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. 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. Change the plan you will roll onto at any time during your trial by visiting the “Settings & Account” section. What happens at the end of my trial? Of Scottish descent, Boyd was born in Accra, Ghana on 7th March, 1952 and spent much of his early life there and in Nigeria where his mother was a teacher and his father, a doctor. Boyd was in Nigeria during the Biafran War, the brutal secessionist conflict which ran from 1967 to 1970 and it had a profound effect on him. For cost savings, you can change your plan at any time online in the “Settings & Account” section. If you’d like to retain your premium access and save 20%, you can opt to pay annually at the end of the trial.

British Council complies with data protection law in the UK and laws in other countries that meet internationally accepted standards. The United Kingdom's international organisation for cultural relations and educational opportunities. A chalk stream in Hampshire flowing through the Mottisfont estate, esteemed for its wildlife, trout fishing and watercress 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. You may also opt to downgrade to Standard Digital, a robust journalistic offering that fulfils many user’s needs. Compare Standard and Premium Digital here.

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. 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. 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.

Lucio Schina lives in Rome and has a degree in prehistoric anthropology and archaeology. Winner of numerous national competitions for published short anthologies, he is the author of the short novel The Mysteries of the Island of Thara published by Bl … Known as the poet of the piano, composer of ballades, études, nocturnes, preludes, scherzos and sonatas as well as two concertos 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.’ 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.

Boyd is referring principally to the death of his father, Alexander, which took place when the writer was in his early 20s. "When you experience bereavement at a youngish age," he says, "you suddenly realise that life is unjust and unfair, that bad things will happen, and you have to take that on board." Alexander disapproved of his son's choice of career, and when he died "there was no sense in which I was proving him wrong". Worse, "my wife's mother died at almost the same time of a horrible, lingering cancer. It was a bad year, we lost as it were half our family in a month, and that's the sort of thing that shakes you up. People experience these tragedies all the time, there's nothing special about it, you're not a Job figure. But in the context of an individual life these events take on a certain significance." People's attitudes to life's uncertainties are also, he thinks, a matter of temperament. As the way he discusses his bad year indicates, his own isn't self-pitying. It's easy to imagine his early life - a colonial upbringing with decolonisation in full swing, followed by boarding schools in Scotland - producing a somewhat alienated figure, but Boyd doesn't present himself as a sensitive intellectual bruised by his post-imperial personal history. His parents, who came from Fife's professional middle classes, moved to west Africa in the postwar years in part because his father had served there in the war, specialising in tropical medicine, and in part because "life was good there for a young married couple - big house, big job, servants, golf courses. And sunny." Both Ghana and Nigeria, where the family moved later, were, he says, "totally integrated societies. There was no settler class and no racial tension. It wasn't like Kenya and certainly not South Africa. But it was a privileged colonial upbringing." Scottish author William Boyd’s novel A Good Man in Africa (1981) chronicles the life and work of Morgan Leafy, the First Secretary of the British High Commission, who accepts a post in the town of Nkongsamba in the state capital of the fictional Kinjanja region of West Africa. Set during the British colonial era, this darkly comic and irreverent novel offers a satirical look at the influences of colonization and cultural understandings of morality and ethics. 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). The story opens in Morgan's office at the British High Commission. His employee, the Second Secretary of the Commission, Richard Dalmire, informs Morgan of his upcoming marriage to Priscilla Fanshawe, daughter of their boss, the High Commissioner Arthur Fanshawe. Though he puts on a brave face, this news devastates Morgan. He once pursued Priscilla but did not commit fully to the relationship, sending her into Richard's all-too-eager arms.