George Mackay Brown

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Hamnavoe was the old name for Stromness and George’s poem follows his father on his postal round through its lively streets: In the following review, the critic describes Brown as gifted in "sharpening one's interest in genuinely rustic activities."] A Celebration for Magnus (son et Lumiere text by Brown, music by Davies; produced in Kirkwall, Orkney, 1988), Nairn, Balnain, 1987. Though Brown thought himself a mere craftsman, his death this year in Kirkwall, Orkney's capital, brought tributes proper to an artist. In London, The Tablet called him "a giant of literature and much loved"; The Guardian found him "a major influence" and a leader of "the Scottish literary renaissance"; The Times named his last novel "a magisterial summing-up of the purpose and meaning of man's life."

The Martyrdom of St. Magnus (opera libretto; music by Peter Maxwell Davies; adaptation of novel Magnus by Brown; produced in Kirkwall, Vienna, and London, 1977 ; produced in Santa Fe, 1979), Boosey and Hawkes (London), 1977.

By early 1977, he was entering a period of depression which lasted intermittently for almost a decade, but maintained his working routine throughout. [57] He also had severe bronchial problems, his condition becoming so serious that in early 1981 he was given the Last Sacraments. [58] In the late 1980's he also began publishing books of short stories, beginning with A Calendar of Love and Other Stories. Among his other anthologies are Hawkfall and Other Stories and Andrina and Other Stories. The story "Andrina" was made into a television film by Bill Forsyth. In 1994, his novel Beside the Ocean of Time was one of six works of fiction shortlisted for the Booker Prize.

Photographs and words together form an unusual procession of contemplative insights into the small part of the world that poet and photographer know so intimately. Mr. Brown was born and remained rooted in the Orkneys, and his art was filled with the rich lore and humanity of the people he knew so well. He also explored Scottish myths and mysticism as well as rituals of the Roman Catholic faith. At the same time, he expressed a social consciousness, as in his first novel, Greenvoe, which described the death of a 1,000-year-old village at the hands of a military-industrial establishment. The title Beside the Ocean of Time links this book with Brown's last novel Vinland. In Vinland, the protagonist dwells at the end on an imaginary ship, a ship that will carry him on his final voyage: death. The voyage in this new work is one of life; a man's life is a voyage over the ocean of time. Cleaned up, and eating his dinner, Freddie became talkative. I relaxed into his stories. During the war, his frail wooden house had been surrounded by the huge airstrip on Mainland. He went to sleep, woke up to the (beautiful) sound of Merlin engines as Spitfires landed, took off. He had fond memories of the pilots, ‘fine beuys’, with whom he had made some friends. He reached under his pillow, and brought out a creased, browning photo of a Spitfire and its pilot, who had autographed the souvenir, ‘For Freddie’. On his table, I noticed a card, some kind of invitation, with a horseshoe on its cover. To make conversation, I asked Freddie what he was being invited to. He smiled in a knowing way, ‘Ah beuy, that will be a secret. As secret as the Horseman’s Word.’ Yet it was typical of him that he should find inspiration in the midst of his travails and produce Foresterhill in 1992, about his recollections of the Granite City and the gratitude he felt for the medical staff who had treated him.

George passed away on 13th April 1996 and his funeral took place on St Magnus Day three days later. St Magnus Cathedral, hosting a Catholic service for the first time since the reformation, was full. George dedicated his final collection of poems Following a Lark to me, but it was published shortly after his death and I never had the chance to thank him. In it is a beautiful poem:

In the following review, Olson finds the stories of Brown's Winter Tales "as poetic as any of his verse."] After a period of unemployment and rejection of a volume of his poetry by the Hogarth Press, [28] Brown did a postgraduate study on Gerard Manley Hopkins, although such work was not to his taste. [29] This provided some occupation and income until 1964, when a volume of poetry, The Year of the Whale, was accepted. [30] There is a certain rightness about the Scandinavian nationality of the photographer. Although the Orkney Islands have been Scottish since 1468, their links before that were all with Scandinavia. As with Shetland, farther north still, Gaelic is not spoken in Orkney. Most of the place names here have a Norse ring to them. (Hypothetically, the Viking occupation was preceded by Piets and the "first Orcadians" spoke a Celtic language.) The main island used to be called "Hrossey." Norse for "horse island." GMB's poems are punctuated with such local names as Scapa Flow, Rinansay, Swona, Hamnavoe, and Egilsay.The one thing I would question is Brown's total dedication to his muse, Orkney. It is impossible to separate the writer from his habitat. Whether it's the short frosted stories of Winter Tales, the 12th-century historical Norse novel Magnus or his many poems, the place is so inescapable that you can't help but wonder how his creative output would have been affected had he lived elsewhere - or if indeed he would have written at all were he not surrounded by such a dramatic, conducive landscape. At the same time, it is this lifetime's dedication to his first love that makes his work so rich.

Christopher Whyte, The 1970s in Modern Scottish Poetry (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2004) The poems were recorded at varying intervals over a period stretching from the late Sixties to the middle Seventies, using an old reel-to-reel machine belonging to Stromness Academy. As head of the English Department at that time, I suggested to George that we should make a start on creating a sound archive for the school by recording some of his poems. I was surprised and gratified when George agreed to this proposal. Up till this time he had been notoriously reluctant to get involved in public performances of any kind, and he was to remain so for most of his life. O'Donoghue, Bernard. "Under the Rooftrees." The Times Literary Supplement, No. 4627 (6 December 1991): 24. SOURCE: A review of Beside the Ocean of Time, in Publishers Weekly, Vol. 241, No. 35, August 29, 1994, p. 63. This theme of time—"the ocean of time"—in a way defines him. "Haunted by time," Brown delved into Orkney's various pasts, while distrusting the modern technologies of North Sea oil drilling and uranium mining. Rigs and mines marred Orkney's sea and land, he felt, just as television corrupted storytelling, telephones distracted thought, and modern conveniences masked the rhythms of nature and life and language.In late 1960, Brown commenced teacher training at Moray House College of Education, but ill health prevented him remaining in Edinburgh. On his recovery in 1961, he found he was not suited to teaching and returned late in the year to his mother's house in Stromness, unemployed. [24] At this juncture he was received into the Roman Catholic Church, converting from Presbyterianism of his childhood [25] [26] being baptised on 23 December and taking communion the next day. This followed about 25 years of pondering his religious beliefs. The conversion was not marked by any change in his daily habits, including his drinking. [27] Maturity as poet [ edit ] His novels Greenvoe and Magnus, which emerged in 1972 and 1973, stamped him as a unique voice, whose work was every bit as ingrained in his roots and where he grew up as Sunset Song was to Lewis Grassic Gibbon.