Slightly Foxed > An Index to Slightly Foxed > Brown, George Mackay

Brown, George Mackay

the essays of, [4] 32; An Orkney Tapestry, [53] 76

Browse articles

20221201101515 Pamela Beasant on Stromness Books & Prints, Slightly Foxed Issue 76, Iain Ashman

A Northern Survivor

Pamela Beasant on Stromness Books & Prints, Orkney

Nestled in the heart of Orkney’s second largest town, on a main street uncoiling, as the Orcadian poet and writer George Mackay Brown described it, ‘like a sailor’s rope’, Stromness Books & Prints has sev­eral claims to fame. It’s the UK’s most northerly independent bookshop, and it’s ‘Scotland’s only drive-in bookshop’, as claimed by Tam MacPhail, who ran the business for many years. (This claim is based on the fact that the main street is narrow enough for drivers to stop outside the shop, open the window, shout a request through the door and be served without leaving the car.)
20041201103834 Ian Charles Scott, George Mackay Brown - Christopher Ruch on the essays of George Mackay Brown - Slightly Foxed Issue 4

Orkney’s Prospero

Christopher Rush on the essays of George Mackay Brown

Every Thursday morning for twenty years and more, the Orkney writer George Mackay Brown cleared a breakfast-table space among the teacups and the marmalade and, sitting with his elbows among the crumbs, picked up a cheap biro and jotted down 400 words on a notepad. It was a letter to the local newspaper, The Orcadian, for publication the following Thursday, and as such was written to entertain an island community of fewer than 2,000 souls. Through the small window of the simple council house – just a few steps away – the sea glimmered and whispered.
20190915110041 Foxed Podcast Episode 11 George Mackay Brown

Episode 11: Orkney’s Prospero

The Slightly Foxed Podcast

Gail, Hazel and host Philippa are transported to Orkney as they explore the life and works of the poet and novelist George Mackay Brown OBE. Together with his biographer Maggie Fergusson and Colin Waters of the Scottish Poetry Library, they bring to light a writer who was at once a solitary soul and a raconteur, a lover and a drinker, a member of the Edinburgh literati yet fame-shy. From the oft-recited ‘Hamnavoe’ to the Booker-nominated Beside the Ocean of Time Mackay Brown’s work sings of his island roots, interweaving life and social history with myth and legend. In this month’s travels through the magazine’s archives, Christopher Robbins and Rory Murphy tackle the high falutin literary rap of Finnegans Wake, and there are the usual wide-ranging recommendations for reading off the beaten track too.
20170301155622 Sylvia Wishart, ‘The Ross Puma ashore in Hoy’ - Pamela Beasant on George Mackay Brown

A Song of the Islands

Pamela Beasant on George Mackay Brown, An Orkney Tapestry

An Orkney Tapestry sits quietly at the heart of George Mackay Brown’s prolific output as a writer of poetry, stories, novels and plays, created over a life that was longer and richer than he or anyone else expected. (Following a diagnosis of TB as a young man, before the introduction of penicillin, he must have felt he was living on borrowed time for almost all his adult life.) For those who have never read him, this small book about his native Orkney serves as a wonderful introduction. For those who have already fallen under his spell, it is something they return to and quote from, and love like an old friend.

Buy related issues of Slightly Foxed


Buy related books or goods

Customise this page for easy reading

Sign up to our e-newsletter

Sign up for dispatches about new issues, books and podcast episodes, highlights from the archive, events, special offers and giveaways.