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George
McKay Brown
 George
Mackay Brown was born in Stromness, Orkney on October 17th
1921. Apart from a brief spell in Edinburgh (attending Newbattle Adult
Education College and Edinburgh University) he spent his entire life in
Orkney, dying there on the 13th April 1996.
He
attended Newbattle College (1951-2), where he was greatly influenced by
the then warden, Edwin Muir: a fellow poet and Orcadian. Brown said of
him,
“I
think that without Edwin Muir, any seeds of poetry in me would have died
through sheer discouragement.”
Brown
went on to read English Literature at Edinburgh University (1956-1960)
which he followed with two years postgraduate work on Gerald Manley
Hopkins.
For
George Mackay Brown, Orkney represented a microcosm of the world. He
felt no need, after his academic studies, to live or to work anywhere
else. Working through the local, he addressed the universal; he truly
loved the stories and history of Orkney, bringing them to an
international audience,
“The
languages and legends of the earliest Orcadians are lost. The Norsemen
were avid and brilliant storytellers; we have in the Orkneyinga Saga a
full record of the exciting doings of their earls and chiefs and
skippers for three centuries. Those earlier Orkney folk had left behind
them huge deposits of narrative. I felt rather like Aladdin in the
enchanted cave. Nothing remained to do but to use my imagination to fill
out blank or obscure places, and deploy modern techniques to make the
old stories enjoyable to readers of the twentieth century.”
His
first collection of poetry, The Storm, was published in 1954 and
he continued to write (poetry, novels and essays) right up until his
death. He also wrote a weekly column, Under Brinkie’s Brae, for
the local newspaper The Orcadian.
He
received many honours during his lifetime, including:
OBE
1974
Fellow
of the Royal Society of Literature 1977
Honorary
Degrees from:
-
Open
University 1976
-
Dundee
University 1977
-
Glasgow
University 1985
Saltire
Scotsman Award for Scottish Book of the Year (Beside the Ocean of
Time) 1994. Beside the Ocean of Time was also short listed
for the Booker Prize in the same year.
James
Tait Black Memorial Book Prize (Golden Bird) 1998
Further
information, including a full publishing history, can be found at the
George Mackay Brown website
www.georgemackaybrown.co.uk
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