[1][2] "At a time when the idea of myth was current in the Scottish literary world and other writers were forging theirs out of the facts and spirit of rural life, Blake took the iron and grease and the pride of the skilled worker to create one for industrial Scotland.
[1][6] At this period he had contact with Red Clydeside through his dramatic works, sitting on the council of the Scottish National Players.
[1] There he was an editor of John O'London's Weekly, replacing Sidney Dark as subeditor and writing a number of columns, to 1928; and then edited the Strand Magazine.
[13] Thomson's 1927 book Caledonia broached the "condition of Scotland" question that preoccupied Blake and other Scottish intellectuals into the 1930s.
This was despite some reservations on the part of Andrew Stewart, Scottish Programme Director, who thought Blake's nationalist views were too overt, and would have preferred Eric Linklater.
[25] Blake died in Glasgow's Southern General Hospital on 29 August 1961, survived by his wife Eliza Malcolm Lawson (Ellie), whom he had married in 1923.
[29] Hugh Macdiarmid discussed in 1926 a "new Glasgow school" of novelists, listing figures of whom only Catherine Carswell attained the same sort of stature as Blake.
[42][31] "Blake's thesis essentially is that the history of the Clyde is a glorious tale of great ships, born out of traditions of craftsmanship and mechanical genius unrivalled anywhere in the world.