Writing
He was the editor of The Burns Chronicle from 1976 to 1992 which under his stewardship reached a level of quality and diversity it has not achieved before or since. He then turned to biography, where he was less successful. Through the 1980s he worked on a biography of Robert Burns which was published in 1992 to favourable reviews and which won the Saltire Award. Subsequent biographies of Allan Pinkerton and William Wallace received more mixed reviews.
1996 saw the release of Michael Collins: A Life, a work about the life of the famed Irish revolutionary which received excellent reviews.
Mackay also wrote books under a number of different pseudonyms including Ian Angus, William Finlay, Bruce Garden, Alex Matheson and Peter Whittington.
Read more about this topic: James A. Mackay
Famous quotes containing the word writing:
“For your writing and reading, let that appear when there is no need of such vanity.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“I have spent so long erecting partitions around the part of me that writes—learning how to close the door on it when ordinary life intervenes, how to close the door on ordinary life when it’s time to start writing again—that I’m not sure I could fit the two parts of me back together now.”
—Anne Tyler (b. 1941)
“I think it’s the real world. The people we’re writing about in professional sports, they’re suffering and living and dying and loving and trying to make their way through life just as the brick layers and politicians are.”
—Walter Wellesley (Red)