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| Reference: |
H-0238b
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| Caption: | Sir Compton Mackenzie, (1883-1972) was a prolific writer of fiction, biography, histories, and memoir, as well as a cultural commentator, raconteur, and lifelong Scottish nationalist. He was one of the co-founders in 1928 of the Scottish National Party. He was born in West Hartlepool, England, into a theatrical family of Mackenzies, but many of whose members used Compton as their stage surname. Compton Mackenzie is perhaps best known for two comedies set in Scotland, the Hebridean Whisky Galore (1947) and the Highland The Monarch of the Glen (1941). He published almost 100 books on different subjects, including ten volumes of autobiography, My Life and Times (1963-1971). He also wrote history, biography, literary criticism, satires, children's stories and poetry. Mackenzie went to great lengths to trace the steps of his ancestors back to his spiritual home in the Highlands, and displayed a deep and tenacious attachment to Gaelic culture throughout his long and very colourful life. He was an ardent Jacobite, the third Governor-General of the Royal Stuart Society, and a co-founder of the Scottish National Party. He was rector of University of Glasgow from 1931 to 1934. Mackenzie built a house on the island of Barra in the 1930s. It was on Barra that he gained much inspiration and found creative solitude. He died in Edinburgh but such was his love of the Scottish Highlands that he is buried in Barra. |
| Added: | 18/10/2013 |
| Keywords: |
man portrait
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