Robert McLellan

Robert McLellan OBE (1907–1985) was a Scottish Renaissance dramatist, writer and poet 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 modern exponents of fine prose in the language.

In addition to his literary career, McLellan saw active service during World War II, 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.

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 he 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 work with Curtain in mind, but his last production with the company, Portrait of an Artist, this time written 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.

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.

The war years would entail a significant interruption in McLellan's developing career as a playwright.

By now a first-time father, McLellan enlisted with the Royal Artillery in 1940.

He served for the next five years as an anti-aircraft gunner in defence around the British Isles (outwith Scotland) and on the Faroe Islands.

Having set drama aside, he turned instead to poetry and short story, modes of writing which he found more conducive within the context of military life.

McLellan conceived Flouers o Edinburgh first and foremost as a professional vehicle for Bridie's recently founded Citizens, but in the later 1940s the two men began to have differences.

McLellan refused permission to tour Jamie the Saxt to London after Bridie insisted on license to make re-writes.

During his absence, the war years had seen developments in the Scottish theatre scene, such as the formation of Unity Players in 1941, and James Bridie's founding of Glasgow Citizens in 1943, so McLellan perhaps returned with better hopes for a more professionalised institutional culture for new Scottish work.

In any event, he hit the ground running.

It was also during his years in the services, in circa 1943, while stationed 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 writer engaged in a parallel effort to forge new literary use for his own native Faroese.

But during this time, the playwright had never lost sight of his principal career.

As soon as hostilities ended in May 1945, while still in uniform but freed of his duties, McLellan straightway composed the verse drama The Carlin Moth during the fortnight after VE Day, by his own account, in the 'hot attic' of a mansion near Southwold on the Suffolk coast where his unit was stationed at the time.

By combining the poetry with his drama, this resumption of his stage work had also added a new mode to his writing.

In the event, The Bogle (later renamed Torwatletie), would wait until 1946 for its debut production.

After demobilisation in 1946, McLellan returned to Arran.

That same year, the newly composed Carlin Moth was produced on radio; the debut production of Torwatletie, completed five years previously but kept on ice until his return from the war, was mounted by Unity (subsequently taken in 1947 to the first "Edinburgh Fringe", then on to London’s Embassy Theatre in 1948); and McLellan himself was already embarked on composing his next major play, The Flouers o Edinburgh.

He also by this time had The Cailleach, a short Scots play with a more sombre tone, under his belt.

Then, in 1948, Bridie's Citizens rejected Flouers.

Although Unity once again mounted the debut production, they did not achieve the same success as with Torwatletie, and perhaps it was the radio production in 1951, a few months after Bridie's death, in which the play was finally "discovered".

Either way, despite the initial resistance from Citizens, Flouers o Edinburgh went on to become one of McLellan's most popular and frequently revived works.

In the early 1960s he served briefly 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 spanning over thirty years of crucial development for Scottish theatrical self-expression.

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.