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:
“Literature is the art of writing something that will be read twice; journalism what will be grasped at once.”
—Cyril Connolly (1903–1974)
“The question mark is alright when it is all alone when it
is used as a brand on cattle or when it could be used
in decoration but connected with writing it is
completely entirely completely uninteresting.... A
question is a question, anybody can know that a
question is a question and so why add to it the
question mark when it is already there when the
question is already there in the writing.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
“All good writing is swimming under water and holding your breath.”
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940)