George Mackay Brown

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, he was also an accomplished novelist and a master of the short story.

When he died on 13th April 1996, he left behind an autobiography as deft as it is ultimately uninformative.

Maggie Fergusson studied History at Oxford and spent a short time working in the City.

She then moved into journalism and has written for newspapers and magazines including The Daily Telegraph, Harpers & Queen and the Independent magazine, and is Secretary of the Royal Society of Literature.

It was a commission by The Times that first led her to Orkney and George Mackay Brown.