George Mackay Brown by Maggie Fergusson - ISBN: 9780719566059
Paperback
Orkney’s enigmatic poet: a life of paradox, revealed through letters.

George Mackay Brown

The Life

$39.96

  • Paperback

    384 pages

  • Release Date

    10 May 2007

Check Delivery Options

Summary

George Mackay Brown was one of Scotland’s greatest twentieth-century writers, but in person a bundle of paradoxes. He had a wide international reputation, but hardly left his native Orkney. A prolific poet, admired by such fellow poets as Seamus Heaney, Ted Hughes and Charles Causley, and hailed by the composer Peter Maxwell Davies as ‘the most positive and benign influence ever on my own efforts at creation’, he was also an accomplished novelist (shortlisted for the 1994 Booker Prize for Bes…

Book Details

ISBN-13:9780719566059
ISBN-10:0719566053
Author:Maggie Fergusson
Publisher:John Murray Press
Imprint:John Murray Publishers Ltd
Format:Paperback
Number of Pages:384
Release Date:10 May 2007
Weight:280g
Dimensions:197mm x 133mm x 25mm
What They're Saying

Critics Review

Other biographies to relish include Maggie Fergusson’s life of the poet George Mackay Brown… - Boyd Tonkin, Independent

In Maggie Fergusson, Mackay Brown has had the good fortune to find the kind of biographer with whom every writer should be blessed. She writes lucidly, with restraint and without sentimentality. Her affection and sympathy for her subject shine through but she never shirks from showing his darker side. He was a deeply troubled man cursed with melancholia whose legacy was prose and poetry of luminous virtuosity. If there is a better biography of a 20th century Scottish writer I look forward to reading it - Sunday Herald

Outstanding… This is an extraordinarily good book; it is sensitive, witty and has an excellent sense of the vitality of the apparently unimportant details that make up lives and characters. - Lucy Lethbridge, New Statesman

An affectionate but clear-sighted biography. Read it alongside his Collected Poems and step into the ‘small green world’ of [the Orkneys] - The Times

Unmissable - Glasgow Herald

[Fergusson’s] biography is infused with love and understanding of the man and his work… she writes with a delicate precision - Sunday Times, Jeremy Lewis

Through his letter and conversations with many friends, Maggie Ferguson discovers that George’s life was vivid, courageous and surprising - Scottish Field

He deserves a good biography but has got a magnificent one; sympathetic, affectionate, but not glossing over his weaknesses - Allan Massie, Daily Telegraph

About The Author

Maggie Fergusson

Maggie Fergusson has written for newspapers and magazines including The Times, the Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph, Harpers & Queen and the Independent magazine, and is Secretary of the Royal Society of Literature. She is married with two daughters and lives in London. This is her first book.

Returns

This item is eligible for free returns within 30 days of delivery. See our returns policy for further details.