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Don Roberto

Factual: Life Stories

Billy Kay celebrates the fabulous life of RB Cunninghame Graham

Billy Kay celebrates the fabulous life of RB Cunninghame Graham, one of the most influential Scots of the 19th and 20th centuries

Don Roberto: The Adventure Begins - Part 1

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The Adventure Begins - Part 1

20/02/2018

BBC Radio Scotland - Don Roberto, The Adventure Begins - Part 1

Billy Kay celebrates the fabulous life of RB Cunninghame Graham.

Billy Kay celebrates the fabulous life of RB Cunninghame Graham, one of the most influential Scots of the 19th and 20th centuries.

Billy Kay introduces us to the fabulous life of RB Cunninghame Graham, one of the most influential Scots of the 19th and 20th centuries. Writer,gaucho and politician, Don Roberto was a Scottish romantic hero whose influence extended across the world, but at home he was also a founding father of both the Scottish Labour Party and the SNP.

The model for characters in George Bernard Shaw's plays "Arms and the Man" and "Captain Brassbound's Conversion". his friends included Oscar Wilde, Henry James and Joseph Conrad. The latter contrasted his own enclosed life compared to the flamboyant exoticism of Don Roberto - "When I think of him, I feel as though I had lived all my life in a dark hole, without seeing or knowing anything". If ever a major Scottish figure deserves re-discovery it is surely the life and legend of RB Cunninghame Graham.

The Adventure Begins is a new programme made by Billy to complement his ground breaking 4 part archive series made in 1999. Since then, Cunninghame Graham's profile has increased but the vast majority of Scots remain ignorant of his enormous contribution to the politics and culture of contemporary Scotland.

Contributors to the new programme include the weans of Gartmore Primary School and their teacher Miss Falconer; Dr Carla Sassi of the University of Verona; Professor Joe Farrell of the Cunninghame Graham Society; John C McIntyre, editor of The Cunninghame Graham Collection, writer Chris Dolan who presented the television documentary Don Roberto in 2008; Chris Dixon, of Dublin Institute of Technology. Lachlan Munro, editor of An Eagle in a Henhouse - Selected Political Speeches and Writings of RB Cunninghame Graham, former SNP MSP Rob Gibson and Labour Party activist Gerry McGarvey.

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