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Last week we published an article on the enduring appeal of Norman MacCaig to coincide with what would have been his 100th birthday.

The feature appears in a new section on the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Scotland website and while it was a bit nerve-racking to be the guinea pig for something different, it did mean that I had the pleasure of listening to some fantastic old ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ archive recordings featuring Norman MacCaig reading and discussing his poetry.

I've tried to fit in as many clips as possible. I hope that they'll help to give anyone studying MacCaig a different perspective on the man and the poetry.

We've also just added some of his poems - 'Visiting Hour', 'Hotel room, 12th floor', 'Assisi' and 'Brooklyn cop' - to the interactive application Book Notes. This allows users to read annotations written by a teaching consultant as well as produce their own. These annotations can be saved and imported/exported - giving teachers and pupils the opportunity to share and exchange them.

I was never going to be able to fit in as much archive as I would have liked - he was featured in many radio programmes over the years and from what I've heard, he was always a witty, if occasionally prickly, interviewee and a marvellous reader.

His friend and former colleague Professor Rory Watson told me that MacCaig was not anti-intellectual - he had huge admiration for scholars - rather he was anti-pretension and listening to the old interviews this came across very strongly.

For example, one clip I didn't have space to include featured MacCaig comparing his approach to that of Hugh MacDiarmid:

I think this clip illustrates what many feel is MacCaig's greatest strength - that while his work has great depth, everyone can get something out of MacCaig's poetry; it excludes nobody.

If you're interested in MacCaig, there's been a number of other pieces that have appeared online in recent weeks (we in the media like anniversaries). His friends and have both written about him, and former English teacher Bill Boyd has been .