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:
“There are different rules for reading, for thinking, and for talking. Writing blends all three of them.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“What is line? It is life. A line must live at each point along its course in such a way that the artist’s presence makes itself felt above that of the model.... With the writer, line takes precedence over form and content. It runs through the words he assembles. It strikes a continuous note unperceived by ear or eye. It is, in a way, the soul’s style, and if the line ceases to have a life of its own, if it only describes an arabesque, the soul is missing and the writing dies.”
—Jean Cocteau (1889–1963)
“His writing is not about something. It is the thing itself.”
—Samuel Beckett (1906–1989)