Angus Lindsay Ritchie Calder (5 February 1942 — 5 June 2008) was a Scottish academician, writer, historian, educator and literary editor with a background in English literature, politics and cultural studies.
He read English literature at King's College, Cambridge, and wrote a doctorate at the University of Sussex, on politics in the United Kingdom during World War II. His book, The People's War: Britain 1939-1945, was published in 1969.
He became a ubiquitous figure on the Scottish literary scene, writing essays and articles, books on Byron and Eliot, and working as editor of collections of poetry and prose. He also wrote introductions to new publications of such diverse works as Great Expectations, Walter Scott's Old Mortality, T. E. Lawrence's Seven Pillars of Wisdom, Evelyn Waugh's Sword of Honour trilogy and Boswell's The Life of Samuel Johnson.
In 1981 he published Revolutionary Empire (1981), a study of three centuries of imperial development by English speakers to the end of the 18th century. Revolving Culture: Notes from the Scottish Republic is a collection of essays on Scottish topics which expressed itself through the writings of such figures as Burns and Scott and in gestures of realpolitik such as the repression of "Jacobins" during the French Revolution. In 1984 Calder helped to set up the Scottish Poetry Library in Edinburgh and served as its first convener. He also worked as an editor of Hugh MacDiarmid's prose.
The Myth of The Blitz (1991) argued that received ideas of the civilian population's reaction to the bombing of London still reflected wartime propaganda. Calder examined how the German bombings generated ideas and images of plucky and stoical suffering and resistance that defined post-war Britain's sense of itself; but it also showed that the "chirpy Cockney", "all pull together" stereotypes were partly propaganda which hid the reality of an inequality of suffering due to deep social divisions, and concealed unheroic stories of opportunistic looting and rape.
A nationalist and socialist, he moved from the Scottish National Party (SNP) to the Scottish Socialist Party, and though he cherished the Scottish republican spirit, he sought to challenge some of the popular myths surrounding the country's sense of national identity. In Revolving Culture: Notes from a Scottish republic (1992) he described the development, during the early stages of the Union with England, of an "intellectual republic" forged by a combination of insularity and lack of English interest in Scottish affairs.
In 1997 he edited Time to Kill ... the Soldier's Experience of War in the West 1939-1945 with Paul Addison; Scotlands of the Mind (2002); Disasters and Heroes: On War, Memory and Representation (2004); and Gods, Mongrels and Demons: 101 Brief but Essential Lives (2004), a collection of potted biographies of "creatures who have extended my sense of the potentialities, both comic and tragic, of human nature". He had always published verse and won a Gregory Award for his poetry in 1967.
Questions of Scottish national identity assumed growing importance in the 1980s, and Calder became active in the debate. Although his upbringing in England had inculcated a love of English literature and of cricket, during the Thatcherite 1980s he found it impossible to support the English cricket team.
A distinctive "Scottish social ethos" informed the activities of prominent Scots in the years of Empire, when they had invested heavily in the concept of Britishness, though he felt that the Scots had meddled much more overweeningly with the English sense of identity than the English ever did with the Scots'. He was delighted to discover that the game had been introduced to Sri Lanka by a Scot.
Calder spent much of his career in Edinburgh, where he became a conspicuous figure on the Scottish literary scene as a published poet and commentator on Scottish culture and politics. Calder taught all over the world, lecturing in literature at several African universities and serving from 1981 to 1987 as co-editor of the Journal of Commonwealth Literature.
He was the son of Lord Ritchie Calder (1906-1982), a noted science writer, Humanist and pacifist. His first wife was Jenni, née Jennifer Daiches, daughter of David Daiches, with whom Calder collaborated on a book about Sir Walter Scott in 1969.
In 1971, after the publication of The People's War, the Calders moved to Edinburgh, where he published Russia Discovered,a survey of 19th-century Russian fiction in 1976, and, three years later, became staff tutor in Arts with the Open University. The Calders had two daughters - Rachel and Gowan - and a son, Gideon. His first marriage ended in 1982; he married Kate Kyle in 1986, with whom he had a son, Douglas, born 1989. He took early retirement from the Open University in 1995, his life increasingly shaped by a long-term alcohol dependency.
The People’s War: Britain, 1939-45. London: Jonathan Cape, 1969.
Scott, with Jenni Calder. London: Evans, 1969.
Russia Discovered: Nineteenth Century Fiction from Pushkin to Chekhov. London: Heinemann, 1976.
Revolutionary Empire: The Rise of the English-Speaking Empires from the Fifteenth Century to the 1780s. London: Jonathan Cape, 1981.
T. S. Eliot. Brighton: Harvester, 1987.
Byron. Buckingham: Open University Press, 1987.
The Myth of the Blitz. London: Jonathan Cape, 1990.
Revolving Culture. London: I.B. Tauris, 1994.
Scotlands of the Mind. Edinburgh: Luath Press, 2002.
Disasters and Heroes: On War, Memory and Representation. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2004.
Gods, Mongrels and Demons: 101 Brief but Essential Lives. London: Bloomsbury, 2004.
Poetry
Waking in Waikato. Edinburgh: diehard, 1997.
Horace in Tollcross: Eftir some odes of Q. H. Flaccus. Newtyle: Kettilonia, 2000.
Colours of Grief. Nottingham: Shoestring, 2002.
Dipa’s Bowl. London: Aark Arts, 2004.
Sun Behind the Castle: Edinburgh Poems. Edinburgh: Luath Press, 2004.
Edited collections: poetry and prose
Britain at War, 1942. London: Jonathan Cape, 1973.
Writers in East Africa', with Andrew Gurr. Nairobi: East African Literature, 1974.
Summer Fires: New Poetry of Africa, with Jack Mapanje and Cosmo Pieterse. London: Heinemann, 1983.
Englische Lyrik 1900-1980, with Gabriele Bok. Leipzig: Reclam, 1983.
Speak for Yourself: A Mass Observation Anthology, with Dorothy Sheridan. London: Jonathan Cape, 1984.
Byron and Scotland: Radical or Dandy?, London: Edinburgh University Press, 1989.
Selected Poetry by Robert Burns, with William Donnelly. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1991.
David Livingstone and the Victorian Encounter with Africa, with John M. Mackenzie and Jeanne Cannizzo. London: National Portrait Gallery, 1996.
Time to Kill: The Soldier’s Experience of War in the West, 1939-45, with Paul Addison. London: Pimlico, 1997.
The Rauchle Tongue: Selected Essays, Journalism and Interviews by Hugh MacDiarmid, with Glen Murray and Alan Riach (3 vols). Manchester: Carcanet, 1997-98.
Wars. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1999.
Selected Poems by Robert Louis Stevenson. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1999.
The Souls of the Dead are Taking the Best Seats: 50 World Poets on War, with Beth Junor. Edinburgh: Luath Press, Edinburgh, 2005.
Introductions
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1965.
Faces at the Crossroads ed. Chris Wanjala. Nairobi: East African Literature Bureau, 1971.
Old Mortality by Walter Scott. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1975.
The Seven Pillars of Wisdom by T. E. Lawrence. Ware: Wordsworth, 1999.
The Life of Samuel Johnson by James Boswell. Ware: Wordsworth, 1999.
Sword of Honour by Evelyn Waugh. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2001.
The Devil's Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce, illustrated by Ralph Steadman. London: Bloomsbury, 2003.
The Thrie Estaitis by David Lindsay, ed. Alan Spence. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2003.
Sugar-Coated Pill: Selected Poems by Mahmood Jamal. Edinburgh: Word Power, 2007.
