William Boyd | Books from Scotland Home > Authors > William Boyd William Boyd William Boyd was born in Accra, Ghana, in 1952, the son of expatriate Scots from Fife. He regards himself as a Scottish writer, saying recently in the Scottish Review of Books, “If someone asks me what nationality I am, I unhesitatingly say I’m Scottish… I’m also aware sometimes I’m included in anthologies of Scottish literature, and sometimes I’m excluded… In Scotland, the net is not being thrown wide enough.” (Here, at BooksfromScotland.com, we’re very happy to include William Boyd.) His writing brought him success almost immediately with his first novel, A Good Man in Africa, winning the Whitbread First Novel Award and the Somerset Maugham Award in 1981. The following year, his next novel An Ice-Cream War was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Since then, he has been a prolific writer and screenwriter with some of his novels and short stories adapting to radio and the small screen. Boyd’s most recent works include Bamboo, an autobiographical selection of non-fiction writings from the past three decades, and the novel Ordinary Thunderstorms.

Share this Sign up to receive our fortnightly newsletter. Name* William Boyd - Literature Literature Biography William Boyd was born in Accra, Ghana, on 7 March 1952. He was educated at Gordonstoun School, Glasgow University and Jesus College, Oxford. Published while he was a lecturer in English at St Hilda’s College, Oxford, his first novel A Good Man in Africa (1981) won the Whitbread First Novel Award and a Somerset Maugham Award. In 1983 Boyd was named by Granta as one of the 20 ‘Best of Young British Novelists’. His other novels include An Ice-Cream War (1982), winner of the Mail on Sunday/John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, Brazzaville Beach (1990), which won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction and the McVitie’s Prize for Scottish Writer of the Year, and The Blue Afternoon (1993), which won the Sunday Express Book of the Year award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize (Fiction).

Armadillo (1998) is set in London and follows the adventures of insomniac loss-adjuster Lorimer Black. In 1998 Boyd also published Nat Tate: An American Artist 1928-1960, an elaborate hoax ‘biography’ of a neglected genius, which embarrassed a number of prominent art critics who claimed to have heard of the wholly fictional painter. Boyd’s eighth novel Any Human Heart (2002), a history of the twentieth century told through the fictional journals of the novelist Logan Mountstuart, won the Prix Jean Monnet for European Literature in 2003 and was nominated for the 2004 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. Restless (2006) won the 2006 Costa Novel Award. His most recent novels are Ordinary Thunderstorms (2009) and Waiting for Sunrise (2012).

Boyd has also published the short story collections On the Yankee Station (1981), The Destiny of Natalie ‘X’ (1995), Fascination (2004) and The Dream Lover (2008), and a collection of non-fiction, Bamboo (2005). A former television critic for the New Statesman (1981-3), William Boyd has also worked extensively as a screenwriter for both film and television. He wrote the television screenplays Good and Bad at Games (1983) and Dutch Girls (1985) (collected in book form as School Ties in 1985), and has adapted two novels by Evelyn Waugh for television: Scoop (1987) and Sword of Honour (2001). He wrote and directed the First World War film The Trench (1999) and has also adapted his own novels Stars and Bars (1988) and A Good Man in Africa (1994) for film, and Armadillo (2001), Any Human Heart (2010) and Restless (2012) for television.

A new radio play, the ghost story A Haunting, was broadcast by BBC Radio 4 in December 2001. Longings, adapted from two short stories by Anton Chekhov and Boyd’s first work for the stage, opened at the Hampstead Theatre in London in February 2013. In 2012 Boyd was commissioned by the Ian Fleming estate to write an official James Bond novel, which was published in 2013 on the sixtieth anniversary of the publication of Fleming’s Casino Royale. Fleming himself made a cameo appearance in Any Human Heart. William Boyd lives in London. He was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1983, and is also an Officier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. He was awarded a CBE in 2005. He is married and divides his time between London and South West France. Awards Critical perspective William Boyd is perhaps best described as a wry historian of 20th-century life, and an ironic commentator on the ways that life has been represented, not only in literature, but in the companion genres of visual art, film and photography.

While his geographical settings vary from the conflict-stricken west African coast of Brazzaville Beach (1990) to the romantic vistas of the Philippine islands in The Blue Afternoon (1993), his recurrent character focus is the English personality and how it adapts – or fails to adapt – to the demands of a foreign landscape. Like Henderson Dores, the introverted Englishman turned extrovert Manhattanite in Stars and Bars (1984), Englishness under pressure is seen to undergo the most radical metamorphoses, and yet remain, at the same time, irrepressibly resilient. In his 1981 debut novel, A Good Man in Africa, Boyd displayed his affiliation to an English tradition of the comic novel of expatriate life, together with his allegiance to one of his many literary mentors, Evelyn Waugh. In the figure of Morgan Leafy, a hapless British diplomat struggling to master the complexities of his posting to a corrupt west African country (the fictional Kinjanja), Boyd also echoed the post-war formula of the ‘Angry Young Man’, his bumbling, gauche, but ultimately sympathetic protagonist even leading some critics to hail the author as a natural successor to Kingsley Amis (D.

J. Taylor, After the War (1993, xxi). Like Amis’s Jim Dixon in the 1954 comedy Lucky Jim, the accident-prone Leafy pursues his love interest through a series of career crises and ham-fisted sexual encounters, ‘an aristocrat of pain and frustration, a prince of anguish and embarrassment’, until he eventually regains his girl, and his self-respect, against all the odds of his situation. But Boyd’s first novel also hinted at his sensitivity to Africa as a continent bedevilled by poverty, exploitation and misguided foreign interference. His portrait no doubt builds on his own childhood experiences in Ghana, something he discusses in the autobiographical essay included in his 1998 Protobiography. Though perpetually self-absorbed, Leafy nonetheless registers the misery and decrepitude of his surroundings in the overpopulated capital of Nkongsamba.

