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It took a renaissance of poetry in the 20th century to free Scottish writers from what the critic Edwin Muir characterised as the cultural and literary clichés of “Balmorality”. For most of his life, from his birth in Stromness, Orkney, in 1921 until his death there in 1996, George Mackay Brown was regarded as one of Scotland’s greatest poets, novelists and writer of short stories. His spare yet passionate narratives are profoundly rooted in Orcadian history, local folklore, Norse and Icelandic sagas and the natural cycle of rural island life yet they still achieve a universality. Although his visionary poetry and versatile prose, written in English, stayed true to its immense and immanent sense of enduring Orcadian place, it ranged widely in time, from ancient history and archaic traditions to the strength and resilience of nature in the present day.

One to read: Magnus (1973)

More about George Mackay Brown

Listen to the poet's work being read by close personal friend Archie Bevan at the Poetry Archive

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