Kenneth McKay

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Kenneth McKay (born 1950) is a Scotland author of thrillers novels.

[edit] Life

Kenneth McKay was born in Glasgow in 1950. He lived there for the first five years before moving with his mother and sister to a seaside town in Ayrshire. While furthering his education and working with the local newspaper he had, at age 19, emergency surgery that curtailed his life for a long time. He began writing at this time and produced a magazine. In 1974 he was offered a teaching post in Spain by the university and accepted it. In 1975 he married an Italian and went on to teach in Italy.

It is interesting how The Master and the Messenger (his novel) came to be written. Some years ago, while travelling from the UK via Belgium to his destination in Italy, Kenneth McKay stopped on the outskirts of the city of Luxembourg to visit a WWII American Military Cemetery. On arrival he found himself alone in front of a sea of brilliant white crosses. Men from all corners of the US lay still, victims of the Battle of the Bulge which took place in 1944. Outside in the car park there was a signpost directing any visitor to Sandweiler, a German Military cemetery, less than a mile away. Along a country road the cemetery was set in a deep wooded area. Never having had the opportunity to visit, to acknowledge the German dead, McKay felt the urge to do so. It was this visit that brought the idea of 'The Master and the Messenger' to life. Sandweiler cemetery is not the same as the American one at Hamm, it is darker and sadder, the young German soldiers' stones are grey, their crosses cropped. Although the book is not a WWII story, being set in the '80s and '90s, it is about national and personal conflict and loss. And those who lay at Sandweiler and Hamm conveyed a message on that visit that is still relevant today.