'I'm not really a believer, but I'm well up on the
Bible, and I was brought up in a Church of
Scotland church-going family... I really enjoyed
getting into what I imagined might be the character
of Jesus. He's a man - perhaps He was the
Son of God, but He was a man. I haven't
shirked the idea of sex, for example. That has to
come in. I've got lots of things that are not Biblical,
that would possibly offend some believers,
but they are necessary to create a real character.'
 

Edwin Morgan interview, Herald, 31 August 1999
            

Edwin Morgan, Scotland's best-loved poet, returns to the stage after his celebrated Phaedra with a powerful and shocking millennial examination of the life of Jesus Christ as a man among men.

Jesus, a human figure in an inhuman time, experiences all that a man can experience; Morgan departs from the Gospels in his exploration of how this Person came to know His world. His love affair with an unmarried woman, Helen, and a declaration of love from John,
'the disciple whom Jesus loved', are in the larger character of Jesus that Morgan discovers.
'My ambition is to tell a good story.'

The year 2000 has been a triumphant annus mirabilis for Morgan, and A.D. is a fitting culmination; honest, candid and experimental in spiritual and linguistic terms. As the Scotsman said,
'Edwin Morgan is the most dynamic, brilliant, free-wheeling poet around, endlessly accessible and inventive, glorious
refreshment.'