Raasay
The poet Sorley MacLean was born in Osgaig, a small crofting community on the west coast of the island; perhaps his most famous poem is about "Hallaig", an abandoned community on the east coast. MacLean's writings often combine an ancient traditional awareness, with a modernist political outlook, in which Raasay, and the areas adjacent to it are frequently referenced. But while MacLean's work dwells on the brutality of war, of the Highland Clearances and modern exploitation, he also writes about nature. Thus, although the Clearances leave an empty landscape populated only by the ghosts of those evicted or forced to emigrate, "Time, the deer, is in the Wood of Hallaig".
Denis McLean
The eldest son of Gordon McLean, a newspaper editor, and Ruahine Smith, McLean was born in Napier; his family later lived in Auckland and Wellington. He attended Nelson College from 1944 to 1948, took an M.Sc (1st class) in geology at Victoria University of Wellington and won a Senior Scholarship in 1953 and a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford University in 1954. At University College in Oxford he studied politics, philosophy and economics. He played rugby at both Victoria and Oxford Universities, and was a member of the Victoria team that won the Jubilee Cup three times in the early 1950s.