Reviews
Skilfully constructed, Mackay Brown weaves together myth, folklore, history, poetry, and even a self-contained play
The Lady
He transforms everything by passing it through the eye of the needle of Orkney
Seamus Heaney
[Brown] is a uniquely observant and skilful chronicler of life in his native Orkneys, past and present
Times Literary Supplement
Brown has perfected a narrative style of great simplicity
Douglas Dunn
Linden Bicket and Kirsteen McCue have done invaluable service to scholarship
The Tablet
A rich fusion of ballad, folk tale, short story, drama and environmental writing
The Scotsman
A celebration of place and people, the book asks troubled questions of the future
Herald Book News
About the Book
First published in 1969, An Orkney Tapestry, George Mackay Brown's seminal work, is a unique look at Orkney through the eye of a poet. Originally commissioned by his publisher as an introduction to the Orkney Islands, Brown approached the writing from a unique perspective and went on to produce a rich fusion of ballad, folk tale, short story, drama and environmental writing. The book, written at an early stage in the author’s career, explores themes that appear in his later work and was a landmark in Brown’s development as a writer. Above all, it is a celebration of Orkney's people, language and history. This edition reproduces Sylvia Wishart’s beautiful illustrations, commissioned for the original hardback.
Made available again for the first time in over 40 years, this new edition sits alongside Nan Shepherd’s The Living Mountain as an important precursor of environmental writing by the likes of Kathleen Jamie, Robert Macfarlane, Malachy Tallack and, most recently, Amy Liptrot.
You may also like…
-
Paperback | Pub: 03 Jun 2021£12.99
In this new Selected Poems, Kathleen Jamie explores the multi-faceted world of George Mackay Brown’s Orkney, the poet’s lifelong home and inspiration. George Mackay Brown’s concerns were the ancestral world, the communalities of work, the...
-
Paperback | Pub: 27 Jun 2019£8.99George’s memory is inseparable from Orkney, where he was born the youngest child of a poor family and which he rarely left. His mother was a beautiful woman who spoke only Gaelic and his father was a wit, mimic and singer, who also doubled as...
