Clifford Leonard Clark "Cliff" Hanley (28 October 1922 – 9 August 1999) was a journalist, novelist, playwright and broadcaster from Glasgow in Scotland. Originally from Shettleston in the city's East End, he was educated at Eastbank Academy.

During the late 1930s, he was active in the Independent Labour Party. During the Second World War he was a conscientious objector.^[1]

He also wrote a number of books, including Dancing in the Streets, an account of his early life in Glasgow (in its contemporaneous serialisation in The Evening Times, retitled My Gay Glasgow), The Taste of Too Much, a coming-of-age novel about a secondary schoolboy, and The Scots.

During the 1960s and 1970s, he published thrillers under the pen-name Henry Calvin. They were more successful in the US and Canada than in the UK. A collection of his humorous verse in Scots, using the pseudonym 'Ebenezer McIlwham', was published by Gordon Wright Publishing of Edinburgh. He also wrote the words of what some still feel is Scotland's unofficial national anthem, Scotland the Brave, and both wrote and recorded The Glasgow Underground Song - a humorous anecdote on the pre-modernisation era Glasgow Subway. A recording of this was made famous by Francie and Josie.

He wrote a number of film and TV scripts, including Between the Lines, an episode of which was described by Mary Whitehouse as the "filthiest programme" her family had seen on TV "for a very long time" at the first public meeting of the 'Clean-Up TV' campaign in May 1964.^[2] Hanley's other scripts include Seawards the Great Ships, The Bowler and the Bunnet,^[3] and The New Road. His son was artist Clifford G. Hanley.

Following updates added by his daughters, February, 2024.

Highlights

Pseudonyms: Henry Calvin, Ebenezer McIlwham (The Bard of Whifflet West)

Nationality: Scottish

Born: Glasgow, Scotland, October 28, 1922

Died: Glasgow, Scotland, August 9, 1999

Wife: Anna Hanley, married January 1948

Children: Clifford G. Hanley, Jane Hanley, Joanna Hanley

Education: Eastbank Academy, Glasgow

Conscientious Objector in WWII

Reporter, Scottish Newspaper Services, Glasgow 1940-1945

Sub-Editor, Scottish Daily Record, Glasgow, 1945-1957 (Columns/features also under pseudonym Andrew Bonar)

Features Writer, TV Guide, Glasgow, 1957-1958

Director, Glasgow Films, Ltd., 1957-1963

Columnist, Glasgow Evening Citizen, 1958-1960

Television Critic, The Spectator, London, 1963

Visiting Writer in Residence, Glendon College, York University, Toronto, Canada, 1979-1980

Awards

Oscar Award for 1961’s Seawards the Great Ships

Memberhips

Close Theatre Management Committee, Glasgow 1965-1971

Inland Waterways Amenities Advisory Council, 1967-1971

Scottish Arts Council, 1967-1974

Scottish PEN, Vice-President 1966-1973, and President 1974-1977

Writers’ Guild of Great Britain, Scottish President 1968-1973

Glasgow Philological and Literary Society (Ours Club),1956-1999, President 1962-1963 and 1996-1997

Comments on Cliff Hanley’s Work by Cliff Hanley in 1972

Dancing in the Streets, my first published book, was written at the suggestion of my publisher, who wanted a book about the city of Glasgow. At the time I thought it a rather pedestrian recital of childhood memories and was taken aback by its critical and commercial success (it is still used as background reading in schools of social studies and urbanology).

My first novel, Love from Everybody, written previously but published later, was frankly intended as a light entertainment, to make money, and was later filmed as Don't Bother to Knock. Having then retired from journalism, I wrote what I considered my first serious work, The Taste of Too Much, as a study of "ordinary" adolescence, without crime and adventitious excitement, and it may well be my most successful book in the sense of fully achieving the author's original conception.

In the subsequent novels under my own name, I think my intention was to look at some areas of life—a businessman's troubles, the family situation, the agonies of work in the theater—simply in my own way, without reference to fashionable literary conceptions. I have often been surprised when people found the novels "funny" because their intention was serious; but an author can't help being what he is. I do see the human condition as tragic (since decay and death are the inevitable end), but I don't distinguish between comedy and tragedy. Funerals can be funny too, and life is noble and absurd at the same time. I also insist on distinguishing between seriousness and solemnity, which are opposite rather than similar.