‘Set in undulating tropical rain forest, from the air it resembled nothing so much as a giant pool of vomit on somebody’s expansive unmown lawn.’ And while the plot of A Good Man is driven by a comedy of diplomatic manners, the novel also conveys the heat, sweat, and endless frustrations of a crumbling post-imperial system, with the chaos of a continent throwing into relief a legacy of British incompetence. Boyd addressed this subject with more seriousness in his second novel, An Ice-Cream War (1982), which delves into the clashes between British and German forces in the East Africa campaigns of the First World War. The historical and military material of this book is recreated in vibrant detail, and in his intense descriptive passages Boyd brings out the full colour and desolation of the ravaged landscape of Tanzania. The African scenes are intercut with episodes set in Kent, in the south of England, telling the parallel stories of two brothers, Gabriel and Felix Cobb, whose lives change irreparably as they are drawn, one after the other, into the war.

The quiet civility of Edwardian England contrasts starkly with the confusion and panic of the Africa conflict, experienced first-hand by Gabriel, as he leads his regiment into an attack on the town of Tanga: ‘Nothing today had been remotely how he had imagined it would be; nothing in his education or training had prepared him for the utter randomness and total contingency of events. Here he was, strolling about the battlefield looking for his missing company like a mother searching for lost children in the park.’ When Gabriel is taken prisoner, his brother Felix searches for him in an African landscape transformed into an absurd nightmare of squalor, insects, torrential rain and countless human casualties. And the novel swings ultimately from romance to elegy, providing a brilliant evocation of the long reach of war behind the front lines and into ordinary domestic existence. Much of Boyd’s writing utilises the awkward intersection of private and public life, and the suffering of individuals who – like the unfortunate protagonist of his screenplay Good and Bad at Games (1983) – cannot match the cultural demands of their environment.

In this respect, he is also intrigued by the way in which individuals register the intimate details of their lives, something which developed into his use of a diary or journal form in several novels. In Armadillo (1998), a low-level thriller set in a London insurance company, the central character’s journal is his means of containing and interpreting the nature of coincidence, chance, unpredictability and risk in everyday life. And a diary of sorts provides the basis for Boyd’s 1987 epic, The New Confessions, in which film-maker John James Todd’s overriding obsession with Rousseau’s Confessions becomes the basis for his own confessional memoir of a life lived, through war, romance and ambition, in tandem with the twentieth century. The New Confessions showcases not only Boyd’s superb historical instinct but also his ability to perceive the significance of modern cultural representation through the evolution of photography, journalism and cinema. In this novel, the story of the heyday and decline of silent movies and B-westerns underlines the idea that art forms, like people, have their own biographies.

The author’s attention to this fact, and to the gaps which emerge between imagination and finished work, later fuelled his 1998 spoof on the New York art world, Nat Tate, and also his forays into architecture, film and music in short fiction. But Boyd’s most daring commentary on artistic representation – and indeed, his most ambitious use to date of the fictionalized diary format – is reserved for an engrossing commentary on literature itself. Any Human Heart (2002), the journal of Uruguayan-born, British-bred writer Logan Mountstuart, spans the defining episodes of the twentieth century and crosses several continents in tracking the meandering life of a modern man-of-letters through a convoluted sequence of relationships and literary endeavours. Again, the diary is a means of exploring how public events impinge on individual consciousness, so that Mountstuart’s journal alludes almost casually to the war, the death of a prime minister or the abdication of the king.

But Boyd also uses it to play ironically on the theme of literary celebrity, bringing his protagonist into contact with a series of ‘real’ writers in a sequence of comic or petty encounters – a spat with Virginia Woolf in London, a possible sexual encounter with Evelyn Waugh at Oxford, a clumsy exchange with James Joyce in Paris over the translation of the term ‘scribouillard’. Any Human Heart is a self-consciously clever novel, a 20th-century picaresque conceived in the tradition of Anthony Powell or Anthony Burgess, and loaded with veiled tributes to Boyd’s literary heroes Cyril Connolly and William Gerhardie, whose flamboyant and affected styles haunt Mountstuart’s own prose. It signals too, towards Boyd’s lingering feelings of uneasiness with colonialism and the British establishment, which he also explores in several of the essays collected in Bamboo (2005). Any Human Heart is also, more simply, a rich and frequently moving study of the inevitability of life’s passage.

The elderly Mountstuart, watching teenagers on a French beach, is struck by the simplicity of this fact: ‘And suddenly I wonder; is it more of my bad luck to have been born when I was, at the beginning of this century and not be able to be young at its end? I look enviously at these kids and think about the lives they are living – and will live – and posit a kind of future for them. And then, almost immediately, I think what a futile regret that is. You must live the life you have been given.’ Boyd has argued that ‘like a vitamin pill, a good short story can provide a compressed blast of discerning intellectual pleasure, one no less intense than that delivered by a novel’ (The Guardian, 2 October, 2004). It could be said that both his stories and his novels are governed by the ideal of a ‘discerning intellectual pleasure’, sustained by his ability to marry individual interest with historical scope, and to fuse conceptual purpose with the power of compelling narrative.

This combination is pursued once again in Restless (2006), a less emotionally involving novel than Any Human Heart, but which similarly highlights Boyd’s ongoing preoccupation with recreating the scenes and textures of 20th-century history. The novel has two female protagonists: Ruth Gilmartin, a postgraduate student in 1970s Oxford, and her mother Sally, whose eccentric and homely English exterior masks a previous existence as Russian émigrée Eva Delectorskaya, and whose wartime career in espionage has returned to haunt her 30 years later. The narrative of Restless alternates between Ruth’s investigation into her mother’s past, and Eva’s own account of her life as a spy, working for the secret British Security Coordination organisation in Belgium, London and, most importantly, the United States, as Boyd mines submerged histories of British wartime propaganda and American Anglophobia to weave a tense and complex web which threatens to undermine post-war myths of a ‘special relationship’ between the two powers.

As Eva gradually involves her daughter in her plans for revenge on her former spymaster with whom she was romantically involved, the novel displays many of the conventions of a romantic thriller, and in the constant role-playing and double bluffing occasioned by the spy genre, personal relationships and allegiances are perpetually at risk. In sharp contrast to the confident personal narrative of Any Human Heart, Restless marks a return, of sorts, to some of the awkward convolutions of identity which flavoured Boyd’s early fiction, and to a British social landscape still troubled by ingrained historical insecurities. Boyd returns to the thriller genre in his tenth and eleventh novels Ordinary Thunderstorms (2009) and Waiting for Sunrise (2012). With a nod to John Buchan’s The 39 Steps, Ordinary Thunderstorms opens as Adam Kindred, a divorced climatologist, arrives in London for a job interview and almost immediately becomes incriminated in a murder. Unlike Buchan’s protagonist, however, Kindred decides to remain in London, abandoning his identity and initially living rough on a piece of waste ground in Chelsea, existing on handouts and charity, as he tries to piece together the circumstances of the killing.

