Saturday, December 12, 2015

My hero / William McIlvanney by Ian Rankin

‘He was a great man as well as a great writer’ … William McIlvanney. 
Photograph: Murdo Macleod




My hero: 

William McIlvanney 

by Ian Rankin 

In his graceful writing, McIlvanney captured the beauty and dignity of ordinary men and women faced with the challenges of life


Saturday 12 December 2015


I

n one of many fine obituaries to William McIlvanney this week, journalist Kenny Farquharson reminisced about a meeting with the Scottish author where McIlvanney told him: “We are part animal. Humanity is an aspiration, not a fact of everyday life.” This aspiration is found everywhere in McIlvanney’s fiction, as ordinary men and women (but mainly men) try to achieve grace and dignity despite the challenges thrown at them by life.

McIlvanney, too, sought grace in his writing – not a word is wasted, each sentence measured, poetic and perfect. He was a man of tremendous empathy; everyone he met probably felt they were in the presence of someone who could either understand them or at least wanted to and would strive to. Because of this, he was a great man as well as a great writer. Let loose in the social laboratory of Glasgow, he found beauty in its hard men – as well as measures of respect and even romanticism in their relationships – no matter how outwardly bitter or inwardly doomed.

I met Willie at every stage of my writing life, from tyro onwards. He was always generous and supportive, and it was a thrill to see him rejuvenated as his books emerged back into print, finding a fresh audience. At a Sunday morning event in Harrogate, he told me he had thought few folk would emerge from their beds. Many hundreds greeted him as he entered the ballroom, and he went on to charm each and every one of them from the stage. Inimitable, humane, thoughtful and spirited – his books live on, but we miss the man.

THE GUARDIAN




2009
001 My hero / Oscar Wilde by Michael Holroyd
002 My hero / Harley Granville-Barker by Richard Eyre
003 My hero / Edward Goldsmith by Zac Goldsmith
004 My hero / Fridtjof Nansen by Sara Wheeler 
005 My hero / Mother Mercedes Lawler IBVM by Antonia Fraser
007 My hero / Ernest Shepard by Richard Holmes
008 My hero / JG Ballard by Will Self
009 My hero / Alan Ross by William Boyd
010 My hero / Ben the labrador by John Banville
011 My hero / Vicent van Gogh by Margaret Drabble
012 My hero / Franz Marek by Eric Hobsbawm

2010

017 My hero / Jack Yeats by Colm Tóibín
018 My hero / Francisco Goya by Diana Athill
019 My hero / Max Stafford-Clark by Sebastian Barry
020 My hero / Arthur Holmes by Richard Fortey

036 My hero / Robert Lowell by Jonathan Raban
037 My hero / Beryl Bainbridge by Michael Holroyd
038 My hero / Charles Schulz by Jenny Colgan
039 My hero / Oliver Knussen by Adam Foulds
040 My hero / Annie Proulx by Alan Warner

041 My hero / David Lynch by Paul Murray
042 My hero / Edwin Morgan by Robert Crawford
043 My hero / Anne Lister by Emma Donoghue
044 My hero / Jane Helen Harrinson by Mary Beard
045 My hero / Edmund Burke by David Marquand
046 My hero / Shelagh Deleaney by Jeanette Winterson
047 My hero / Christopher Marlowe by Val McDermid
048 My hero / Gwen John by Anne Enright
049 My hero / Michael Mayne by Susan Hill
050 My hero / Stanley Spencer by Howard Jacobson

051 My hero / William Beveridge by Will Hutton
052 My hero / Jean McConville by Amanda Foreman
053 My hero / Alexander Pushkin by Elaine Feinstein
058 My hero / Cy Twombly by Edmund de Waal

2011
079 My hero / Gene Wolfe by Neil Gaiman
087 My hero / Alberto Moravia by John Burnside
096 My hero / Isaac Babel by AD Miller
097 Lucian Freud by Esi Edugyan
100 Thomas Tranströmer by Robin Robertson
102 My hero / David Hockney by Susan Hill

2012

190 My hero / Iris Murdoch by Charlotte Mendelson
194 My hero / René Descartes by James Kelman
199 My hero / Albert Camus by Geoff Dyer

2015
2016


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