Allan Massie

Journalist

Massie is a journalist and critic of fiction, writing regular columns for The Scotsman, The Sunday Times (Scotland) and the Scottish Daily Mail. He has been The Scotsman's chief fiction reviewer for a quarter of a century and also regularly writes about rugby union and cricket for that paper. He has previously been a columnist for The Daily Telegraph, the Glasgow Herald, and was the Sunday Standard's television critic during that paper's brief existence. He is also a contributor to The Spectator - where he writes an occasional column, Life and Letters - the Literary Review, The Independent, and The Catholic Herald. He has also written for the New York Review of Books.

His conservative political outlook is apparent, despite the then decline of Conservative influence in Scotland. He was a leading, if lonely, campaigner against Scottish devolution, and a critic of much of the legislation passed by the Scottish Parliament since its establishment in 1999. Though initially in favour of greater devolutionary powers for Scotland, his views on devolution changed during the Thatcher years and he came to regret his support for the 1979 devolution referendum.

In his literary reviews, his preferences lie towards traditional novels rather than the avant-garde. He is a great admirer of Sir Walter Scott (and a past president of the Sir Walter Scott Club). Among contemporary novelists, he is a champion of the Russian writer Andreï Makine and Scotland's William McIlvanney. Though he has criticised Irvine Welsh and James Kelman, he has admired some of the latter's work, arguing that Kelman is an important voice for a section of society often ignored in literary fiction.

Novelist

Massie is the author of nearly 30 books, including 20 novels. He is notable for writing about the distant past, and the middle class, rather than grittier elements of the present. The most successful of his novels, at least in terms of sales, have been a series of reconstructed autobiographies or biographies of Roman political figures, including Augustus, Tiberius, Mark Antony, Caesar, Caligula and Nero's Heirs. Gore Vidal called him a "master of the long-ago historical novel." His most recent book is The Thistle and the Rose, a series of essays on the often thorny relationship between Scotland and England, in which he takes a strong Unionist viewpoint.

His 1989 novel about Vichy France, A Question of Loyalties, won the Saltire Society's Scottish Book of the Year award - an award he has been shortlisted for more than once. The Sins of the Fathers (1991) caused a controversy when Nicholas Mosley resigned from the judging panel for the Booker Prize, protesting that none of his books (of which Massie's was the favourite) made it on to the shortlist (Martin Amis's Time's Arrow edged out Massie's novel for the final spot on the six book list).

Those two novels, and Shadows of Empire constitute a loose trilogy in which a constant concern is the potential danger of idealism and ideology, as well as the struggle to lead a decent personal life in indecent political times.

In 2009, Massie brought out what he calls "a private novel" (i.e. an examination of private morality rather than the large political or "public" dilemmas examined in his other contemporary novels). This innovative work, Surviving, is set in Rome and concerns a group of English-speaking alcoholics and the intensity of their friendships. It is also a highly personal work, reflecting the author's own experience of Italy in the seventies, although the book is set in the nineties.

His 2010 novel, Death in Bordeaux, sees Massie return to Vichy France in the first of a trilogy.

Other works include critical studies of Muriel Spark and Colette as well as histories of Edinburgh and Glasgow and A Portrait of Scottish Rugby.

Massie was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2013 Birthday Honours for services to literature.^[3]

Novels

• Change and Decay in All Around I See - (1978)
• The Last Peacock - (1980)
• The Death of Men - (1981)
• One Night in Winter - (1984)
• Augustus (1986)
• A Question of Loyalties - (1989)
• The Hanging Tree - (1990)
• Tiberius - (1991)
• The Sins of the Father - (1991)
• Caesar - (1993)
• The Ragged Lion - (1994)
• These Enchanted Woods (sequel to The Last Peacock) - (1993)
• King David (novel) - (1995)
• Shadows of Empire - (1997)
• Antony - (1997)
• Nero's Heirs - (1999)
• The Evening of the World - (2001)
• Caligula - (2003)
• Arthur the King - (2004)
• Charlemagne and Roland - (2007)
• Surviving - (2009)
• Klaus: and other stories - (2010)
• Death in Bordeaux - (2010)
• Dark Summer in Bordeaux - (2012)
• Cold Winter in Bordeaux - (2014)
• End Games in Bordeaux - (2015)

Non-fiction

• Muriel Spark - (1979)
• Ill Met by Gaslight: Five Edinburgh Murders - (1980)
• The Caesars - (1983)
• Aberdeen: Portrait of a City - (1984)
• A Portrait of Scottish Rugby (Polygon, Edinburgh; ISBN 0-904919-84-6) - (1984)
• Colette - (1986)
• 101 Great Scots - (1987)
• Byron's Travels - (1988)
• The Novelist's View of the Market Economy - (1988)
• How Should Health Services be Financed?: A Patient’s View - (1988)
• Glasgow: Portraits of a City - (1989)
• The Novel Today: A Critical Guide to the British Novel, 1970-1989 - (1990)
• Edinburgh - (1994)
• The History of Selkirk Merchant Company 1694 - 1994 - (1994)
• The Thistle and the Rose: Six Centuries of Love and Hate Between the Scots and the English - (2005)
• The Royal Stuarts: A History of the Family That Shaped Britain - (2010)

Edited books

• Edinburgh and the Borders: In Verse - (1983)
• P.E.N. New Fiction II - (1987)

The History Man columns in Scots Heritage Magazine

Book reviews