poem for Television, read by Iain Cuthbertson, (BBC TV)
  • 1978 - filmed interview by Alexander Scott of McLellan at home for Spectrum (BBC TV)
  • 1978 - The Daftie, film version by Micheal Alexander of a story from the Linmill cycle (BBC TV)
  • 1979 - The Donegals, film version by Micheal Alexander of a story from the Linmill cycle (BBC TV)

Non fiction

  • 1970 - The Isle of Arran, full-length historical and geographical survey of the Isle of Arran
  • 1977 - The Ancient Monuments of Arran, HMSO guide book

Unproduced work

  • 1959 - Kirstan and the Vikar, A Parable in Scots, drama in Scots set on a fictional island under German occupation in World War Two (completed in stage and radio versions)
  • 1960 - Kilellan, series of completed television sit-com episodes set on Arran (offered to the new STV company in Glasgow but never produced)
  • 1964 - A Cure for the Colonel, episode for Dr Finlay’s Casebook (completed but not produced)
  • 1965 - Mum and Sally, short drama written for television
  • 1967 - Progress to Extinction, drafts for a television documentary on island depopulation
  • 1970 - My Dear Dear Sister, long draft play about William and Dorothy Wordsworth

Posthumous collections

Although individual plays and stories were regularly published throughout McLellan's lifetime, collected editions of his works only appeared posthumously:

  • 1990 - Linmill Stories, McLellan's short-story cycle in Scots
  • 2014 - Playing Scotland’s Story: Collected Dramatic Works, McLellan's principal plays

References

  • Donald Campbell, Playing for Scotland, A History of the Scottish Stage, 1715-1965 (Mercat Press, 1996)
  • Colin Donati (ed), Robert McLellan, Playing Scotland's Story: Collected Dramatic Works (Luath Press, 2013)
  • Joy Hendry (ed), Chapman, double issue 43-4, 'Scottish Theatre Today' (Chapman, 1986)
  • David Hutchison,1976: The Modern Scottish Theatre (Molendinar, 1977)

External links

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Robert_McLellan&oldid=946505498"