Literary Scotland

The Kingdom of Fife837 the university of st andrews 23The University of St Andrews, Britain’s third oldest university, rejoices in having the whole ofthe historic town as its campus, ‘a place eminently adapted to study and education’ accordingto Dr Johnson. Notable alumni have included the poets William Dunbar, Gavin Douglas,Sir David Lyndsay, George Buchanan, James Graham Marquis of Montrose and RobertFergusson. Dying tragically young, Fergusson hilariously satirised ‘the superb treat’ withwhich the dignitaries of the university honoured Dr Johnson’s visit in 1773. Another of itsdistinguished graduates, the folklore scholar Andrew Lang celebrated in nostalgic verse ‘a littlecity worn and grey’, and also less solemnly the rigours of its golf links. He is buried among thegraves surrounding the ruins of the cathedral. In the mid-1930s, St Andrews was a centrallocation for the writers associated with the Scottish Literary Renaissance: James H. Whytewas a wealthy American who edited the key periodical of the time, The Modern Scot, owned andran the Abbey Bookshop at 3 South Street and an art gallery in the former coastguard buildingat 5–11 North Street. The composer F.G. Scott, poet Edwin Muir and his wife the novelistWilla Muir, art critic and cultural historian John Tonge and poet Hugh MacDiarmid wereall intermittent residents at this time. In the late twentieth and early twenty-first century, acluster of poets has been centred at the university, including John Burnside, Robert Crawford,Douglas Dunn, Kathleen Jamie and Don Paterson.Above St Salvator’s College, University of St Andrews.