Book description
ALASDAIR GRAY is Scotland's best known polymath. Born in 1934 in
Glasgow, he graduated from Glasgow School of Art in 1957 then lived by
part-time teaching, painting and writing plays for TV and radio until
1981. His first novel, the loosely autobiographical, blackly fantastic
LANARK, opened new imaginative territory for such varied writers as
Jonathan Coe, A. L. Kennedy, Janice Galloway and Irvine Welsh. It led
Anthony Burgess to call him “the most important Scottish writer since
Sir Walter Scott”. His other published books include 1982 JANINE, POOR
THINGS (winner of the Whitbread Award), THE BOOK OF PREFACES, THE ENDS
OF OUR TETHERS and OLD MEN IN LOVE. In this book, with reproductions of
his murals, portraits, landscapes and illustrations, Gray tells of the
failures and successes which have led to his pictures being accepted by
a new generation of visual artists.
