History of the Great War by James Graham
James Graham was born in 1939 in Ayrshire, Scotland, in a rural cottage lit by oil lamps. He was a teacher for thirty years, but would rather have been a celebrated journalist and best-selling author. Apart from teaching and writing, he has done a good deal of protesting – from CND to Stop the War.
His eccentric way of maturing with age has been to become a Marxist pig-collector. He has read a lot of 21st century theoretical Marxist writers and is not bored. He loves pigs, so not having the facilities to keep live ones he collects ceramic and pewter ones – no silly cartoon pigs please, only naturalistic sus scrofa domesticus.
He is not descended from his aristocratic namesake, James Graham, 1st Marquis of Montrose, the very distinguished 17th century Scottish soldier and poet. Instead his ancestors were the Grahams who lived on the Scottish-English border at the time when Scotland was an independent kingdom. They included some very bad men, cattle thieves and murderers. After the two kingdoms united in 1603, an edict was issued by King James I (of the UK), directing that these ‘troublesome and rebellious Grahams’ were to be transported, every last one of them, to Ireland. Ethnically cleansed. The contemporary minor poet James Graham is very proud of his heritage.
Most of his published work has been poetry, which has appeared in print magazines including The Dark Horse and The Linnet’s Wings; anthologies published by Edinburgh University Press, the Glasgow Centre for Contemporary Arts, the Ragged Raven Press, and the first and second Every Day Poets anthologies; and various websites, of which all are now defunct except:
http://www.forpoetry.com/Archive/james_graham.htm (One poem)
http://www.everydaypoets.com/interview-with-james-graham/
A browse in EDP will lead to poems by J.G. plus gazillions of good poems by other poets.
His second collection, Clairvoyance, was published by Troubador Press in 2007. Clairvoyance is here: http://tinyurl.com/cgs8obc
postcardpoemsandprose.wordpress.com 
James, you never fail to get my attention.
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James, Well done. Yes, war is basically a futile enterprise.
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Oh my what a picture – thank you
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Poignant!
marion
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