William Boyd is a Scottish author and screenwriter. He grew up in Ghana and Nigeria, and moved to Scotland at the age of nine. His first novel, A Good Man in Africa (1981), was published while he was a lecturer in English at St Hilda’s College, Oxford, and he has since been an extraordinarily prolific and successful author. He was selected by Ian Fleming’s estate to write the next James Bond novel, Solo, published in 2013. His work includes novels, short stories, screenplays and a memoir and it has been translated into over thirty languages.
William Boyd
William Boyd
Restless
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William Boyd
On A Woman’s Perspective
William Boyd
Reading Muriel Spark’s A Far Cry From Kensington
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William Boyd
On Identity in Restless
William Boyd
On Writing Restless
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William Boyd
On Enhanced Emotions and the World of Spies
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William Boyd
On the Film Adaptation
William Boyd
Restless
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William Boyd
On Setting the Story
Featured book by William Boyd
Restless
At the dawn of WW2, the young Eva, a Russian émigrée in Paris, is recruited to work for the British Secret Service. Under the guidance of her mentor, Lucas Romer, she transforms into the perfect spy, but all is not as it seems. Years later, Eva, or rather the wife and mother Sally Gilmartin, finds herself confronted with her past, and with it, her daughter.
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Short Stories
By Anton Chekhov
Recommended by: William Boyd
Regarded as the greatest author of short stories, Anton Chekhov changed the genre itself with his spare, impressionistic depictions of Russian life and the human condition. From characteristically brief, evocative early pieces … to his best-known stories … Chekhov’s short…
A Far Cry From Kensington
By Muriel Spark
Recommended by: William Boyd
Publish Date: 1988
Inspired by her own experience as a literary editor in London, the book tells the story of Agnes (Nancy) Hawkins, an editor working for a failing publishing house. Looking back on her past, Nancy recalls her struggling days in South…
Scoop
By Evelyn Waugh
Recommended by: William Boyd
Publish Date: 1938
Lord Copper, newspaper magnate and proprietor of ‘The Daily Beast’, is convinced that he has found the perfect young reporter to cover the crisis in the African Republic of Ishmaelia. William Boot, a nature contributor to the newspaper, finds himself…
Pale Fire
By Vladimir Nabokov
Recommended by: William Boyd
Publish Date: 1962
‘The American poet John Shade is dead; murdered. His last poem, Pale Fire, is put into a book, together with a preface, a lengthy commentary and notes by Shade’s editor, Charles Kinbote. Known on campus as the ‘Great Beaver’, Kinbote…