Publisher's Synopsis
Sidney Goodsir Smith has still to achieve full recognition as the inventive, witty and rumbustious poet and writer he was. He is best known for his poetry in Scots, for tenderly sensual love lyrics, and his play "The Wallace", precursor perhaps to "Braveheart" - and more historically accurate. He is a poet of his beloved city, Edinburgh, celebrating its unique atmosphere and vitality as well as its more seamy undersides with characteristic humanity and rollicking humour. His work as an artist and art critic is less known, but he painted many watercolours, often rejoicing in the spectacular land and waterscapes of Wester Ross, in and around Plockton where he spent much time. Least known of all are his drawings, pen and ink, felt pen and pencil - whatever was to hand - gathered together here in this unique volume. Drawn from childhood through to later years, they show his love of shape, his flair for affectionate but terse perspicacious caricature, especially in drawings from a European trip in the early thirties through Italy, France and Germany, where the iron hand of the Nazi regime was becoming visibly present. But perhaps most striking of all are the illustrations to his sequence of love lyrics, "Under the Eildon Tree". The volume presents his drawings, set alongside the poems they relate to.