Kindred’s profession is something of a red herring, and inasmuch as the novel has any contemporary target it is the international pharmaceutical trade: the murdered man had been developing a new cure for asthma, and Kindred is in possession of a file which casts doubt on the effectiveness of the new drug, leading to a brutal manhunt by private security operatives. This is Boyd’s London novel, and there are obvious Dickensian echoes in Kindred’s experiences in the underworld, and in the way that Boyd seeks to draw characters from disparate social backgrounds into his narrative. The course of this thriller is perhaps hindered by the number of digressions and subplots, and its pace is often as leisurely as the River Thames around which much of the action unfolds. A false accusation also sets the plot of Boyd’s subsequent novel in motion. In Waiting for Sunrise, Lysander Rief travels to Vienna in 1913, seeking therapeutic treatment for an embarrassing sexual problem. There he falls into a tempestuous relationship with a fellow patient, the neurotic sculptress Hettie Bull, who after some months accuses him of rape.

Indebted to a shadowy pair of attachés at the British consulate who enable his escape to England, on the outbreak of war Rief is compelled to become involved in a complex operation to trace the leaking of details of military movements on the Western Front to Germany. The early sessions of therapy offer a convenient means of establishing the back story of the Anglo-Austrian protagonist, whose pre-war employment as an actor and facility for disguise prove central to his mission, which offers Rief ‘the chance to see the mighty industrial technologies of the twentieth-century war machine both at its massive, bureaucratic source and at its narrow, vulnerable human target.’ Waiting for Sunrise displays some familiar Boyd preoccupations, including the ekphrastic description of invented works of art and references to the early days of cinema, and the novel demonstrates his enduring interest in recreating specific historical and cultural milieux: initially Vienna immediately before the First World War (there is a cameo appearance by Sigmund Freud) and subsequently wartime London, with brief sorties to the trenches of the Western Front and to Geneva.

Like previous works, the novel has an important confessional dimension, as the narrative is interspersed with extracts from Rief’s journals, which permit some formal innovation in the inclusion of some poems and some fragments of dialogue rendered in playscript. Boyd’s recent success in refreshing the conventions of spy fiction should serve him well in his forthcoming project of writing the next official James Bond novel, published in 2013. Dr Eve Patten, 2008, Dr Guy Woodward, 2013 Bibliography Books by William Boyd Books by William Boyd Waiting For Sunrise Vienna. 1913. Lysander Rief, a young English actor, has his first appointment with the eminent psychiatrist, Dr. Bensimon. In the waiting room he anxiously ponders the nature of his problem when an extraordinary woman enters. She is clearly in distress, but Lysander is immediately drawn to her... Moving from Vienna to London, the battlefields of France and Geneva, Waiting for Sunrise is a mesmerising journey into the human psyche, a beautifully observed portrait of wartime Europe, a plot-twisting thriller and a literary tour de force.

Ordinary Thunderstorms One May evening in London, as a result of a chance encounter and a split-second decision, the young climatologist Adam Kindred loses everything - home, job, reputation, passport, credit cards, money - never to get them back. With the police and a hit man in merciless pursuit, Adam has no choice but to go underground, joining the ranks of the disappeared. His journey of discovery will take him from Chelsea to the East End. On the way he encounters aristocrats, priests, prostitutes and a policewoman - but will he ever find himself again? The Dream Lover Short Stories Funny, moving and sharply observed, here are twenty-four gripping tales told in bold, distinct voices from Brazil to Africa and from Nice to Hollywood. This eclectic collection is a must-read for any lover of the short story. ‘Perfect … Suffused with an understanding of love, desire and emotional incompetence’ Guardian Restless It is 1939. Eva Delectorskaya is a beautiful 28-year-old Russian émigrée living in Paris.

As war breaks out she is recruited for the British Secret Service by Lucas Romer, a mysterious Englishman, and under his tutelage she learns to become the perfect spy, to mask her emotions and trust no one, including those she loves most. Since the war, Eva has carefully rebuilt her life as a typically English wife and mother. But once a spy, always a spy. Now she must complete one final assignment, and this time Eva can't do it alone: she needs her daughter's help. Bamboo Throughout his career as a novelist, William Boyd has never stopped writing non-fiction, providing a fascinating counterpoint to the world of his novels. Bamboo gathers together Boyd's writing on literature, art, the movie business, television, people he has met, places he has visited and autobiographical reflections on his African childhood and his years at boarding school. From Pablo Picasso to the allure of the British caff, from Charles Dickens to Catherine Deneuve, from mini-cabs to Brideshead Revisited, this collection proves an engrossing and revealing companion to the work of one of Britain's leading novelists.

Fascination Described as "the finest storyteller of his generation", Boyd shows his mastery of the form as these stories range widely through time and space. In a brilliant array of styles and narratives we move from 1930s Germany to Los Angeles in the Second World War, from contemporary Oxford to 19th century Russia. Whether in London or Amsterdam. Eastbourne or a Normandy village these stories explore and expose the fraught, funny, absurd, poignant and lovelorn lives of their many and varied characters. Any Human Heart Every life is both ordinary and extraordinary, and Logan Mountstuart’s — lived from the beginning to the end of the twentieth century — is a rich tapestry of both. As a writer who finds inspiration in Paris and London, as a spy betrayed in the war and as an art-dealer in ’60s New York, Logan mixes with the men and women who shape his times. But as a son, friend, lover and husband, he makes the same mistakes we all do in our search for happiness. Here, then, is the story of a life lived to the full — and a journey deep into a very human heart.

