“I went to his flat and he sketched me. A few years later, I discovered I was going to be on the new mural. I can now go to the underground and see myself standing there with my brush as part of the story of the west end.” Allan is now retired but continues to make art.

“He invited me in to have a look around at his work but he never introduced himself,” Allan said. “It wasn’t until later I discovered who he was, and I would chat to him like with any of the other locals.” One day Gray asked Allan if he could draw him

One of the people Allan spoke to regularly & became a friend of was Gray, whose street he’d clean. Allan said he had no idea who Gray was but the paintbrushes in his window had caught his attention as he passed by, so the next time Allan saw him, he asked if he was an artist.

We posted recently about acquiring this tile for the archive which features Allan Richardson who kindly agreed to talk to us last week about how he got to know Alasdair and posed for him. Allan worked as a west end street cleaner for over 30 years, using his breaks to sketch

Timeline 28: 1982 - Following the breakout success of Lanark Alasdair joined with Liz Lochhead & Tom Leonard to perform a review for the Edinburgh Fringe. Lanark wins the Frederick Niven Award. The prize money was substantial, but Alasdair donated it all to the miners’ strike 💪🏽

RT @gem_ste: Quite simply the greatest novel ever written.

Alan debuted a section of the play earlier this year at our annual Gray Day event. 'When Billy Met Alasdair' July 31st - Aug 23rd (selected dates off in between) at the Scottish Storytelling Centre, tickets available via link in bio!

This August Alan Bissett will perform a new play at the Edinburgh Fringe, 'When Billy met Alasdair’ - commissioned by AGA & @GlasgowComedy, which explores an imagined conversation the pair might have had, inspired by the George Oliver photograph which hangs in the archive.

Timeline 27: 1981 - LANARK .After multiple decades of writing and many rejections ‘Lanark’, Gray’s magnum opus is eventually published by Canongate. An instant critical and commercial success, Alasdair’s debut is now considered to be a classic of Scottish and postmodern fiction.

We are always looking to grow so get in touch if you’d like to help us! info@thealasdairgrayarchive.org.

Did you know that the 5,000 items that came from Alasdair’s home are owned by the Gray Estate & since 2021 AGA has been growing our own collection to 3,5000 items making the total collection of 8,500 items the SINGLE LARGEST COLLECTION of Gray’s work WORLDWIDE!.

Delighted to report we have recently acquired this unique tile made for Alasdair’s SPT Hillhead Underground mural. This was a complicated & expensive process so there weren’t multiples made of the sections, making acquiring this for our growing collection all the more special!

Also in this year his completed manuscript for Lanark is rejected, deemed as ‘too long’. ‘The Comedy of the White Dog’ is published by the Print Studio Press, copies at AGA include a redesign featuring a white dog that Gray would later use as his symbol for corporate greed.

He also begins working as ‘City Recorder’. He was hired by Elspeth King for this role who was then Curator at the People’s Palace. His role was to document a rapidly changing Glasgow, Alasdair would go on to describe this as ‘the pleasantest steady job of my life’.

Without the support of Francis Head to sell his plays, who’d died the previous year, Gray found himself in financial difficulties. Due to this & his friendship with the Chip’s owner, Colin Clydesdale, Gray offered to paint a series of murals in exchange for free meals.

Timeline 26: 1977 - A busy year for Gray with a mural commission and his most stable period of employment as the ‘City Recorder’. He begins working on the Ubiquitous Chip mural in an up and coming west end eatery that was experimenting with Scottish/European fusion cuisine.

Timeline 25: In 1976 Francis Head, Alasdair’s literary agent, dies. He secured commissions & his death was a serious blow both personally & professionally for Gray. Item AGA3.4.275, in our collection is a typed treatment with written directions Gray wrote for a tv drama.

BOOK NOW - 25 spaces for PGR researchers for a FREE WORKSHOP with @rodgeglass & @GraySorcha supported by @sgsah & @UniStrathclyde . 🗓️ 16.08.25 10am-2pm. 📍AGA. - Support for travel and access costs. - Lunch included. 🎫 booking essential via info@thealasdairgrayarchive.org

Huge thanks to @dr_cole_collins who visited us last week to offer advice & insights to our curatorial assistant Holly Rennie Brown as they develop their curated ‘The City’ project. Cole is an art historian, editor, lecturer, researcher & curator based in Glasgow.

Thanks to our curatorial assistant Holly Rennie Brown for leading another successful tour of the collection yesterday, was especially special to welcome our friend Diego Gentini joining us all the way from Buenos Aires!. #alasdairgray .#thealasdairgrayarchive