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The George Mackay Brown Fellowship was established in 2006, and from that year, the GMB Memorial Lecture was held annually (with the exception of 2008) until 2023/4? Most often the Lecture was about George Mackay Brown, his life and his work, or associated subjects. From time to time it has focussed Orkney writing and writers more widely. Lectures have been given by Orkney writers and academics and also guest speakers – writers and editors from across the UK.
2006 Ron Ferguson
The inaugural lecture was given in the Pier Arts Centre April 2006 by Ron Ferguson. He had become friends with George Mackay Brown when he moved to Orkney in 1990 to take up the charge of St Magnus Cathedral. A writer himself, he had a deep love of the poet’s work and a shared interest in spirituality and in St Magnus, his story and its resonance through time. He had retired as minister of St Magnus Cathedral in 2001 and was, by this time, a full time writer. Later he would write George Mackay Brown: The Wound and the Gift (St Andrews Press, 2011), and following its publication, he returned to give the 2011 GMB Memorial Lecture.
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2007 Maggie Fergusson
In 2006, ten years after George Mackay Brown’s death, the first full-length work about the writer was published by John Murray. George Mackay Brown: The Life was written by Maggie Fergusson, and it went on to win a number of awards. She had first met the poet in June 1992 as part of her research for an article she was writing for The Times. After an inauspicious start – the poet, famously, hated being interviewed – the two became friends, and George agreed with his editor, Hugh Brunner at John Murray, that she should write his biography, stipulating that it should not be published until after his death. In April 2007 Maggie Fergusson gave the second GMB Memorial Lecture in the Pier Arts Centre.
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2009 Morag MacInnes
Writer Morag MacInnes, one of three daughters of artist and former Head Teacher of Stromness Academy, Ian MacInnes, had known George Mackay Brown from childhood. He and her father had been friends since their early school days, and the writer was a frequent guest in her parents home. Ian MacInnes had provided the artwork for his first collection to be published, The Storm and Other Poems (The Orkney Press, 1954), as well as subsequent works, and painted the portrait which would, many years later, appear on the cover of GMB’s autobiography, For the Islands I Sing (John Murray, 1996). Morag MacInnes, a writer, poet and dramatist, was the first Chair of the GMB Fellowship. She stepped down in 2008 and gave the third GMB Memorial Lecture in 2009 in the Pier Arts Centre.
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2010 Dr Donna Heddle
In 2010 Dr Donna Heddle (now Professor Donna Heddle) of the Centre for Nordic Studies (Orkney College/UHI) delivered the GMB Memorial Lecture.
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2011 Ron Ferguson
In 2011, following the publication that year of George Mackay Brown: The Wound and the Gift by Saint Andrew Press, later short-listed for a Saltire Award, Ron Ferguson once more delivered the annual GMB Memorial Lecture in the Pier Arts Centre.
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2013 Dr Sarah Neely
In 2013 writer and academic Dr Sarah Neely gave the GMB Memorial Lecture in the Pier Arts Centre. Its subject was the relationship between poetry and film in the work of Margaret Tait. In 1959 and 1960 the writer had published three volumes of poetry and two of short stories. They were publicised and distributed for a short time and were soon unavailable, though latterly sought after. With the publication of Subjects and Sequences: A Margaret Tait Reader (LUX, 2004), edited by Peter Todd and Benjamin Cook, and Sarah Neely’s own volume, Margaret Tait: Stories, Poems, Writings (Fyfield Books, 2012), the poet and film-maker’s writing had become available once more – some of it previously unpublished in book form.
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2014 Dr Linden Bickett
Following the death of George Mackay Brown in 1996, a vast legacy of the writer’s work remained and was now in the keeping of his friend and literary executor, Archie Bevan. For some years he and another good friend of the writer, Brian Murray, edited and delivered a stream of publications. First, Northern Lights: A Poet’s Sources (John Murray, 1999) which brought together works hitherto unpublished with works published in newspapers and magazines. There was Travellers: Poems (John Murray, 2001), which compiled poems from unpublished manuscripts or typescripts, as well as others from newspapers and periodicals in which they appeared. And of course, The Collected Poems of George Mackay Brown (John Murray, 2005), which, besides all the published collections, contained the uncollected “Corpus Christi” sequence.
A great deal remained to be done! There were many boxes and bags of the writer’s papers to be sorted and archived.
Delivering the 2014 GMB Memorial Lecture in the Pier Arts Centre, Dr Linden Bickett, then working at Glasgow University, talked about the fascinating discoveries she made – and also the challenges she faced – in organising the vast collection of unpublished literary work, letters and other papers then in the keeping of George’s Literary Executor, Archie Bevan. The collection is now held by the Orkney Library and Archive.
