An internationally renowned Scottish writer who bequeathed his library to the French town where he lived for more than forty years on the proviso that his former home be retained as ‘a place of inspiration, a place of life and thought’ has had his wishes overturned by the local municipality. Glasgow born poet and academic Kenneth White, who died in 2023 aged 87, also donated EURO100,000 (£86,277.81) to the council to enable his wishes to create a Kenneth White Residence for Artists and Writers.
The Trébeurden Council in the Côtes-d'Armor department of Brittany in north western France now has plans to sell the house along with the vast collection of books it currently contains. At a meeting in January this year, Trébeurden’s mayor Bénédicte Boiron declared that “The most likely future of the house will be a sale…. A complete inventory will be carried out. Books can't stay in the house.”
This has prompted outrage amongst the international literary community, including scholars of his work in Scotland. A Change,org petition protesting the move currently stands at 2,046 signatures, while former Scottish Government Minister for Culture and current Chair of the Scottish Land Commission Michael Russell has written to Holyrood Culture Secretary Angus Robertson advocating an intervention.
As a poet and academic, White was the founding father of geopoetics, a holistic fusion of poetry, geography and philosophy. White coined the term based on his own travels, particularly in the Scottish Highlands. Since then, White’s work has had a huge influence on writing rooted in the environment, both in Scotland and internationally. In 1989, he founded the International Institute of Geopoetics, which now has centres all over the world.
"Norman Bissell, author and Director of the Scottish Centre for Geopoetics, said, “The geopoetics movement is thriving all over the world. Our Scottish Centre for Geopoetics is growing fast with members in eighteen different countries ranging from Australia to Kenya, the Faroe Isles to USA. There are now three geopoetics groups in Brazil as well as in Chile and many European countries.
“I stayed in the home of Kenneth and Marie-Claude White in Brittany many years ago, and would love to go back to use his vast library and archive there to learn even more about geopoetics. I'm sure many other writers and artists would do the same, so it would be tragic if this were not possible because the Trébeurden Council removed the library and sold off the house.”
Michael Russell points out how “White’s influence on Scottish thought has been hugely significant. Speaking personally, I will never forget his 2001 lecture at the Edinburgh Book Festival, called The Re-Mapping of Scotland. Geopolitics, which was created by him, is about connecting place to people and integrating creativity with our concern for the planet and he anticipated that what was then a ‘new’ Parliament would take forward that cause.
“By leaving his house and library to future generations in order to continue that work he made a gesture that has the potential to reap huge rewards here and across the continent. It is therefore very sad that the body charged with carrying out his wish now seems intent on reneging on it. It would be good to see the Scottish Government speak up for a man who was a vital symbol of Scottish Europeanism, and I have written to the Culture Secretary to request that he makes representations to the French Government and to the local authority in Brittany about the issue.”
Cairns Craig, Emeritus Professor at the University of Aberdeen and editor of four volumes of White’s collected works published by Edinburgh University Press, said that “Kenneth White put a great deal of time and effort in his final years to trying to ensure that his and his wife Mari-Claude’s home would remain a place of refuge and of creativity for art and artists.”
Craig called the move by Trébeurden Council“as far as one can tell from this distance, an outrage to the wishes of a man who was more famous in France than he was in Scotland, and who was, from the 1970s, one of the most influential figures on the French literary scene.”
In Craig’s view, White was “one of the most important creative forces to emerge from Scotland in the aftermath of the Second World War: no modern poet has written essays so powerfully about the place of poetry in the modern world and why it continues to matter.” Craig also pointed out that “White's was a career on an intellectually epic scale but rooted in a profound localism.”
White was born in 1936 in the Gorbals in Glasgow, and grew up in Fairlie, near Largs in Ayrshire. He studied at the University of Glasgow, then in Paris before returning to Glasgow in 1963 to lecture in French literature for four years. Disillusioned by the British literary scene, White returned to France, lecturing at the University of Bordeaux before being expelled due to his involvement in the student protests in May 1968. White went on to lecture at the University of Paris VII until 1983, before becoming chair of twentieth century poetics at Paris-Sorbonne.
In 2005, White delivered a series of lectures in Ullapool, Inverness and Kirkwall. These were published as On the Atlantic Edge. White held honorary doctorates from the University of Glssgow, University of Edinburgh and the Open University. He was made an honorary member of the Royal Scottish Academy, and was a visiting professor at the University of the Highlands and Islands Millennium Institute.
“I hope everyone who believes in respecting the wishes of a great Scottish writer will sign this petition,” says Bissell, “and that public opinion will convince the Trébeurden Council to retain his home as a residence for writers and artists to be inspired to take forward geopoetics under the auspices of the International Institute of Geopolitics."
The Herald, March 20th 2026
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