Loving Alasdair : the 39 years of my life with Alasdair Gray

The Author is a trained nurse andher medical knowledge and caring disposition helped form the bedrock of therelationship. It was a relationship that began in the early 1980s when MayHooper and Alasdair Gray met at a party in the West End of Glasgow and whenAlasdair Gray, clearly attracted by May Hooper’s striking good looks, asked ifhe could draw or paint her. At a following portrait session the two realisedthat they enjoyed each other’s company, that this was more than just anartist/model relationship and the friendship took off and was to last for 39years until Alasdair Gray’s death in 2019. Beneath the lust, the book tells stories of long walkstogether, of a visit to the Edinburgh Book Festival, of trips to the cinema, ofoutings to the Scottish countryside, of Alasdair Gray’s work on murals inGlasgow and in Dunfermline (when he was working with May Hooper’s partner,Robert, as his assistant). Conversations and events taking place in the courseof their times together are described, sometimes showing connections with booksto be written by Alasdair Gray. What is described is sometimes in the generalnature of personal friendships, sometimes out of the ordinary, sometimesbizarre and eccentric, always entertaining and always throwing light on thecharacter of this Scottish artist. Although when they first met theyeach lived in different parts of the city of Glasgow, quite distant from eachother, they were later to become near-neighbours in the West End of the city. The memoir describes the events which led to Alasdair Gray’s hospitalisationand how May Hooper, of her own volition and acting out of deep-seated love andadmiration, became the person who organised his home care when he was confinedto a wheelchair. The memoir alludes to Alasdair Gray’s relationships with hisown next-of-kin and describes how May Hooper was to take on what was in effectan unofficial power of attorney to ensure that his final years were spent inthe way that he himself wanted.