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2015 Dr Simon Hall
In 2015, teacher Dr Simon Hall, author of The History of Orkney Literature (John Donald, 2010) – the first book length history of Orkney literature, and winner of the 2010 Saltire Award – gave the GMB Memorial Lecture in the Warehouse Building, Stromness. An Orcadian speaker, interested in the changes in the language, and in using and promoting it as a medium for writing, his lecture was on the current state of Orkney language.
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2016 Erlend Brown
In the year of the 20th anniversary of the death of George Mackay Brown, his nephew, artist Erlend Brown gave the GMB Memorial Lecture. It took the form of a talk and slide presentation, telling the story of the writer’s family and social life in Orkney through a rich selection of photographs and reminiscences.
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2017 Dr Sarah Jane Gibbon
The stories of Magnus, a popular saint across the northern hemisphere, had a profound effect upon the thought and writing of George Mackay Brown at different times and in different forms throughout his life.
In 2017, during the celebration of Magnus 900, Dr Sarah Gibbon of UHI gave the GMB Memorial Lecture on the process in which she had been involved of discovering Magnus through the landscape and archaeology and place-names of Orkney. This was research which informed the development of the St Magnus Way, a long distance walking trail across the island of Egilsay, where he died, and through the parishes of Mainland, from Evie to Birsay; through Rendall, Firth and Orphir; and on to Paplay in Holm; and to Kirkwall and St Magnus Cathedral, where bones, thought to be those of Magnus, lie inside a pillar.
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2018 Gerda Stevenson
In 2018, the centenary of the birth of the Orkney poet and fim-maker Margaret Tait, poet, actor and director Gerda Stevenson delivered the GMB Memorial Lecture in the Warehouse Building, Stromness. She shared memories of working with Margaret Tait during the filming in Edinburgh and Orkney of the film-maker’s only feature film, Blue Black Permanent (1992), and of being given, as she left her studio in Rendall one day, copies of her three collections of poems. Gerda went on to discuss the poet and film-maker’s impact and influence on her own work and others, sharing writing inspired by Margaret Tait.
Blue Black Permanent, with Margaret Tait’s own screenplay was inspired in part by the life, and the challenges within it, of Orkney writer Ann Scott-Moncrieff (1914-1943). It interweaves the stories of three generations of Scottish women; Gerda Stevenson played the central role of Greta Thorburn.
At the time of the Memorial Lecture, Gerda Stevenson”s second collection of poems had just been published. Quines (Luath Press, 2018) is a celebration of and tribute to women of Scotland and beyond, including Margaret Tait, who have fully lived, worked, contributed – and spoken. And yet, through deeply ingrained cultural habits and ways of thinking, many have been marginalised, denied, and in the historical record, diminished or forgotten.
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2019 Dr Ragnhild Ljosland
The image of runes worked into stone is prevalent in the writing of George Mackay Brown. In her lecture, Dr Ragnhild Ljosland of Orkney College/UHI gave an account of the Norse runes discovered in Orkney; revealed the most recent decodings that have been proposed; and explored the significance of runes in the work of George Mackay Brown.
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2020 Jean Findlay
The 2020 GMB Memorial Lecture focussed on the life and work of Orkney-born writer Agnes Shearer (1914-1943) who became known, following her marriage, as Ann Scott-Moncrieff. She was the writer of a collection of short stories, The White Drake (1936), and two novels for children, Aboard the Bulger (1935) and Auntie Robbo (1940), all now reprinted by Scotland Street Press. She wrote poems, published only posthumously by Ernest Marwick in An Orkney Anthology (The Orkney Press, 1949) and in Chapman 38 (1984). In recent years they have been reprinted in Poems by Braga Press, Orkney. Ann Scott-Moncrieff also wrote a large number of scripts for the BBC Radio education service, and many short stories for adults, published in newspapers and magazines. A selection of these are due to be published in book form by the Catholic University of America Press in 2026, edited and with an introduction by Linden Bickett.
The COVID-19 pandemic had spread to the UK in 2020, and the restrictions imposed by the Lockdown, which began on 24 March, resulted in delays to the Memorial Lecture, then the decision to deliver it live on Zoom. A large audience from across the UK, and with participants signing in from the US and Canada, took part in an event chaired by Yvonne Gray.
Born with an Oar in her Hands was a talk on the life and writing of Ann Scott-Moncrieff, illustrated with photographs and reminiscences heard in recorded interviews (between Ann Marwick and Hannah Rendall, a childhood friend of the poet, and between Jean Findlay and her mother, Lesley Findlay, daughter of the poet). It was given by Jean Findlay, writer, publisher and founder of Scotland Street Press, and granddaughter of Ann Scott-Moncrieff.
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2021 James Robertson
The 2121 GMB Memorial Lecture, held in the Centenary of the birth of George Mackay Brown, was delivered on Zoom by writer, editor, poet and publisher James Robertson who has long admired the Orkney poet’s work. Published later that year, his own latest novel, News of the Dead, shares with George’s work a preoccupation with time.
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Writing Orkney 