Mr J. Derrick McClure

Mr J. Derrick McClure, M.A. (Glasgow), M.Litt. (Edinburgh), retired in 2009 after over forty years in the Department of English, University of Aberdeen.

Publications include Why Scots Matters (Saltire Society, Edinburgh, 1988, revised 1997, third edition 2008), Scots and its Literature (edited collection of previously-published essays: Benjamins, Amsterdam, 1995), Language, Poetry and Nationhood (Tuckwell, Edinburgh, 2000), Doric: the Dialect of North-East Scotland in the Varieties of English Around the World series (Benjamins, Amsterdam, 2002), the chapter “English in Scotland” in the Cambridge History of the English Language (Vol. 5), and over a hundred articles on Scottish linguistic and literary topics in various journals, festschrifts and conference proceedings volumes. In 2009-10 Chairman of the Scottish Government’s Ministerial Advisory Group on the Scots Language, until 2009 Chairman of the Forum for Research in the Languages of Scotland and Ulster, and still member of the Scottish Parliamentary Cross-Party Group on the Scots Language, the Language Committee and the International Committee of the Association for Scottish Literary Studies, the Scottish Dictionaries Council and the steering committee of the National Library of Scotland’s Bibliography of Scottish Literature in Translation (BOSLIT). Until 2009 Editor of the annual journal Scottish Language. Recent and current research and publication principally on Scots as a medium for literary translation and Middle Scots poetic prosody. Translations include Scotland o Gael an Lawlander (Gairm Publications, Glasgow, 1996: Scots translations from contemporary Gaelic poetry), the Scots versions in Meas air Chrannaibh - Fruit on Brai(i)nches by Aonghas Pàdraig Caimbeul, Stornoway (Acair) 2007, Sangs tae Eimhir (from Sorley MacLean’s Dàin do Eimhir), Stornoway (Acair) 2011, Ailice’s Anters in Ferlielann (a North-East Doric version of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland), Cnoc Scéichin (Evertype) 2012, and translations from (among others) Cecco Angiolieri, Frédéric Mistral and Alfred Kolleritsch.  In 2002 awarded an MBE for services to Scottish culture.