1892-1978

Christopher Grieve did not start using the pseudonym Hugh MacDiarmid until 1922, when he was 30. In 1915 he was 23 and working as a journalist for the Forfar Review in Forfarshire, but still retained close links with his birthplace Langholm.

His father was a postman who died in 1911 from pneumonia, aged 47. His mother was a caretaker for Langholm Library and lived in the library building for two or three more years. Christopher gave the library as his address in 1913 when he got involved in a spat in the local newspaper.

Both James and Christopher were active in the South United Free Church, Christopher being a Sunday School teacher in his teens. The minister Rev Thomas Cairncross was his literary mentor but they fell out later over Christopher’s public criticism of Cairncross.

Christopher wrote a number of poems in 1914-1915 for the local newspaper, signed ‘C.M.G.’ or ‘C. M. Grieve’, some of which were published only in 2014. (See, for example,

He had joined the Territorial section of the Royal Army Medical Corps in 1908 and, although initially ambivalent about war service, decided to report for duty in July 1915 at Hillsborough barracks, Sheffield.

From 1916 to 1918 he served as a sergeant in Salonica, Greece, returning to the UK after repeated bouts of malaria. He married Margaret Skinner, who he had met when he worked in Fife, and was then assigned to France until being demobilised in 1919.

Born	Langholm, 1892
Parents	James (1863-1911), Elizabeth Graham (1856-1934)
Siblings	Andrew (1894-1972)
Marriages	1) Margaret (‘Peggy’) Skinner (1897-1962), divorced. 2) Valda Rowland (1906-1989).
Children	By first wife: Christine, Walter (1928-2011). By second wife: James (1932-1995).
Died	Edinburgh, 1978, aged 86