Hugh MacDiarmid was born Christopher Murray Grieve in 1892 in Langholm, in the Scottish Borders. He started out as a journalist, working in Scotland and in Wales before joining the Royal Army Medical Corps on the outbreak of the First World War. MacDiarmid was an ardent believer in socialism, later communism, and he was a founding member of the Scottish National Party in 1928. His increasing literary reputation abroad allowed him to travel abroad in later years, including USSR and China. A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle was MacDiarmid's second poetry collection, published in 1926. His last 27 years were spent with his wife Valda near Biggar. He died in 1978.

Kenneth Buthlay (1926-2009) was one of the finest scholars and critics of modern Scottish literature, and an expert on Hugh MacDiarmid.