ANGUS Calder, one of Scotland's leading polymaths, died in Edinburgh yesterday aged 66 after a brief illness.
A writer, poet and historian, his books changed interpretations of the 18th-century origins of the British Empire.
Anything but a narrow specialist, however, he was equally at home writing about modern British and African history – particularly Br
itain in the Second World War.
In 1991, his book The Myth of the Blitz controversially argued, using evidence from the Mass Observation archives, that propagandistic images of heroic resistance masked a hitherto unsuspected amount of looting and rape.
The son of leading Scottish science writer, peace activist and academic (Lord) Peter Ritchie-Calder, he studied English at Cambridge and was a widely respected literary critic and cultural commentator. His post-graduate studies, however, led him towards modern history: his 1969 book, The People's War, was for many years the definitive book on Britain in the Second World War.
In 1971, he moved to live in Scotland, where he gained a reputation as an inspirational Open University lecturer and one of the finest minds in the country.
As well as writing books on poets such as Byron and Eliot and editing the prose of Hugh McDiarmid, he was an award-winning poet himself, with four collections to his name. In 1984, he was the first convener of the Scottish Poetry Library.
He was married twice, first to Jenni Daiches, with whom he had two daughters and a son, and then to Kate Kyle, with whom he had a son.
The full article contains 261 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
