Leader: Gray rewrites the record books

ALWAYS pictured looking chaotically attired and with a splendidly curmudgeonly appearance, Alasdair Gray, one of Scotland’s greatest living writers, wonderfully lived up to his image by chaotically and curmudgeonly failing to turn up to receive the Saltire Society’s book of the year prize. There was no explanation, indeed, he hadn’t even accepted it in the first place.

Perhaps Mr Gray’s efforts at composing a reply had been afflicted by the difficulty of starting to write a novel, described in Lanark, the book for which he first won the Saltire Prize in 1982: “After a few more words he scored out what he had written and started again. He did this four times, each time remembering an earlier event than the one he described”.

But no, what has emerged was variously a noble tale of an author who, having received one prize, decreed he would receive no more as they should go to younger and more struggling writers. Then it was a more mundane but obscure account of whether he needed the money or not, with a wonderfully quixotic diversion involving a publisher e-mailing an author who shuns such modern contrivances. Finally he relented and accepted the accolade – less a curmudgeon, still magnificently chaotic and definitely a national treasure.