HE is regarded as Scotland’s greatest living writer and after a lengthy battle back to health after suffering a serious fall he is finally getting back to work.

Alasdair Gray, at the age of 81 and after months in hospital, has revealed he still has two great ambitions for his work – to return to painting large-scale artworks and to see his modern version of Goethe’s Faust performed professionally on the stage.

He is currently working on two designs for the Glasgow Print Studio and writing and illustrating his own version of Dante’s Inferno, the first part of which will be published next Christmas.

He said he manages around four hours a day on his artistic projects – despite becoming “less efficient” – but stressed that: “Work is important to me as it ever was.”

In an exclusive interview with the Sunday Herald, he told of his hopes to also be able to resume work on a painting of St Mungo, Glasgow’s patron saint, which was commissioned by the city’s Museum of Religious Life and Art around three years ago.

Much depends on when he is able to get back on his feet. Last June he fell into the cellar at his home in Glasgow, breaking his back and cracking a rib. It resulted in a seven-month stay in hospital and he still has to use a wheelchair.

Gray is hoping to resume work on the painting once he is able to stand up or “hobble about with a crutch”.

“I can’t yet work on big paintings, because for that I need to move about and move my legs, which I can’t do yet. I am hoping to get that back,” he said.

“I have a commission to do a painting of St Mungo from the Religious Museum. I have begun it, but can’t continue with it at the present.”

He regrets not being able to do as much work as he would like increase his production once he becomes more mobile.

“Generally my carers and health workers only get me fully dressed and sitting at my desk by between 10.30am and 11am,” he said. “I work three or four hours generally. I am becoming less and less efficient. I am hoping to get to work earlier in the day if I can.”

Gray’s most famous work is Lanark, widely seen as one of the most influential novels of the 20th Century. However when asked about his favourite work, perhaps surprisingly, he still rates 1982, Janine as his best novel. And he yearns to see a professional production of his play Fleck – a modern version of Goethe’s Faust.

This was premiered on the stage at the Edinburgh International Book Festival in 2011 as a reading, with a cast of star writers including Liz Lochhead, Will Self, AL Kennedy and Gray himself.

“I have only been able to get productions of it by taking a part in it myself and getting other writers to act the main parts,” Gray said. “But I think it is a play that would work just as well if it was being produced professionally.

“It might happen, but perhaps I will have to be dead first.”

He believes that the “distinctly socialist” message of the play – it ends with a call for a worldwide socialist state – could be one of the reasons it has been rejected to date.

“Our present conservative or highly-Tory climate is maybe one of one of the reasons why no professional company is interested.”

Gray has, of course, long been a prominent supporter of Scottish independence – he designed the Sunday Herald’s iconic front page which backed Yes in the 2014 independence referendum. And, “like the majority of Scots”, he said he was sorry about the results of the Brexit vote.

“I thought the economic community was a step towards internationalism,” he continued. “It made warfare between European states less likely, which was one of the reasons certainly why it happened.”

He said it was also “even more proof” that Scotland and England are different nations, but on the prospects of another independence referendum in the future – and whether he will be around to see it – answered simply: “I don’t know. I am 81, I don’t know how long I am going to live.”

Adding: “I believe [independence] will come, but there are many other things that may come before too. For instance I think it is unlikely that democracy can operate in a very huge nation. America may have to break into several separate states because it is too big for a democracy.

“[Donald] Trump may help to break it up. I don’t know, but that is interesting.”

Gray is also despairing at the state of the world today and concerned for its future.

“Mr Trump is prepared to assert – when scientists and others who say we are polluting the oceans and earth and the ice-caps are melting – that it is not the case,” he said. “A lot of people are prepared to deny major facts, just as in the 1950s – and to some extent in the 1960s – governments denied a nuclear war would be the end of humanity. They eventually changed their minds about that.

“Most governments, particularly in small nations, believe that we are in danger of rendering the planet uninhabitable for most of our grandchildren as things are. That doesn’t please me.

“And it is also worrying that people find they can stop worrying by refusing to believe in it.”

*An evening to honour Gray will be held at Oran Mor in Glasgow later this month. The Songs for Scotland event, on November 29, will feature performances by a number of Scottish artists and the launch of the Alasdair Gray Musical Scholarship Trust to support young musicians.