George MacBeth

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For the Canadian politician, see George Macbeth (politician).

George Mann MacBeth (January 19, 1932 – February 16, 1992) was a Scottish poet and novelist. He was born in Shotts, Lanarkshire.

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, until 1976. He was a member of The Group.

He resigned from the BBC to take up novel writing; he introduced a series of thrillers involving the spy, Cadbury. In his later post-BBC years, as his influence waned and after an acrimonious divorce, his second wife gleefully reported that MacBeth himself was the source of the occasional rumor that he was on the shortlist to become England's next poet laureate.

Poems from Oby (1982) was a Choice of the Poetry Book Society; Oby is a Norfolk village. He received a Geoffrey Faber Memorial Award for his work.

He died in Tuam, County Galway, Ireland.

[edit] Works

  • A Form of Words (1954)
  • The Broken Places (1963)
  • Penguin Book of Sick Verse (1963) editor
  • Lecture to the Trainees (1964) Fantasy Press
  • Penguin Modern Poets 6 (1964) with Jack Clemo and Edward Lucie-Smith
  • A Doomsday Book: Poems and Poem-games (1965)
  • Missile Commander (1965)
  • Penguin Book of Animal Verse (1965) editor
  • The Calf (1965)
  • The Twelve Hotels (1965)
  • Noah's Journey (1966)
  • The Colour of Blood (1967)
  • Poetry 1900 to 1965 (1967) anthology, editor
  • The Screens (1967)
  • The Humming Birds. A Monodrama (1968)
  • A Death [A Poem] (1969)
  • A War Quartet (1969)
  • Night of Stones (1969)
  • The Penguin Book of Victorian Verse (1969) editor
  • The Burning Cone (1970)
  • Jonah and the Lord (1970)
  • Noah and the Lord (1970)
  • Poems (1970)
  • The Bamboo Nightingale (1970)
  • The Falling Splendour, Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson (1970) editor
  • The Hiroshima Dream (1970)
  • The Snow Leopard (1970)
  • Two Poems (1970)
  • A Prayer Against Revenge (1971)
  • Free Form Poetry Two (1971) with Bob Cobbing
  • 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)
  • My Scotland: Fragments of a State of Mind (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)
  • The Transformation (1975)
  • The Book of Cats (1976) editor with Martin Booth
  • Last Night (1976)
  • The Samurai (1976) thriller
  • The Survivor (1977) novel
  • Buying a Heart (1978)
  • The Seven Witches (1978) thriller
  • The Saddled Man (1978)
  • Poem for Breathing (1979)
  • Poetry 1900-75 (1980) anthology, editor
  • Poems of Love and Death (1980)
  • Typing a Novel About the War (1980) poem
  • Cadbury and the Samurai (1981) thriller
  • Poems from Oby (1982) Oby is a Norfolk parish
  • The Born Losers (1982)
  • The Rectory Mice (1982)
  • The Katana: A Novel Based on the War Diaries of John Beeby (1982) also as A Kind of Treason
  • The Long Darkness (1983)
  • Anna's Book (1983)
  • Facts and Feelings in the Classroom (1983) editor with Martin Booth
  • The Lion of Pescara (1984)
  • The Long Darkness (1984)
  • Dizzy's Woman (1986) Disraeli letters
  • The Cleaver Garden (1986)
  • The Story of Daniel (1986)
  • A Child of the War (1987): an autobiographical account of his life pre-Oxford
  • Anatomy of Divorce (1988)
  • Collected Poems, 1958-1982 (1989)
  • Another Love Story (1991)
  • Trespassing. Poems from Ireland (1991)
  • The Testament of Spencer (1992) novel
  • Selected Poems (Enitharmon Press, 2002) edited by Anthony Thwaite
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