Gowk Storm (Canongate Classics). Cet article n’est pas disponible.Gowk Storm (Canongate Classics)

Oddballs, tinks, heidbangers, saints, keelies, nutters, philosophers and freaks. These apparently marginal lives are not only interesting in their own right but often tell us more about the mores of a country or a time than the lives of its better known citizens (and some of them are included here too). Here, the Japanese poet Basho, the baseball star Babe Ruth and the singer Billie Holiday rub shoulders with Ganesh, Johnny Faa, the Gypsy Laddie and Eliza Donnithorne (true-life model for Dickens? Miss Havisham). Angus Calder has created an original, ex-centric and richly entertaining compendium of brief but essential lives.

Nancy Brysson Morrison was born in Glasgow. A very private person who never married, she lived in this city for most of her life, but also London and Edinburgh. Her work was very much admired in America, and indeed her late novel Thea (1962) was first published in New York. An interest in biography resulted in books on a variety of historical and literary figures; others were published on religious subjects. She also wrote five other novels, set partly in Glasgow, partly in the Highlands.