Uploaded February 2014 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Here's a virtual movie of the brilliant Scots poet and prolific literary biographer G S Fraser reading his short,but seemingly very apt little poem mocking the mixed fortunes of Scotland at this momentous time as Scotland considers its future should it unwisely in my humble opinion vote to become independent from the UK "The Good Times Gone"
George Sutherland Fraser (8 November 1915 -- 3 January 1980) was a Scottish poet, literary critic and academic.Fraser was born in Glasgow, Scotland, later moving with his family to Aberdeen. He attended the University of St. Andrews.
During World War II he served in the British Army in Cairo and Eritrea. He was published as a poet in Salamander, a Cairo literary magazine. At the same time he was involved with the New Apocalyptics group, writing an introductory essay for the anthology The White Horseman, and formulating as well as anyone did the idea that they were successors to surrealism.
After the war he became a prominent figure in London's literary circles, working as a journalist and critic. Together with his wife Paddy he made friends with a gamut of literary figures, from the intellectual leader William Empson to the eccentric John Gawsworth. He worked with Ian Fletcher to have Gawsworth's Collected Poems (1949) published. His direction was that of the traditional man of letters (soon to become extinct).
In 1948, Fraser contributed an essay entitled "A Language by Itself" to a biblio-symposium honouring the sixtieth birthday of T. S. Eliot. Drawing comparisons with John Donne, he praised the poet's profound refreshment (particularly in The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock) of the English poetic tongue, together with his subtle facility for transitional verse and his potent effect on the poetic youth; but, more importantly for present purposes, he also confessed, "I am not a very original writer myself; I am lost, on the whole, without a convention of some sort [...]."[1]
In 1949 he accepted the job of replacing Edmund Blunden as Cultural Adviser to the UK Liaison Mission in Tokyo. This ended badly when he suffered a breakdown in 1951 while in Japan. Subsequently he was much less the poet than the all-purpose writer.
He became a lecturer at the University of Leicester in 1959, where he was an inspiring teacher, remaining there until retirement in 1979.
Kind Regards
Jim Clark
All rights are reserved on this video recording copyright Jim Clark 2014
Here's a virtual movie of the brilliant Scots poet and prolific literary biographer G S Fraser reading his short,but seemingly very apt little poem mocking the mixed fortunes of Scotland at this momentous time as Scotland considers its future should it unwisely in my humble opinion vote to become independent from the UK "The Good Times Gone"
George Sutherland Fraser (8 November 1915 -- 3 January 1980) was a Scottish poet, literary critic and academic.Fraser was born in Glasgow, Scotland, later moving with his family to Aberdeen. He attended the University of St. Andrews.
During World War II he served in the British Army in Cairo and Eritrea. He was published as a poet in Salamander, a Cairo literary magazine. At the same time he was involved with the New Apocalyptics group, writing an introductory essay for the anthology The White Horseman, and formulating as well as anyone did the idea that they were successors to surrealism.
After the war he became a prominent figure in London's literary circles, working as a journalist and critic. Together with his wife Paddy he made friends with a gamut of literary figures, from the intellectual leader William Empson to the eccentric John Gawsworth. He worked with Ian Fletcher to have Gawsworth's Collected Poems (1949) published. His direction was that of the traditional man of letters (soon to become extinct).
In 1948, Fraser contributed an essay entitled "A Language by Itself" to a biblio-symposium honouring the sixtieth birthday of T. S. Eliot. Drawing comparisons with John Donne, he praised the poet's profound refreshment (particularly in The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock) of the English poetic tongue, together with his subtle facility for transitional verse and his potent effect on the poetic youth; but, more importantly for present purposes, he also confessed, "I am not a very original writer myself; I am lost, on the whole, without a convention of some sort [...]."[1]
In 1949 he accepted the job of replacing Edmund Blunden as Cultural Adviser to the UK Liaison Mission in Tokyo. This ended badly when he suffered a breakdown in 1951 while in Japan. Subsequently he was much less the poet than the all-purpose writer.
He became a lecturer at the University of Leicester in 1959, where he was an inspiring teacher, remaining there until retirement in 1979.
Kind Regards
Jim Clark
All rights are reserved on this video recording copyright Jim Clark 2014
