George Mackay Brown: The Life

“A poet as rooted in his landscape as Barnes or Clare, Herrick or Herbert, in an age of Intercity trains and Concorde travel”.

Winner of the Saltire Society First Book of the Year Award in 2006, Maggie Fergusson’s biography of the Orcadian writer and poet George Mackay Brown is a fantastic accompaniment to those who know his work and an captivating introduction for those who do not. Born in 1921 in Orkney, George Mackay Brown writes of the islands he hardly left throughout his life as no one else could.

Fergusson’s account of his life brings to life the man behind the words. Brown’s personality, achievements and idiosyncrasies come to the fore through accounts from those who knew him, exerts from his work and meetings between Brown and Fergusson. This biography from a writer who knew Brown personally and whom Brown permitted to write his biography after his death, is well worth a read.