Interviews of Alastair Reid aged 86

Biographical interview with poet and translator Alastair Reid (b.1926) who speaks about his childhood in Whithorn and his relationship to the community and the region. Alastair describes his childhood as the son of a local minister and says he was heartbroken when his father was moved to a ministry in Selkirk when Alastair was only 6 years old. He subsequently returned throughout his life, both in childhood and adulthood. Notable visits include helping with the harvest at Broughton Mains farm where he worked alongside Italian POWs. From early childhood he recalled that there was very little money used. After learning about money at school, he recalled asking his father what a pound looked like. His father took down a book and from it produced a pound note which Alastair copied and which was then returned to its place. For Alastair, people were the economy in his childhood, not money.

Alastair talks about the changes he has seen over his lifetime, remarking that Whithorn seems almost like a museum to him. When he visited during the War, it was to find a community where food was plentiful and the gloom which was elsewhere was missing from the local area. Other subjects covered include: going to church; local families of note; gypsies and tinkers (whitesmiths) and other local people who travelled; transportation before the railway and train travel; community life; poaching; recreation; language; tourism; books, publishing and Wigtown as the book town; chores about the house when he was a child and what the area was like during World War 2.