Nat Tate An American Artist: 1928-1960 Artist Nathwell Tate was born in 1928 in Union Beach, New Jersey. On January 8 1960 he contrived to round up and burn almost his entire output of Abstract Expressionism. Four days later he killed himself. This book offers an account of Tate's life and work which can be seen either as straight art biography or as fiction. It is an investigation of the blurry line between the invented and the authentic, the wholly false and the utterly real. Armadillo One winter's morning, Lorimer Black - young, good-looking, but with a somewhat troubled expression - goes to keep a perfectly routine business appointment and finds a hanged man. A bad start to the day, by any standards, and an ominous portent. Sure enough, Lorimer's life is duly turned upside down and inside out in ways he could never have foreseen. The Destiny of Nathalie 'X' and Other Stories Eleven ironic, inventive short stories of love, loss, and ambition include the tale of a widowed Englishwoman and a Portuguese poet who enjoy an annual tryst in 1930s Lisbon.

The Blue Afternoon Los Angeles 1936. Kay Fischer, a young, ambitious architect, is shadowed by Salvador Carriscant, an enigmatic stranger claiming to be her father. Within weeks of their first meeting, Kay will join him for an extraordinary journey into the old man's past, initially in search of a murderer, but finally in celebration of a glorious, undying love. Brazzaville Beach On Brazzaville Beach, on the edge of Africa, Hope Clearwater examines the complex circumstances that brought her there. Sifting the details for evidence of her own innocence or guilt, she tells her engrossing story with a blunt and beguiling honesty that not only intrigues and disturbs but is also completely enthralling. Stars and Bars All Henderson Dores dreams of is fitting in. But America, land of the loony millionaire and the subway poet, down-home Bible-basher and sharp-suited hood, of paralysing personal frankness and surreally fantasized facilities, is hard enough for an Englishman to fit in to. Henderson could never shed enough inhibitions to become just another weirdo. Or could he?

An Ice-Cream War As millions are slaughtered on the Western Front, a ridiculous and little-reported campaign is being waged in East Africa - a war they continued after the Armistice because no one told them to stop. Primarily a gripping story of the men and women swept up by the passions of love and battle, William Boyd's magnificently entertaining novel also elicits the cruel futility and tragedy of it all. On The Yankee Station and Other Stories Adolescent sex in a Scottish boys' public school, oddballs on the seedy side of America, murder in a quiet Devon cottage are some of the subjects in this collection of short stories. It also includes two early adventures from the career of Morgan Leafy, anti-hero of A Good Man in Africa. A Good Man in Africa Morgan Leafy isn't overburdened with worldly success. But then, as a representative of Her Britannic Majesty in tropical Kinjanja, it was not very constructive of him to get involved in wholesale bribery. Nor was it oiling his way up the ladder to hunt down the boss's daughter when officially banned from horizontal delights by a nasty dose ...

Falling back on his deep-laid reserves of misanthropy and guile, Morgan has to fight off the sea of humiliation, betrayal and ju-ju that threatens to wash over him. Longing The first play by bestselling author William Boyd, Longing adapts two of Anton Chekhov's short stories to weave a comic tale, at once exotic and familiar. When Kolia is invited to visit his oldest friends on their Estate in the country he anticipates a pleasant break from Moscow life. But as the comedy of provincial life plays out around him, he finds himself adrift in a miasma of false expectations, missed opportunities, and unspoken passions. Solo 1969. A veteran secret agent. A single mission. A licence to kill. James Bond returns. Combining all the glamour and excitement of Ian Fleming’s original novels with the masterful storytelling of William Boyd, Solo is a stylish, period novel featuring 007 as a veteran agent at 45. Sweet Caress Amory’s first memory is of her father standing on his head. She has memories of him returning on leave during the First World War. But his absences, both actual and emotional, are what she chiefly remembers.

It is her photographer uncle Greville who supplies the emotional bond she needs, and, when he gives her a camera and some rudimentary lessons in photography, unleashes a passion that will irrevocably shape her future... William Boyd: Our man in 007 land | The Independent Profiles William Boyd: Our man in 007 land With an invitation to pen the next James Bond novel, this most accomplished of storytellers is poised to win a whole new set of admirers Friday 13 April 2012 23:00 BST Click to follow The Independent Online He says: 'Where do you go when you want to really understand what other people are like? The best place to go is a novel.' David Sandison/The Independent When it was announced on Wednesday that William Boyd had accepted an invitation by the Ian Fleming estate to write a new James Bond novel, fans of his recent books won't have been much surprised.

From Restless in 2006 to the recent Waiting for Sunrise, by way of Ordinary Thunderstorms (2009), Boyd has ploughed a furrow that's perplexed admirers of his earlier "literary" works such as his Whitbread-winning debut, A Good Man in Africa and the Booker-shortlisted An Ice-Cream War. Boyd's late-middle-period books are thrillers with classic ingredients: spies, femmes fatales, men on the run, men going underground, daring escapes, untrustworthy foreigners, assumed identities and a casual sadism that would have impressed Ian Fleming. In Ordinary Thunderstorms, our hero is pursued by an ex-SAS psychopath called Jonjo Case who likes to flay the skin from his victim's hands and fingers. The protagonist in Waiting for Sunrise, a dim but likeable actor called Lysander discovers an aptitude for torture by forcing Brillo pads into a man's mouth and applying electrodes, plugged into the mains.

Although in each book Boyd's protagonists pause for chin-stroking reflections – on the impossibility of burying the past, the multitude of undocumented missing persons in Britain, the new world order after 1914 – these are not profound works, any more than were Fleming's Bond novels. They're cracking adventure stories – fast, efficient, full of description and short on emotion. They're still reviewed, however, in the serious, literary-fiction pages of the national press. Although Restless was a "Richard and Judy" selection in 2007, it won the high-profile Costa Award. Literary editors and judges refuse to relinquish their view of Boyd as a superior literary being, a writer of subtlety, poignancy and psychological nuance, as his earlier novels revealed him to be. He is, they admit, a 21st-century avatar of Graham Greene, who blithely interspersed "serious" works (The End of the Affair, A Burnt-Out Case) with action-thriller "entertainments" such as Brighton Rock and Our Man in Havana. The reading public couldn't care tuppence about such matters.

