George MacBeth

George Mann MacBeth (19 January 1932 – 16 February 1992) was a Scottish poet and novelist.

Biography George MacBeth was born in Shotts, Lanarkshire, Scotland. When he was three, his family moved to Sheffield in England. He was educated in Sheffield at King Edward VII School, where he was Head Prefect in 1951 (photo), before going up to New College, Oxford, with an Open Scholarship in Classics.

He joined BBC Radio on graduating in 1955 from the University of Oxford. He worked there, as a producer of programmes on poetry, notably for the BBC Third Programme, until 1976. He was a member of The Group.

Works

Poetry

A Form of Words (1954) Lecture to the Trainees (1962) The Broken Places (1963) A Doomsday Book: Poems and Poem-games (1965) Missile Commander (1965) The Calf (1965) The Twelve Hotels (1965) The Colour of Blood (1967) The Screens (1967) A Death (1969) A War Quartet (1969) Night of Stones (1969) The Burning Cone (1970) Poems (1970) The Bamboo Nightingale (1970) The Hiroshima Dream (1970) The Snow Leopard (1970) Two Poems (1970) A Prayer Against Revenge (1971) The Orlando Poems (1971) Collected Poems 1958–1970 (1972) A Farewell (1972) A Litany (1972) Lusus: A Verse Lecture (1972) Shrapnel (1972) Prayers (1973) A Poet's Year (1973) The Vision (1973) Elegy for the Gas Dowsers (1974) In the Hours Waiting for Blood to Come (1975) The Journey to the Island (1975) Last Night (1976) Buying a Heart (1978) The Saddled Man (1978) Poem for Breathing (1979) Poems of Love and Death (1980) Typing a Novel About the War (1980) Poems from Oby (1982) The Long Darkness (1983) The Cleaver Garden (1986) Anatomy of Divorce (1988) Collected Poems, 1958–1982 (1989) Trespassing: Poems from Ireland (1991) The Patient (1992) Selected Poems (2002), edited by Anthony Thwaite

Novels

The Transformation (1975) The Samurai (1976), also published as Cadbury and the Samurai The Survivor (1977) The Seven Witches (1978), also published as Cadbury and the Seven Witches The Born Losers (1982), also published as Cadbury and the Born Losers The Katana: A Novel Based on the War Diaries of John Beeby (1982), also published as A Kind of Treason Anna's Book (1983) The Lion of Pescara (1984) Another Love Story (1991) The Testament of Spencer (1992)

As Editor

Penguin Book of Sick Verse (1963) Penguin Modern Poets 6 (1964) with Jack Clemo and Edward Lucie-Smith Penguin Book of Animal Verse (1965) Poetry 1900 to 1965 (1967) The Penguin Book of Victorian Verse (1969) The Falling Splendour, Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson (1970) Free Form Poetry Two (1971), with Bob Cobbing The Book of Cats (1976), editor with Martin Booth Poetry 1900–75 (1980), anthology, editor Facts and Feelings in the Classroom (1983), editor with Martin Booth

Books for Children

Noah's Journey (1966) Jonah and the Lord (1970) Noah and the Lord (1970) The Rectory Mice (1982) The Story of Daniel (1986)

Non-Fiction

My Scotland: Fragments of a State of Mind (1973) Dizzy's Woman (1986) A Child of the War (1987)

Short Fiction

Crab Apple Crisis (New Worlds, October 1966)

Drama

The Humming Birds: A Monodrama (1968)