Profession: poet

Vaché met Breton in a neurological ward, where both worked during WWI. Breton wrote four introductory essays to Vaché’s published letters to Breton and others, and was much influenced by him.

Gibbon was a close friend: they collaborated on a polemical book about Scotland. Trocchi had a famous spat with him at a conference organised by Calder, MacDiarmid calling him “cosmopolitan scum”, but they wrote to one another and became unlikely friends. Pound and he met only once, but got on very well; MacDiarmid said that he loved Pound. Buchan was a colleague, Yeats was met in Ireland, while Eliot turned down as uncommercial a long poem MacDiarmid submitted for publication. MacDiarmid described the 18-year-old Finlay as “very delightful”, but later turned against him.

Meyerbeer was his cousin and benefactor. Hegel taught him in Berlin. Schlegel also taught him, and encouraged his writing. Whilst a student, he had an interview with Goethe, amusingly described in later years. In Paris, he frequently met his former teacher Hegel, the Humboldt brothers, and Schleiermacher. Liszt, Berlioz, Dumas, Nerval, Chopin, Balzac, Hugo and Sand were other Paris acquaintances. Marx also knew him at this time, read his poetry and corresponded with him. Engels translated some of his work into English, and visited him when paralysis confined him to bed.

Forster was a friend, and visited when he was ambassador in London and writing at 3 a.m. Seferis corresponded with Eliot and (20 years after first being influenced by him) met him: he said he was thinking of giving up his diplomatic job for interfering too much with the subconscious. Valaoritis’ 20-year correspondence with him became a best-selling book; the poets Palamas and Sikelianos were also good friends. Miller gave him his diary as a present when he had to leave Greece, and Durrell wrote enthustically about going to see him at Katsimbalis’s and “giving modern lit a bashing” with them.