Biography

I’ve spent most of my life in England and Scotland though I was born in Massachusetts (in 1947). I grew up in Bath and Cornwall with periods in Switzerland and back in the USA. (I’m sometimes told that I’m a very “English” writer and I suppose that’s because it’s always taken a conscious effort to feel at home in Britain.) After Oxford I lectured in English Literature at Strathclyde University in Glasgow and worked on my first novel, The Quincunx. Its publication in 1989 by the small Edinburgh company, Canongate, changed my life. There was only one thing I loved more than my job as a teacher and that was writing and now I was able to do it fulltime. That was because The Quincunx became an international bestseller and went into a dozen languages. Nobody was more surprised than me.Since then I’ve published five more novels and a novella. Everything I’ve published has been unlike anything that preceded it. I realise that confuses readers (not to mention publishers and booksellers) but I write from curiosity and have no wish to repeat myself.Which is my favourite? The one I’m writing now.