They buy Boyd's books in hundreds of thousands because they know him to be the most reliably page-turning of modern English novelists, full of old-fashioned storytelling virtues, of place evocation, pace, drama and sex. Of the generation nominated "Best of Young British Writers" by Granta in 1983 – the generation of Amis, Barnes, McEwan, Rushdie, Rose Tremain, Pat Barker, A N Wilson, Adam Mars-Jones et al – Boyd's probably the author for whom ordinary readers feel the most fondness. The Queen is known to be a fan, though possibly more because of his Commonwealth background and blue-eyed charm than his prose style. He lives in a handsome Chelsea townhouse, with his wife Susan, editor-at-large at the American Harper's Bazaar magazine (he married her at 23 – they've been married for 37 years, and have no children) and in a converted farmhouse in Bergerac, where he owns a vineyard, Chateau Pecachard. For a chap who turned 60 in March, it seems an enviable life. The Boyd oeuvre is full of obsessions and recurring themes, the most conspicuous of which is history.

His books constantly burrow into the past, tracking through the 20th century, placing characters in the Western Front, the General Strike, the Spanish Civil War, the Blitz, the post-war Manhattan art market. In The New Confessions (1987) a Scottish film-maker called John James Todd fights in the First World War, is a war correspondent in the post-D-Day invasion of France, and winds up embroiled with the McCarthy blacklist of suspected communists. Any Human Heart offers the diaries of Logan Mountstuart, a half-British, half-Uruguayan writer who publishes a best-selling novel in his twenties and spends 80-odd years with writer's block meeting key figures from the literary century: TS Eliot, Virginia Woolf, Evelyn Waugh, Hemingway, Martha Gellhorn. In Restless, he's at it again, as Eva, a Russian émigrée, gives her daughter a memoir of her life as a spy in the Second World War. Where does Boyd's fascination with people caught up in war come from? His inspiration was close at hand. "People had amazing lives in the 20th century," he told me in 2002.

"My wife Susan's father, for instance. He was 19 when he fought at Tobruk, was captured, was a prisoner of war, escaped to Italy, was recaptured by the Germans and shipped to a PoW camp, did slave labour in an ironworks, was shipped to another camp out east. He woke one day to find the Germans gone and the Russians arriving. He commandeered a bicycle and cycled through the ruins of the Third Reich to meet the advancing Americans. Then he went back to Glasgow to become a tea merchant. His life before and after was entirely normal – he got married, had three kids – but in the middle was this extraordinary event. And as that generation grows older and dies, the sons naturally wonder: what can it have been like? And they, the ones who didn't take part, are the generation whose novelists want to write about it." Identity is another abiding fascination in his work. Characters constantly adopt disguises, change their names (Ruth in Restless discovers her mother isn't Sally Fairchild but Eva Delectorskaya) and become other people. But if you ask William Boyd about his own identity – where he's from – he finds it hard to explain.

He was born in 1952 in Accra, Ghana. His Scottish parents (he a doctor, she a teacher) moved to Africa at the end of the Second World War. He grew up in western Nigeria, and was sent to Gordonstoun, the tough Scottish boarding school attended by Prince Philip and all his sons. (Charles called it "Colditz in kilts".) When Boyd went home for the vacations, it was to an Africa torn apart by strife. The Biafran war raged when he was in his teens. He moved from public-school rules and Scottish gentility to road blocks, strip searches and summary execution. He saw, earlier than most children, the precariousness of life. "It shaped the way I write and it also shaped the way I live," he told the Evening Standard in 2009. "I don't take anything for granted and I advance with due caution. It does mean you seize the day, every day." After a peripatetic education – he went to university in Nice, Glasgow and Oxford – he lectured in English for three years at St Hilda's College, Oxford, where his good looks reportedly made lady undergraduates swoon.

During this period (1980-83) he wrote his first novel, A Good Man in Africa, set in the fictional African country of Kinjana, and following the politico-sexual entanglements of a conceited but romantic diplomat called Morgan Leafy. Other fish-out-of-water British characters appeared in his follow-up, An Ice-Cream War, set in East Africa in 1914 and starring the upper-middle-class Cobb family. Boyd turned his attention to America in his fourth novel, Stars and Bars, in which Henderson Dores, an art dealer in love with America, tries to acquire a US millionaire's priceless Renoir. Starting out as a typically Briton, Dores ends up clad only in a cardboard box, taken by the locals for just another weirdo. A Good Man and Stars and Bars were both later filmed to Boyd's own screenplays. He's had a secondary career as a film-maker, both writer and director, adapting the works of favourite writers, such as Evelyn Waugh's Scoop, Joyce Cary's Mister Johnson and Mario Vargas Llosa's Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter.

As he told the media last week, he's been involved filmically with three James Bond actors over the years - with Sean Connery in A Good Man in Africa, Pierce Brosnan in Mister Johnson and Daniel Craig in Boyd's first film as director, The Trench. His most successful adaptation was probably that of his own novel Any Human Heart, televised in 2010 in four instalments, to loud acclaim. One light-dazzling moment, in which a boy in a boat sees three incarnations of himself on the riverbank, was especially moving. As this prodigiously gifted master storyteller contemplates his past, his comfortable present and his James Bond-tastic future, he's entitled to feel a bit dazzled by his own success. A Life In Brief Born: 7 March 1952, Accra, Ghana Family: His father moved to Ghana after the Second World War to run a health clinic, where Boyd and two sisters were born. He has been married to his wife Susan for 37 years. Education: Attended Gordonstoun school in Scotland before studying at the University of Nice, University of Glasgow and Jesus College, Oxford.

Career: After teaching at Oxford, in 1981 his first novel, A Good Man in Africa, won him the Whitbread First Novel Award. His works include An Ice-Cream War, Brazzaville Beach and Any Human Heart. He says: "Where do you go when you want to really understand what other people are like? The best place to go is a novel." They say: "His thrillers occupy the niche that Ian Fleming would fill were he writing today." Corinne Turner, Ian Fleming Publications Ltd. William Boyd Biography William Boyd Biography Good and Bad at Games William Boyd WILLIAM BOYD has received world-wide acclaim for his novels.

They are: A Good Man in Africa (1981, winner of the Whitbread Award and the Somerset Maugham Prize) An Ice Cream War (1982, shortlisted for the 1982 Booker Prize and winner of the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize), Stars and Bars (1984), The New Confessions (1987), Brazzaville Beach (1990, winner of the McVitie Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize) The Blue Afternoon (1993, winner of the 1993 Sunday Express Book of the Year Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Award for Fiction, 1995), Armadillo (1998) and Any Human Heart (2002, winner of the Prix Jean Monnet). His novels and stories have been published around the world and have been translated into over thirty languages.

