What would Alasdair Gray think of Poor Things?

It’s awards season in the movie industry and the film Poor Things, based on the novel by the late Scottish writer and painter Alasdair Gray, is flying high. To date, it has received more than 180 nominations in various award categories, including 11 Oscars and 11 BAFTAs, and has chalked up 51 wins.

What Alasdair would have made of the film version of Poor Things, I don’t know. He could be a hard man to please. It has certainly brought his extraordinary imagination to an entirely new audience. I imagine Alasdair would have disapproved of the film leaving its Scottish roots behind (although Willem Dafoe has an odd stab at a Scottish accent). But the film does full justice to Alasdair’s dazzling vision and I can only think he would have thoroughly approved of Emma Stone’s gleefully fearless portrayal of Bella Baxter.

I met Alasdair Gray when I was a student at Glasgow University, around 1969, when I rang the doorbell of his West End flat to ask him to come and read some of his work for our literary society.