William Boyd (writer)

William Boyd, CBE (born 7 March, 1952 in Accra, Ghana) is a contemporary 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 thence 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 awarded an Order of the British Empire in 2005. He is currently living in London.

Work

Novels

Boyd, who is of the same generation as Martin Amis, Julian Barnes and Ian McEwan, has been, some people believe, "overlooked" as a novelist, largely because he has kept a low public profile. Although his novels have been short-listed for major prizes, he has never had quite 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.

His novels include Brazzaville Beach (1991), about a female scientist researching chimpanzee behaviour in Africa; A Good Man in Africa, for which he won the Whitbread Book award and Somerset Maugham Award in 1981, and An Ice Cream War, for which he was nominated for the Booker Prize for Fiction in 1982. The book won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize in the same year. Any Human Heart was long-listed for the Booker Prize in 2002.

Screenplays

As a screenwriter Boyd has written a number of feature film and television productions. The feature films include: Stars and Bars (1988), adapted from his own novel; Mister Johnson (1990); A Good Man in Africa (1994), also adapted from his own novel; Scoop (1987), adapted from the Evelyn Waugh 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: Armadillo (2001), adapted from his own novel and Good and Bad at Games (1983), about English public school life.

Hoax

In 1998 Boyd produced Nat Tate: American Artist, 1928-1960 which presents the paintings and tragic biography of the New York based 1950's artist, Nat Tate, who actually never existed and was, along with his paintings, a creation of Boyd's. When the book was launched it was not revealed that this was a work of fiction. Some were duped by the hoax; it caused quite a stir once the truth was revealed. Also, allegations that he bribed Joshua Bays to promote his book Armadillo were proven false.

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