was an immediate commercial success for the Press. At this point Thomson and Blake were aligned in nationalist politics. Thomson's 1931 pamphlet The Kingdom of Scotland Restored, advocating a form of Scottish home rule, had Blake's approval, and the Introduction was signed by Blake, Andrew Dewar Gibb, Moray McLaren and William Power. By that year, Blake had joined the National Party of Scotland (NPS). Gunn became involved in the efforts, which succeeded, to merge the NPS, of the left, with the conservative Scottish Party; on Thomson's account, Blake encouraged Gunn to do so. Returning to Scotland in 1932, Blake worked for the Porpoise Press, which in 1934 published William Power's My Scotland. Both Gibb and Power later became leaders of the merged Scottish National Party. Blake and Thomson then fell out, with Thomson resigning from the Press in 1933. It published his Scotland That Distressed Area in 1935. Blake's The Shipbuilders was published the same year, by Faber & Faber. They differed in method: Thomson offered partisan polemics, Blake a journalist's realism expressed as a novel. Later life Blake lived at The Glenan, Helensburgh and elsewhere. He was a radio broadcaster and literary journalist; and was visited by T. S. Eliot. He had a regular position on This Week in Scotland, BBC Scottish Region Radio. 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. 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. Works Fiction Blake's novels have been described as "resolutely realistic, serious, socialistic, and nationalistic". Their social realism included addressing industrialisation and urban poverty, topics neglected in Scottish literature until the 1920s and 1930s. He wrote a number of "Glasgow novels", as well as other fiction. 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. Mince Collop Close (1923) The Wild Men (1925)) Young Malcolm (1926)) Paper Money (1928), US title Gettin' in Society The Path of Glory (1929), about the Gallipoli campaign, in the "soldier's tale" genre. Returned Empty (1931) The Shipbuilders (1935), subsequently a film The Shipbuilders from 1943. The film has been described as a more authentic representation of working-class Glasgow. James Kelman