Pictures & words

During the debate on all the amendments to the Post 16 Bill yesterday there was mention made of an allegedly "large portrait " of myself in my Holyrood office.

Like much that comes from the opposition in Scotland it was a wild exaggeration. There is a picture of a Holyrood magazine cover of me from some years back but it is hardly huge.

In any case this picture which sits on the book shelves in the same office is much more interesting.

It was taken at a Celtic Film & TV Festival awards dinner in Inverness at some time in the. 1980s or early 90s. I am sitting between my old friend who ran the Festival after I had left, the late Duncan MacLeod and Sorley MacLean ,the greatest 20th century poet that Scotland produced. Next to him is Maire MacConghail , the daughter of that Irish women who is central to Sorley's great early work.