He is also the author of a collection of screenplays and a memoir of his schooldays, School Ties (1985); and three collections of short stories: On the Yankee Station (1981), The Destiny of Nathalie 'X' (1995) and Fascination (2004). He also wrote the speculative memoir of his schooldays, School Ties (1985); three collections of short stories: On the Yankee Station (1981), The Destiny of Nathalie 'X' (1995) and Fascination (2004). He also wrote the speculative memoir Nat Tate: an American Artist -- the publication of which, in the spring of 1998, caused something of a stir on both sides of the Atlantic. A collection of his non-fiction writings, 1978-2004, entitled Bamboo, was published in October 2005. His ninth novel, Restless, was published in September 2006 (Costa Book Award, Novel of the Year 2006) and his tenth novel, Ordinary Thunderstorms, published September 2009.

His most recent novel is Waiting For Sunrise which published in February 2011. Born in Accra, Ghana, in 1952, Boyd grew up there and in Nigeria. He was educated at Gordonstoun School and attended the universities of Nice (Diploma of French Studies) and Glasgow (M.A.Hons in English and Philosophy) and Jesus College, Oxford, where he studied for a D.Phil in English Literature. He was also a lecturer in English Literature at St. Hilda's College, Oxford, from 1980-83. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and an Officier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. He has been presented with honorary Doctorates in Literature from the universities of St. Andrews, Stirling, Glasgow and Dundee. In 2005 he was awarded the CBE. His screenwriting credits include Stars and Bars (1987, dir. Pat O'Connor), Mr Johnson (1990, dir. Bruce Beresford), Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter (1990, dir. Jon Amiel), Chaplin (1992, dir.

Richard Attenborough) A Good Man in Africa (1993, dir. Bruce Beresford), The Trench (1999, which Boyd also directed) and Man to Man (2005, dir. Régis Wargnier). He adapted Evelyn Waugh's Scoop for television (1988) and also Waugh's Sword of Honour trilogy (2001). His own three-part adaptation of his novel Armadillo was screened on BBC 1 in 2001 and on A&E in the US in 2002. His film about Shakespeare and his sonnets — A Waste of Shame -- was made in 2005 for BBC 4. He has written two original TV films about boarding-school life in England -- Good and Bad at Games (1983) and Dutch Girls (1985). He adapted his own novel Any Human Heart into a four-part drama for Channel 4 in 2010, which garnered much critical acclaim. He is married and divides his time between London and South West France.

Author photograph © Eamonn McCabe The New Confessions : William Boyd : 9780141046914 The New Confessions US$8.70 US$11.06 You save US$2.36 Free delivery worldwide Add to basket Add to wishlist Description The New Confessions is the outrageous, extraordinary, hilarious and heartbreaking autobiography of John James Todd, a Scotsman born in 1899 and one of the great self-appointed (and failed) geniuses of the twentieth century. 'An often magnificent feat of story-telling and panoramic reconstruction ...John James Todd's reminiscences carry us through the ups and downs of a long and lively career that begins in genteel Edinburgh, devastatingly detours out to the Western Front, forks off, after a period of cosy family life in London, to the electric excitements of the Berlin film-world of the Twenties, then moves on to Hollywood ...to ordeal by McCarthyism and eventual escape to Europe' Peter Kemp, Observer.

show more Product details 130 x 196 x 35mm | 281.23g Publication date Contemporary Fiction Review quote "An entertaining and darkly comic novel, a novel given weight and ballast by the pressure of recent history."--The New York Times "Here is the rarest of books, the sort you want to read again--even before you've finished it the first time. . . . Boyd gives us a magnificent experience." --People "Boyd has created an important and complex character in a vividly evoked series of settings. . . . He has written a subtle and provocative history of our time." --Los Angeles Times Book Review "Entertaining and intellectually engaging." --Time" show more About William Boyd William Boyd was born in 1952 in Accra, Ghana and grew up there and in Nigeria. His first novel, A Good Man in Africa (1981), won the Whitbread First Novel Award and the Somerset Maugham Prize.

His other novels include An Ice Cream War (1982, shortlisted for the 1982 Booker Prize and winner of the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize), Stars and Bars (1984), The New Confessions (1987), Brazzaville Beach (1990, winner of the McVitie Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize), The Blue Afternoon (1993, winner of the 1993 Sunday Express Book of the Year Award), Armadillo (1998), Any Human Heart (2002, winner of the Prix Jean Monnet) and Restless (2006, winner of the Costa Novel of the Year Award). His latest novel is Sweet Caress (2015). Some seventeen of his screenplays have been filmed, including The Trench (1999), which he also directed, and he is also the author of four collections of short stories: On the Yankee Station (1981), The Destiny of Nathalie 'X' (1995), Fascination (2004) and The Dream Lover (2008).

He is married and divides his time between London and South West France. show more Follow us The New Confessions: Amazon.it: William Boyd: Libri in altre lingue Libri in altre lingue Tutti i prezzi includono l'IVA. Spedizione gratuita per ordini sopra EUR 29. DisponibilitÃ immediata. Venduto e spedito da Amazon. Confezione regalo disponibile. QuantitÃ : Per vedere gli indirizzi, per favore Accedi Inserisci un codice postale corretto. Inserisci un codice postale corretto. Oppure Venduto da worldofbooksit Condizione: Usato: Ottime condizioni Commento: The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged. Aggiungi al carrello Passa al retro Passa al fronte Ascolta Riproduzione in corso... In pausa Stai ascoltando un campione dell'edizione audio udibile.

The New Confessions (Inglese) Copertina flessibile – 3 giu 2010 di Vuoi riceverlo venerdÃ¬ 20 gen.? Ordina entro 7 ore e 8 min e scegli la spedizione AmazonGlobal Rapida. Dettagli Nota: Questo articolo puÃ² essere consegnato in un punto di ritiro. Dettagli Ritira il tuo ordine dove e quando preferisci. Scegli tra gli oltre 8.500 punti di ritiro in Italia I clienti Prime beneficiano di consegne illimitate presso i punti di ritiro senza costi aggiuntivi Come inviare un ordine presso un punto di ritiro Amazon. Trova il tuo punto di ritiro preferito ed aggiungilo alla tua rubrica degli indirizzi Indica il punto di ritiro in cui vuoi ricevere il tuo ordine nella pagina di conferma dâordine Descrizione prodotto L'autore William Boyd was born in 1952 in Accra, Ghana and grew up there and in Nigeria.

