William Boyd

William Boyd was born in Accra, Ghana, in 1952, the son of expatriate Scots from Fife. He regards himself as a Scottish writer, saying recently in the Scottish Review of Books, “If someone asks me what nationality I am, I unhesitatingly say I’m Scottish… I’m also aware sometimes I’m included in anthologies of Scottish literature, and sometimes I’m excluded… In Scotland, the net is not being thrown wide enough.” (Here, at BooksfromScotland.com, we’re very happy to include William Boyd.)

His writing brought him success almost immediately with his first novel, A Good Man in Africa, winning the Whitbread First Novel Award and the Somerset Maugham Award in 1981. The following year, his next novel An Ice-Cream War was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Since then, he has been a prolific writer and screenwriter with some of his novels and short stories adapting to radio and the small screen.

Boyd’s most recent works include Bamboo, an autobiographical selection of non-fiction writings from the past three decades, and the novel Ordinary Thunderstorms.