In September 1969 Eddie Linden – “This wild eyed scrubby Catholic communist working class Glaswegian Irish peacenik”, as the late Oliver Bernard described him – launched Aquarius, perhaps the farthest-fetched invention of a year of improbabilities.

Linden’s journal of poetry, fiction and criticism was retired several years ago but fifty years after its birth it is still warmly remembered by those he cajoled into writing for it – who include pretty much every poet of the last sixty or seventy years you have heard of. Among the contributors to Eddie’s Own Aquarius, the special issue of the magazine published to celebrate Linden’s seventieth birthday, were Seamus Heaney, Elizabeth Smart, George Barker, Alan Brownjohn, Andrew Motion, Blake Morrison and Peter Porter.