His first novel, A Good Man in Africa (1981), won the Whitbread First Novel Award and the Somerset Maugham Prize. His other novels include An Ice Cream War (1982, shortlisted for the 1982 Booker Prize and winner of the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize), Stars and Bars (1984), The New Confessions (1987), Brazzaville Beach (1990, winner of the McVitie Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize), The Blue Afternoon (1993, winner of the 1993 Sunday Express Book of the Year Award), Armadillo (1998), Any Human Heart (2002, winner of the Prix Jean Monnet) and Restless (2006, winner of the Costa Novel of the Year Award). His latest novel is Sweet Caress (2015).

Some seventeen of his screenplays have been filmed, including The Trench (1999), which he also directed, and he is also the author of four collections of short stories: On the Yankee Station (1981), The Destiny of Nathalie 'X' (1995), Fascination (2004) and The Dream Lover (2008). He is married and divides his time between London and South West France. Non Ã¨ necessario possedere un dispositivo Kindle. Scarica una delle app Kindle gratuite per iniziare a leggere i libri Kindle sul tuo smartphone, tablet e computer. Apple Per scaricare una app gratuita, inserisci il numero di cellulare. oppure Non hai un Kindle? Scopri Kindle , oppure scarica l'applicazione di lettura Kindle GRATUITA.

Dettagli prodotto Editore: Penguin (3 giugno 2010) Collana: VIKING FIC PB n.118652 in Libri in altre lingue > Per lingua > Inglese Garanzia e recesso: Se vuoi restituire un prodotto entro 30 giorni dal ricevimento perchÃ© hai cambiato idea, consulta la nostra pagina d'aiuto sul Diritto di Recesso . Se hai ricevuto un prodotto difettoso o danneggiato consulta la nostra pagina d'aiuto sulla Garanzia Legale . Per informazioni specifiche sugli acquisti effettuati su Marketplace consulta… Maggiori informazioni la nostra pagina d'aiuto su Resi e rimborsi per articoli Marketplace . Desideri aggiornare le informazioni del prodotto o lasciare dei feedback sulle immagini ?

Consegne illimitate in 1 giorno Iscriviti ad Amazon Prime: consegne in 1 giorno senza costi aggiuntivi, accesso anticipato alle Offerte Lampo di Amazon.it e agli eventi di Amazon BuyVIP e spazio di archiviazione per le foto illimitato Non ci sono ancora recensioni di clienti su Amazon.it 5 stelle 4.0 su 5 stelle A Chancy Affair 30 aprile 2011 Di Daniel Myers - Pubblicato su Amazon.com Formato: Copertina flessibile Acquisto verificato Reading this book, I was reminded of why, despite Rousseau's many shortcomings and faults, I've always loved his Confessions: It's BECAUSE of his all too human shortcomings and faults. That said, our protagonist herein, John James Todd, is not exactly a modern day John-Jacques. The most obvious flaw is that the caustic tone Boyd lends him herein is almost exactly that of Nat Tate, the protagonist in his later book Any Human Heart, rather than the lilting, self-pitying one of Rousseau's Confessions.

Still, it is impossible not to sympathise with Todd in his narrative and regard him, if not as a man more sinned against than sinning, than at least as one equally sinned against as sinning. Todd, like Rousseau, is very unreliable as narrator, and at some parts of the book it can become a sort of pleasant distraction to discover the narrative inaccuracies: My personal favourite was his quoting (actually misquoting, as he himself says) from T. S. Eliot's poem "Burnt Norton" whilst in Germany in the 20's, even though Eliot didn't even begin writing the poem until the 30's. It's all very confusing at times reading a book called The New Confessions by author Boyd which consists of a confessional narrative by character Todd written at the end of his life which was largely devoted to the creation of a film version of Rousseau's Confessions. It's all rather like a literary version of a Russian matryoshka doll with progressively smaller dolls enclosed inside it.

Be all this as it may, one can't help but be drawn to a cad with a vision surrounded by pious hypocrites with no vision at all, save getting and spending - which is basically the set-up here. And, underlying it all, the reiterated Boyd/Todd theme that we are all playthings of Chance, regardless of how we try to delude ourselves: "There is no guarantee of good fortune, no assurance that your allies will always be staunch, that unfairness and indifference will not always prevail. So why in these cases (Jean Jacques's case) does the world howl paranoic, lunatic, misanthrope, ingrate, egomaniac? ........I will tell you why. Because it makes people feel better, more secure. If they can lay all the blame on the victim....Chance, the random and haphazard, the contingent, do not really dictate the way the world turns." And who does not have more than a bit of the Rousseauvian in him in the sense that: "When I act it is because I am impelled by something irresistible within me and seldom as a result of some well-plotted strategy." A flawed book, whose covers the prospective reader will hopefully chance to open.

4.0 su 5 stelle 20th Century througth the eyes of a dreamer 8 giugno 2014 Di Frank L. Smith - Pubblicato su Amazon.com Formato: Formato Kindle Acquisto verificato This is the first William Boyd novel I have read; it came about as a direct result of a recommendation from a good friend whose opinion I value. He stated it would be a good 'airplane read'. The New Confessions was more than that; it was a pleasant surprise with a riveting story that, while meandering at times, nevertheless, aided by periodic references to a classic Rousseau novel, follows a life thread from birth & childhood through silent cinema to talkies to color interspaced with war, passion and occasional humor (the balloon flight) and myriad geographic locations from Berlin to Tijuana that keeps you wanting to read more long after the plane is at the jet-way. I highly recommend this book for anyone looking for a very well-written first-half of the 20th Century period piece.

