George Mackay Brown (17 October 1921 – 13 April 1996) was a Scottish poet, author and dramatist with a distinctly Orcadian character. He is widely regarded as one of the great Scottish poets of the 20th century.
George Mackay Brown was born on 17 October 1921, the youngest of six children. His parents were John Brown, a tailor and postman, and Mhairi Mackay, a descendant of Clan Mackay who had been brought up in Braal, a hamlet near Strathy, Sutherland, as a native speaker of the Reay Country dialect of Scottish Gaelic.
Except for periods as a mature student in mainland Scotland, Brown lived all his life in the town of Stromness on Mainland, Orkney. One of his Stromness neighbours was his friend the artist Sylvia Wishart. Because of illness, his father was restricted in his work and he received no pension. The family had a history of depression and Brown's uncle, Jimmy Brown, may have died by suicide: his body was found in Stromness harbour in 1935. George Mackay Brown's youth was spent in poverty. During that period he contracted tuberculosis.
Brown's illness kept him from entering the army at the start of the Second World War and affected him so badly he could not live a normal working life. However, this gave him time and space in which to write. He started work in 1944 with The Orkney Herald, writing on Stromness news, and soon became a prolific journalist. He was encouraged in writing poetry by Francis Scarfe, who was billeted in the Browns' house for over a year from April 1944. After that he was helped in developing as a writer by Ernest Marwick, whose criticism he valued, and by Robert Rendall.
Brown's weekly "Island Diary" appeared in the Herald between 1945 and 1956. He used the pen name "Islandman" for the column. He was sometimes portrayed by "Spike" (Bob Johnston), the paper's cartoonist, wearing a prominent scarf in the regular Spotlight comic strip. The loss of the scarf on a trip to Shetland was described in 1951. The "now almost legendary scarf" was returned and put on display in a Stromness shop window. Jo Grimond, the local MP, said "the scarf should be retained as permanent inter-county trophy," but Brown complained that "they hadn't even washed it". Spike described it as "the scarf that launched 1,000 quips".
In 1947, Stromness voted to allow pubs to open again, the town having been "dry" since the 1920s. When the first bar opened in 1948, Mackay Brown first tasted alcohol. He found alcoholic drinks "a revelation; they flushed my veins with happiness; they washed away all cares and shyness and worries. I remember thinking to myself 'If I could have two pints of beer every afternoon, life would be a great happiness'". Alcohol played a considerable part in his life, but he says, "I never became an alcoholic, mainly because my guts quickly stalled."
Higher education and beginnings as poet
Brown was a mature student at Newbattle Abbey College in the 1951–1952 session, where the poet Edwin Muir, who had a great influence on his life as a writer, was warden. His return for the following session was interrupted by recurrent tuberculosis.
Having had poems published in several periodicals, his first volume of them, The Storm, appeared with the Orkney Press in 1954. Muir wrote in the foreword: "Grace is what I find in these poems.". Only three hundred copies were printed, and the imprint sold out within a fortnight. It was acclaimed in the local press.
Brown studied English literature at the University of Edinburgh. After publication of poems in a literary magazine, with the help of Muir, Brown had a second volume, Loaves and Fishes, published by the Hogarth Press in 1959. It was warmly received.
During this period he met many of the Scottish poets of his time – Sydney Goodsir Smith, Norman MacCaig, Hugh MacDiarmid, Tom Scott and others – with whom he often drank in Rose Street, Edinburgh. Here he also met Stella Cartwright, described as "The Muse in Rose Street". Brown was briefly engaged to her and began a correspondence that continued until her death in 1985.
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. At this juncture he was received into the Roman Catholic Church, converting from Presbyterianism of his childhood 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.
After a period of unemployment and rejection of a volume of his poetry by the Hogarth Press, Brown did a postgraduate study on Gerard Manley Hopkins, although such work was not to his taste. This provided some occupation and income until 1964, when a volume of poetry, The Year of the Whale, was accepted.
Brown now found himself able to support himself financially for the first time, as he received new commissions. He received a bursary from the Scottish Arts Council in December 1965 as he was working on the volume of short stories, A Calendar of Love, which was issued to critical acclaim in February 1967. He was still troubled by excessive drinking, and that of Stella Cartwright. Later that year came the death of his mother, who had supported him despite disapproving of his drinking; she left an estate of £4.
Meanwhile, he had been working on An Orkney Tapestry, which includes essays on Orkney and more imaginative pieces, illustrated by Sylvia Wishart. The year 1968 also saw his one visit to Ireland, on a bursary from the Society of Authors. He met Seamus Heaney there, although his nervous condition reduced his ability to enjoy the visit.
In 1969, his short-story collection A Time to Keep received a positive welcome. The poet Charles Causley said, "I don't know anyone writing in this particular genre today who comes within a thousand miles of him." This was also the year in which he finished working on a six-part cycle of poems about Rackwick, published in 1971 as Fishermen with Ploughs. Meanwhile, An Orkney Tapestry was proving to be a commercial success.
By the late 1960s Brown's poetry was renowned internationally, so that the American poet Robert Lowell, for example, came to Orkney expressly to meet him.
During the summer of 1970, Brown met the musician Peter Maxwell Davies in Rackwick. Subsequently, Davies, who came to live in Rackwick, based a number of his works on the poetry and prose of George Mackay Brown.