Author: George Mackay BrownPublisher:
ISBN:
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 152
Book Description
Author: George Mackay BrownBeside the Ocean of Time
Author: George Mackay BrownPublisher: John Murray
ISBN: 1444779737
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 175
Book Description
In this novel set on the fictitious island of Norday in the Orkneys, George Mackay Brown beckons us into the imaginary world of the young Thorfinn Ragnarson, the son of a crofter. In his day-dreams he relives the history of this island people, travelling back in time to join Viking adventurers at the court of the Byzantine Emperor in Constantinople, then accompanying a Falstaffian knight to the battle of Bannockburn. Thorfinn wakes to the twentieth century and a community whose way of life, steeped in legend and tradition, has remained unchanged for centuries. But as the boy grows up - and falls in love with a vivacious and mysterious stranger - the transforming effect of modern civilization brings momentous and irreversible changes to the island. During the Second World War Thorfinn finds himself in a German prisoner-of-war camp, and it is here that he discovers his gifts as a writer. Long afterwards he returns, now a successful novelist, to a deserted and battle-scarred island. Searching for the peace and freedom of mind he had in abundance as a child, he finds instead something he didn't even know he was looking for. George Mackay Brown intertwines myth and reality to create a novel of deceptive simplicity. The story of Thorfinn and the island of Norday is a universal and profound one, rooted in the timeless landscape of the Orkneys, the inspiration of all his writing.
George Mackay Brown
Author: Maggie FergussonPublisher: John Murray
ISBN: 1848547870
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 328
Book Description
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 Beside the Ocean of Time) and a master of the short story. When he died in 1996, he left behind an autobiography as deft as it is ultimately uninformative. 'The lives of artists are as boring and also as uniquely fascinating as any or every other life,' he claimed. Never a recluse, he appeared open to his friends, but probably revealed more of himself in his voluminous correspondence with strangers. He never married - indeed he once wrote, 'I have never been in love in my life.' But some of his most poignant letters and poems were written to Stella Cartwright, 'the Muse of Rose Street', the gifted but tragic figure to whom he was once engaged and with whom he kept in touch until the end of her short life. Maggie Fergusson interviewed George Mackay Brown several times and is the only biographer to whom he, a reluctant subject, gave his blessing. Through his letters and through conversations with his wide acquaintance, she discovers that this particular artist's life was not only fascinating but vivid, courageous and surprising.
Armchair Nation
Author: Joe MoranPublisher: Profile Books
ISBN: 1847654444
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 465
Book Description
But what does your furniture point at?' asks the character Joey in the sitcom Friends on hearing an acquaintance has no TV. It's a good question: since its beginnings during WW2, television has assumed a central role in our houses and our lives, just as satellite dishes and aerials have become features of urban skylines. Television (or 'the idiot's lantern', depending on your feelings about it) has created controversy, brought coronations and World Cups into living rooms, allowed us access to 24hr news and media and provided a thousand conversation starters. As shows come and go in popularity, the history of television shows us how our society has changed. Armchair Nation reveals the fascinating, lyrical and sometimes surprising history of telly, from the first demonstration of television by John Logie Baird (in Selfridges) to the fear and excitement that greeted its arrival in households (some viewers worried it might control their thoughts), the controversies of Mary Whitehouse's 'Clean Up TV' campaign and what JG Ballard thought about Big Brother. Via trips down memory lane with Morecambe and Wise, Richard Dimbleby, David Frost, Blue Peter and Coronation Street, you can flick between fascinating nuggets from the strange side of TV: what happened after a chimpanzee called 'Fred J. Muggs' interrupted American footage of the Queen's wedding, and why aliens might be tuning in to The Benny Hill Show.
Author: George M. BrownSelected Poems 1954 - 1992
Author: George Mackay BrownPublisher: John Murray
ISBN: 1848549393
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 163
Book Description
A compilation of poetry written by George Mackay Brown over a 30-year period, which represents his favourite work. These poems reflect the richness of the Orkney Island community where he lives - a community permeated with its past and still close to the natural world.
Travellers
Author: George Mackay BrownPublisher: John Murray
ISBN: 1848549482
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 148
Book Description
These unknown and sometimes unexpected poems by the Orcadian master have all his characteristic simplicity and power. In these poems readers will find new ideas previously unexplored, but they will also find those qualities that made George Mackay Brown different from anyone else.
A Dictionary of Writers and their Works
Author: Christopher RichesPublisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019251850X
Category : True Crime
Languages : en
Pages : 1431
Book Description
Over 3,200 entries An essential guide to authors and their works that focuses on the general canon of British literature from the fifteenth century to the present. There is also some coverage of non-fiction such as biographies, memoirs, and science, as well as inclusion of major American and Commonwealth writers. This online-exclusive new edition adds 60,000 new words, including over 50 new entries dealing with authors who have risen to prominence in the last five years, as well as fully updating the entries that currently exist. Each entry provides details of a writer's nationality and birth/death dates, followed by a listing of their titles arranged chronologically by date of publication.
Professor Challenger and his Lost Neolithic World: The Compelling Story of Alexander Thom and British Archaeoastronomy
Author: Euan W. MacKiePublisher: Archaeopress Publishing Ltd
ISBN: 1784918342
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 158
Book Description
This book combines the two great passions of the author’s life: reconstructing the Neolithic mind and constructively challenging consensus in his professional domain. Semi-autobiographical, it charts his investigation of Alexander Thom’s theories regarding the alignment of prehistoric monuments in the landscape across several key Neolithic sites.
