Thank you for the excellent article by James Naughtie on Sunset Song (Loons and queans and orramen, G2, 25 November). He is right to be apprehensive as to whether the film about to be released can capture, as he says, “a love song for a landscape and language”. However, the publicity for the film and the article imply that there have never been any attempts to dramatise the novel – not true. So successful was the six-part television serial made by BBC Scotland in 1970 that it became a set text in Scottish schools, was shown on Masterpiece Theatre in America, and was repeated 10 years later as one of the most popular dramas to be transmitted. So, “the speak of the Mearns” was appreciated even in America.
Moira Armstrong
Television director
