William Boyd (writer)

William Boyd
Boyd at his Chelsea, London home, 2009
Born	7 March 1952 (1952-03-07)
Occupation	Novelist, screenwriter
Notable work(s)	A Good Man in Africa

William Boyd, CBE (born 7 March 1952) is a Scottish novelist and screenwriter.

Biography

Of Scottish descent, Boyd spent his early life in Ghana and Nigeria, in Africa. He was educated at Gordonstoun school, in Moray, Scotland; and then the University of Nice, France, the University of Glasgow, Scotland, and finally Jesus College, University of Oxford, England.

Between 1980 and 1983 he was a lecturer in English at St Hilda's College, Oxford, and it was while he was there that his first novel, A Good Man in Africa (1981), was published.

He was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2005. He currently lives in London.

Work

Novels

Although his novels have been short-listed for major prizes, he has never had the same publicity as his contemporaries. Boyd was selected in 1983 as one of the 20 'Best of Young British Novelists' in a promotion run by Granta magazine and the Book Marketing Council.

Boyd's novels include: A Good Man in Africa, a study of a disaster-prone British diplomat operating in West Africa, for which he won the Whitbread Book award and Somerset Maugham Award in 1981; An Ice-Cream War, set against the background of the World War I campaigns in colonial East Africa, which won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize and was nominated for the Booker Prize for Fiction in 1982; Brazzaville Beach, published in 1991, which follows a female scientist researching chimpanzee behaviour in Africa; and Any Human Heart, written in the form of the journals of a fictitious twentieth century British writer, which was long-listed for the Booker Prize in 2002. Restless, the tale of a young woman who discovers that her mother had been recruited as a spy during World War II, was published in 2006 and won the Novel Award in the 2006 Costa Book Awards.

Screenplays

As a screenwriter Boyd has written a number of feature film and television productions. The feature films include: Scoop (1987), adapted from the Evelyn Waugh novel; Stars and Bars (1988), adapted from Boyd's own novel; Mister Johnson (1990); A Good Man in Africa (1994), also adapted from his own novel; and The Trench (1999) which he also directed. He was one of a number of writers who worked on Chaplin (1992). His television screenwriting credits include: Good and Bad at Games (1983), adapted from Boyd's short story about English public school life; Dutch Girls (1985); Armadillo (2001), adapted from his own novel; A Waste of Shame (2005) about Shakespeare; and Any Human Heart (2010), also adapted from his own novel.

Hoax

In 1998, Boyd published Nat Tate: An American Artist 1928-1960, which presents the paintings and tragic biography of a supposed New York-based 1950s Abstract Expressionist painter named Nat Tate, who actually never existed and was, along with his paintings, a creation of Boyd's. When the book was initially published, it was not revealed that it was a work of fiction, and some were duped by the hoax; it was launched at a lavish party, with excerpts read by David Bowie (who was in on the joke), and a number of prominent members of the art world claimed to remember the artist. It caused quite a stir once the truth was revealed.

The name Nat Tate is derived from the names of the two leading British art galleries: The National Gallery and The Tate Gallery.

Nat Tate also appears in Any Human Heart, also by Boyd, with a wry footnote to the 1998 book.

Bibliography

• A Good Man in Africa; Hamish Hamilton, 1981
• On the Yankee Station and Other Stories; Hamish Hamilton, 1981
• An Ice-Cream War; Hamish Hamilton, 1982
• Stars and Bars; Hamish Hamilton, 1984
• School Ties; Hamish Hamilton, 1985
• The New Confessions; Hamish Hamilton, 1987
• Brazzaville Beach; Sinclair-Stevenson, 1990
• The Blue Afternoon; Sinclair-Stevenson, 1993
• The Destiny of Natalie 'X' and Other Stories; Sinclair-Stevenson, 1995
• Armadillo; Hamish Hamilton, 1998
• Nat Tate: An American Artist 1928-1960; 21 Publishing, 1998
• Any Human Heart; Hamish Hamilton, 2002
• Fascination (collection of short stories); Hamish Hamilton, 2004
• Bamboo; Hamish Hamilton, 2005 (non-fiction)
• Restless; Bloomsbury, 2006
• The Dreams of Bethany Mellmoth (Short Story) Notes from the underground; 2007
• Ordinary Thunderstorms (2009); Bloomsbury, 2009
• Waiting for Sunrise (2012)

Literary Prizes and Awards

• 1981 Whitbread First Novel Award A Good Man in Africa
• 1982 Booker Prize for Fiction (shortlist) An Ice-Cream War
• 1982 Mail on Sunday/John Llewellyn Rhys Prize An Ice-Cream War
• 1982 Somerset Maugham Award A Good Man in Africa
• 1983 Selected as one of the 20 'Best of Young British Novelists' by Granta magazine and the Book Marketing Council
• 1990 James Tait Black Memorial Prize (for fiction) Brazzaville Beach
• 1991 McVitie's Prize for Scottish Writer of the Year Brazzaville Beach
• 1993 Sunday Express Book of the Year The Blue Afternoon
• 1995 Los Angeles Times Book Prize (Fiction) The Blue Afternoon
• 2004 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award (shortlist) Any Human Heart
• 2006 Costa Book Award Restless
• 2007 British Book Awards Richard and Judy Best Read of the Year (shortlist) Restless

References

• Times Literary Supplement, 'Edge of Armaggedon', August 2006,[1]
• British Council, Arts, Contemporary Writers [2]
• William Boyd, Penguin UK authors [3]
• Stars and Bars, New York Times, May 21, 1983, 'New Territory for Explorer in Fiction', Eleanor Blau [4]
• The Guardian, October 2, 2004 'Brief Encounters' (William Boyd on the art of short story writing) [5]
• The Telegraph, 17 October, 2004 'Writer's Lives: William Boyd' [6]
• The Observer, October 3, 2004 Fascination, 'Too many tricks spoil the book' [7]
• Prospect magazine, 'A Short history of the short story' [8]
• British Arts Council's emcompassculture [9]
• The Observer, September 3rd, 2006, 'My week: William Boyd'
• Toronto Globe and Mail, Ben King interview, Profile of William Boyd, 2002[10]
• Financial Times, February 14, 2005, Arts & Style: 'A soft spot for cinema' [11]
• Guardian Unlimited, September 12, 1999, 'Boyd's own story', The Trench >
• "Bowie and Boyd "hoax" art world". BBC. 1998-04-07. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/75207.stm. Retrieved 2007-03-11. 
• Patten, E. (2005). William Boyd biography, British Council, Contemporary Writers.

External links

• William Boyd official website
• William Boyd (writer) at the Internet Movie Database
• Works by or about William Boyd (writer) in libraries (WorldCat catalog)