A Job at the B.B.C: Some Personal Reminiscences by Joseph Macleod (GT41)

Published 1947: First Edition / Hardcover / Very Good Condition

Original red cloth with gilt titles on the spine. 255 very clean and bright slightly age-toned pages, first free page missing. Boards slightly rubbed and faded with time, bumped on the corners and frayed along the edge consistent with age but remain firm and intact. A very scarce first edition. (GT41)

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Joseph Macleod (1903–1984) was an English poet, actor, playwright, theatre director, theatre historian and BBC newsreader during the Second World War. After the war he returned to his native Scotland where he broadcasted regularly as actor, commentator and narrator.

In 1938, Macleod became an announcer and newsreader at the BBC. By the Second World War news readers were anonymous, although the fact of his news-reading was mentioned in the Radio Times of 22 March 1940, where he was listed along with the three other regular newsreaders in London — Frank Philips, Alan Howland, and T. Alvar Lidell. By this time announcer and newsreader roles were separated.

In 1943 it was reported at a Board of Governors meeting that Macleod had been withdrawn from news reading "because of repeated failure to conform to instructions about the manner of his announcing". A few months later, however, it was agreed that there was no objection to him being used for news reading, "on his merits, and as opportunity occurred".

At the same time he began to write and publish poetry under the pseudonym "Adam Drinan". These poems dealt with the Highland clearances, and described the Scottish landscape in rich detail, using Gaelic assonances. He was one of the first to succeed in rendering the qualities of Gaelic poetry in English. These poems and verse plays won praise from many Scottish writers – Naomi Mitchison, Norman MacCaig, Edwin Muir, Compton Mackenzie, George Bruce, Sydney Goodsir Smith, Maurice Lindsay, and many more.

Macleod's "Drinan" poetry was in much demand in both England and Scotland, as well as Ireland and the US. Editors such as Tambimuttu (of Poetry (London)), Maurice Lindsay (Poetry (Scotland)) and John Lehmann (Hogarth Press and New Writing), all requested and published many of his poems in the 1940s. The "Drinan" pseudonym was not publicly revealed until 1953, after which Hugh MacDiarmid commented it was "so long one of the best-kept secrets of the contemporary literary world".

https://wiki.scotlandonair.com/wiki/Joseph_Macleod

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