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When Alex Salmond's office rang Liz Lochhead's Glasgow flat 10 days ago telling her to expect a call from the First Minister later that day, she knew she was on the cusp of becoming Scotland's national poet, or Makar. Sitting in her Hyndland flat, she reveals that between those two phone calls she considered turning the role down.
"Because," she says, "I'm a private person." Last June, Lochhead's husband Tom Logan died following a short illness. She has never spoken publicly about the loss, but now says it informed her decision to eventually say yes.
"If they had asked me such a question any earlier I would have said no," she says. "I wouldn't have had the strength or the courage. Whereas this time, I thought I still feel hellish, but I have to work. I know that is what is going to get me through this. So I knew Tom would have said, 'you say yes, obviously'. I would have asked him. I would have phoned him up. He would have been on his way home from work on his bike. And I just felt,...