TIMES PAST FIVE FACTS ABOUT Archie Hind
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1Archie Hind was the author of what is considered one of the finest books ever written about Glasgow – but he is less well-known than the likes of many who claimed him as an influence – James Kelman, William McIlvanney and Alasdair Gray included. Born in June 1928 in Dalmarnock, Archie discovered the translation of an old Gaelic name for his home city, during his research – The Dear Green Place – and that is what he named his ground-breaking novel.
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The Dear Green Place is a passionate account of a working-class man’s desire to become a writer. It was published in 1966 and won four prestigious literary prizes. It has been reprinted many times and was most recently published in a new edition with a fragment of his uncompleted second book, Fur Sadie.
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Archie grew up in the East End with his father, a locomotive stoker, and his stern Church of Scotland grandmother. His mother and baby sister had left but were reconciled a decade later. He attended Riverside High in Carntyne and left at 14 to work as a clerk. After enrolling in an evening class in literature at Glasgow University, he decided to study full time.
4Archie married Eleanor Slane, the daughter of a Jewish emigrant from the Crimea in 1952 and the couple had five children, one of whom, a son, sadly died in a car crash aged just 23. Their home in Govan and their flat on Bath Street became magnets for writers and artists.
5In 1968, Archie became part of the Easterhouse project, a privately funded youth project set up partly with money from the popular singer Frankie Vaughan at a time when Easterhouse suffered from gang violence. He went on to write 10 plays, but no scripts survived. He died in February 2008.