Two pages of the fair copy Hugh MacDiarmid made of his poem 'A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle'.
No manuscripts of Hugh MacDiarmid's early published work survive. Kulgin Duval and Colin Hamilton put considerable effort into trying to locate the 'Drunk Man' manuscript, but failed.
Eventually they accepted — as did MacDiarmid — that it had probably been destroyed by the original publisher after lying unclaimed for some time.
In Colin's words: '… It seemed a great pity that there was no extant manuscript of this poem … and when asked MacDiarmid agreed to write out a fair copy.'
the 'Drunk Man' manuscript.
As this was to be a display item, Kulgin and Colin thought it suitable to have it in a designed binding, and asked Bernard Middleton to bind it for them. Colin says:
'He chose the paper on which the manuscript was written — of a suitable quality for binding' — and produced a sort of classical design, typical of him, in which the quality of binding is outstanding.'