2 di 2 persone hanno trovato utile la seguente recensione 5.0 su 5 stelle All works by William Boyd 10 maggio 2013 Di Alice Bond - Pubblicato su Amazon.com Formato: Copertina rigida Acquisto verificato Everything I have read by William Boyd has been spectacular. I am a big time reader.....and I have never felt this compulsion to absorb everything a writer has to give. I absolutely love his sense of history, his character development, his humanity....I wish I could know him (william Boyd) and talk to him for hours. I love that he dedicates every novel to his sweetheart/lifemate. {Please tell him to keep writing.) I hope he lives a long time and keeps giving us the fruit of his incredibly rich and juicy orchard. With so much respect for your talent and your insight.......Alice 1 di 1 persone hanno trovato utile la seguente recensione 4.0 su 5 stelle a great panorama of one mans life from the 20's to end of world war II. 15 marzo 2013 Di Gerald C.

Vanoli - Pubblicato su Amazon.com Formato: Formato Kindle Acquisto verificato William Boyd is one of the best & most talented writers of our time. His skills in putting this novel together, bridging 2 world wars, the early movie industry & starring a far from lovable hero as the centerpiece are remarkable. Boyd's talent makes this a fascinating book on many levels. He begins in Scotland, then the battlefields of World war1, back to England after the war, then to pre-Hitler Germany with its budding movie industry, and finally(and believably) to Hollywood. This is a very entertaining book. 1 di 1 persone hanno trovato utile la seguente recensione 2.0 su 5 stelle The New Confessions is a Bore 18 febbraio 2013 Di Catherine Snedaker - Pubblicato su Amazon.com Formato: Formato Kindle Acquisto verificato William Boyd went off the rails with this one. I found it tedious, ego-driven and unbelievable. I didn't care what happened to the characters and gave up in the middle. I enjoyed Boyd's other books.

This one missed WSP - AUTHOR SPOTLIGHT - WILLIAM BOYD Wednesday, 18 May 2016 15:09 WSP - AUTHOR SPOTLIGHT - WILLIAM BOYD About the novel Amory’s first memory is of her father standing on his head. She has memories of him returning on leave during the First World War. But his absences, both actual and emotional, are what she chiefly remembers. It is her photographer uncle Greville who supplies the emotional bond she needs, and, when he gives her a camera and some rudimentary lessons in photography, unleashes a passion that will irrevocably shape her future. A spell at boarding school ends abruptly and Amory begins an apprenticeship with Greville in London, living in his tiny flat in Kensington, earning two pounds a week photographing socialites for the magazine Beau Monde. But Amory is hungry for more and her search for life, love and artistic expression will take her to the demi monde of Berlin of the late 20s, to New York of the 30s, to the Blackshirt riots in London and to France in the Second World War where she becomes one of the first women war photographers.

Her desire for experience will lead Amory to further wars, to lovers, husbands and children as she continues to pursue her dreams and battle her demons. In this enthralling story of a life fully lived, William Boyd has created a sweeping panorama of some of the most defining moments of modern history, told through the camera lens of one unforgettable woman, Amory Clay. Buy tickets to the Walter Scott Prize Reviews ‘Boyd deals with heavy themes with the lightest touch. We’re lucky to have him writing for us’ - John Sutherland, The Times ‘It is an utterly compelling read and Boyd’s best novel since Restless’ - Independent 'Boyd is as good as ever at capturing time and place, and at blurring the line between fact and fiction . A highly enjoyable read' - Daily Telegraph ‘One of Britain’s best and best-loved storytellers … a skilfully plotted, cleverly constructed and highly entertaining novel.

It’s a book crying out for screen adaptation’ Sunday Express ‘Witty and resourceful, Boyd’s heroine immediately appeals … This is the story of a life shaped and scarred by war and also by those accidents of fate over which none of us can exert power’- Daily Mail ‘Boyd is a gifted and intelligent story-teller, who possesses the charm to beguile us through a tale which, like all his novels, bears testimony to the damage inflicted on the human psyche by love and war’ - Independent on Sunday We asked the shortlisted authors a few questions about being nominated for the prize - here's what William said - What do you think about being shortlisted for the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction? Do you see yourself as a historical novelist? I'm delighted to be shortlisted. In fact I have a bust of Sir Walter in my living room — good karma! As for being a "historical" novelist, my response is: define "historical". My novel begins in 1908, almost 110 years ago. History, for sure. Yet my grandmother, whom I knew well, was born in 1891. Queen Victoria was on the throne.

My own feeling is that this generational reach means that recent history is not the distant past, as, say, Tudor England, is. It's still with us. So perhaps I'm a contemporary-historical novelist. How did the character of Amory Clay first lodge in your imagination? My basic idea for the novel was to write the whole life of a woman. I had done two "whole-lives" of men and I thought it was time I explored a woman's experience of the human condition. So Amory Clay came into being as a woman who had lived a long life, a life that I decided should be a 20th century one. Then I started adding details. What role does research have in your writing? When does the fiction take over from the facts? It's extremely important — but, equally, you have to know that you're going to chuck out 90% of what you've unearthed. A novel mustn't be overburdened by its factual, historical context — a fine judgement is required. The fiction is always pre-eminent but settled on a bedrock of authenticity.

About the Author William Boyd was born in Accra, Ghana, in 1952, Boyd grew up there and in Nigeria. He was educated at Gordonstoun School and attended the universities of Nice (Diploma of French Studies) and Glasgow (M.A.Hons in English and Philosophy) and Jesus College, Oxford, where he studied for a D.Phil in English Literature. He was also a lecturer in English Literature at St. Hilda's College, Oxford, from 1980-83. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and an Officier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. He has been presented with honorary Doctorates in Literature from the universities of St. Andrews, Stirling, Glasgow and Dundee. In 2005 he was awarded the CBE. Boyd has received world-wide acclaim for his novels. They are: A Good Man in Africa, An Ice Cream War, Stars and Bars, The New Confessions, Brazzaville Beach, The Blue Afternoon, Armadillo and Any Human Heart, Restless, Ordinary Thunderstorms, Waiting for Sunrise and Sweet Caress.

He has also written for film and television and has adapted his own novel Any Human Heart into a four-part drama for Channel 4 in 2010, which garnered much critical acclaim. He is married and divides his time between London and South West France. Related items

Question: Which Scottish author wrote "A Good Man in Africa", "The New Confessions", and his most recent novel "Ordinary Thunderstorms"?
Answer: William Boyd