Archie Hind
Archie Hind (3 June 1928 – 21 February 2008), the author of The Dear Green Place, was a Scottish writer.
Life and work
The Dear Green Place was his only completed work (published in 1966), but it won four major awards and has been listed as one of the best 100 Scottish novels of all time.[1] The book had a number of reprintings over the decades, and was again reprinted in March 2008 published in conjunction with Hind's incomplete novel, Fur Sadie as two novels in one volume. Hind had worked on the latter title for decades without finishing it, and the manuscript was assumed to have been lost until it was rediscovered and edited by family acquaintance, the poet, writer and artist Alasdair Gray.
Hind was born to Archibald Taylor (Archie Sr.) Hind and Margaret Duff Hind née Miller. He is known to have had two siblings, Allan and John Hind. He was raised in the Carntyne district of Glasgow. in conditions of poverty and hardship. Hind's father Archie Sr. seemingly had psychological problems and this condition and other frustrations led to frequent incidents of domestic violence; has been quoted as "..a nutter and... wife beater", and also at times as an alcoholic. The latter is refuted by Hind's grandchildren Sheila and Martin Hind. However the young Archie often had to avoid the public baths because of his bruises caused by the meting out of his father's violence against the family. Archie Sr.'s pressure for money forced Archie to leave school and take on menial jobs. He was called up to serve in the medical corps in Singapore and Ceylon at the end of World War II. After he was "demobbed" he was determined to become a writer. His big break came when he was accepted in 1950–51 to study a creative course at Newbattle Abbey College, Midlothian, where the principal, Orcadian poet Edwin Muir, reportedly became his mentor and helped inspire him.
The success of The Dear Green Place, a reference to his birthplace and hometown of Glasgow, turned Hind from a trolleybus driver/former slaughterhouse worker into a successful and notable writer. He won 1966's Guardian First Book Award. Hind went on to publish journalistic articles and wrote several plays and theatrical revues, notably for Glasgow's Citizen's Theatre. The comedy show 'Dear Green Place' which was aired on BBC One Scotland in 2007 has no relation to Hind's novel. He had been due to appear on 7 March 2008 with famous writers from around the world at the Aye Write! literary festival in Glasgow's Mitchell Library to mark the reprinting of ‘’The Dear Green Place’’, along with the Fur Sadie manuscript and examples of his writing. However he died from cancer, aged 79, on 21 February. The organizers held a memorial service on 8 March 2008.
The unfinished manuscript of Fur Sadie was thought to have been lost or destroyed, but it was pieced together by Alasdair Gray and journalist/literary agent John Linklater, and was published along with The Dear Green Place on 15 March 2008 by Polygon, an imprint of Birlinn Publishing.
Fur Sadie
Originally titled Für Sadie, because Hind was influenced by Beethoven's piece Für Elise, but the umlaut was later dropped to reflect Glasgow dialect, the story tells of Sadie, a housewife in the Parkhead district of Glasgow who rediscovers her childhood love for the piano as a means of escaping her middle-aged misery.
Family
Archie Hind is survived by his wife of 56 years, Eleanor (née Slane), sons Calum and Martin, and daughters Sheila and Helen. A third son, Gavin, died in a road accident as a youth. Hind also had a number of grandchildren and great grandchildren. Throughout the family is a love of creativity such as writing, Art, film making and music. There is also a strong interest in political action tied into their working-class roots and during the 1960s and 1970s the family played a part in organizations. Eleanor Hind was a member of Glasgow Women Against the Bomb and the family participated in protests. Slane's family, the Zams, were Russian Jews who had fled the Pogroms in the Ukraine, arriving in Scotland between 1904–1912, and settling at first in Glasgow. Many references are made to Eleanor as the character 'Helen' in Archie Hind's 1966 novel 'The Dear Green Place', as well as her parents John and Sonia Slane (née Zam), whose characters are portrayed in the story as well off, intellectual, and disapproving. It was unusual for anyone to 'marry out' to a gentile (person of non-Jewish faith) and it was often met with opposition; even sometimes resulting in excommunication from a family. Given that the novel was largely biographical, most of these elements of the story are true to actual events.
Notes
References
- Linklater, John., Scottish Review of Books (Volume 4, No. 1), 2008
- Obituary: Archie Hind (Jackie Kemp, Guardian, Friday 29 February 2008)
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