On looking back, I realize that the tone of the novels tends to be affirmation rather than despair. This may be a virtue or a fault, or an irrelevance—a novelist should probably leave such judgments to critics and simply get on with what he must do. Maybe they also betray some kind of moral standpoint of which I was unconscious. This was explicit, in fact, in my first professionally produced play, The Durable Element, which was a study of the recurrent urge to crucify prophets. It was also deliberate in The Chosen Instrument, a pseudonymous Henry Calvin ten years later, in which a contemporary thriller mode was used to do a sort of feasibility study on the New Testament mythology. (The intention was so well disguised that no critic noticed it).

But I suppose cheerfulness keeps breaking through. I am an entertainer as well as novelist, and the two may be compatible. My first commandment as a writer is not at all highfalutin. It is Thou Shalt Not Bore. A Skinful of Scotch is an irreverent guide to one man's Scotland and was written for fun. So, originally, were the Henry Calvin thrillers. I enjoy reading thrillers and I adopted the pen-name simply to feel uninhibited. The thriller too is a morality, but the morality is acceptable only if it has character and pace. These are not intellectual mysteries but tales of conflict between good and evil.

My later work for the theater was exclusively devoted to calculated entertainment and I am glad that people were actually entertained. I find now that I see life in more somber terms, but whether this will show in future novels is hard to tell. It may even be a temporary condition.

(Addendum 1991) Self-assessment has always struck me as a futile exercise, in the sense that we can study a bug through a microscope, but we can't study the microscope through itself. I wrote my novels for fun or from internal compulsion (the two are the same, maybe) but have always seen myself as an entertainer, so they were intended for the reader's fun, which could include laughter, fear, enlightenment, puzzlement, and any other response.

They are not bad, probably. I did feel I hit the target with The Taste of Too Much (a committee title I don't like too much) in picturing the pangs of teenage love. School pupils agreed, especially girls, and it seems nothing has changed in 30 years. Nothing But the Best was partly stolen from life, and when I myself was widowed in 1990 I was interested in how my own responses followed those of the hero.

Another Street, Another Dance was compulsive. The heroine, Meg, came into my mind fully formed, I was back in the time and place of my autobiographical first book Dancing in the Streets. It went onto the typewriter at the rate of 4, 000 to 7, 000 words a day with no hesitation because Meg was in the room with me. A very strange experience.

The Henry Calvin thrillers were entirely for fun, and I can only hope readers have shared it. (Odd, how many Scottish writers have hidden under pseudonyms). Henry was my father's name, and I picked Calvin because in these light tales virtue would triumph over vice, and to hell with some of the grim realities.

Not sure if I'll produce any more. I am now lazy, and comfortably fixed—a serious disincentive to work. But I am being nagged by an idealistic young New Yorker on a voyage of discovery through working-class and academic Glasgow, and I fear I shall have to let him right into the brain to dictate his misadventures and revelations. He is taking over, and I mildly resent that, but life is real and life is earnest, and the gravy is our goal, still.

Known list of books written by Clifford Hanley, giving pseudonyms and coworkers where relevant.

Known list of plays written by Clifford Hanley, with coworkers where relevant

Known list of Film scripts/work by Clifford Hanley

Known list of Television works by Clifford Hanley

Known List of Song Lyrics by Clifford Hanley

Several of these are integral to shows and as such would not be performed as 'stand alone' numbers

(2024) While the copyright to Scotland’s first and we feel, true, “National Anthem” is still held by the Estate of Clifford Hanley, we have not attempted to list the innumerable instances where Scotland the Brave has been featured in film, television, sound and media of all sorts.

Other Work by Clifford Hanley

Sleeve Notes for John Laurie’s album The Great McGonagall, 1969

Cliff Hanley’s Notable Scots, a 52 week compendium collection produced by the Daily Record in 1988

And countless columns, appearances, presentations

As a Broadcaster:

Hanley's light and humorous touch, and sharp observations on Scottish life, saw him much in demand as a commentator on radio and television, not only in Scotland but on UK-wide programmes. Very much a 'professional Glaswegian', he was often called upon to comment on issues affecting the city.

When Radio 4 Scotland re-launched its morning radio programme, Today in Scotland, in April 1970, Hanley was hired as a presenter.  

References

External links

• Cliff Hanley at IMDb