Weeds, bugs and lichens must now thrill the imagination
In the summer of 1992, the Times sent me to Orkney to interview the poet George Mackay Brown. He was notoriously wary of media interest – perhaps the only author ever to have asked his doctor for anti-depressants when shortlisted for the Booker prize – and I could hardly get a word out of him. His council flat didn’t yield much either: a sofa, a table – a Formica surface which Brown cleared of crumbs after breakfast and then wrote on till lunchtime. But behind his rocking chair, a huge banner, embroidered in bright wools, blazed out across an otherwise monochrome room: O let them be left, wildness and wet
