Rare Books
My life and times : octave six 1923-1930
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- Description
- In every period of his life Sir Compton Mackenzie has been remarkable for fresh enthusiasms and formidable energies and talents applied in new directions. This is strikingly true of the eight years after his fortieth birthday covered in this Octave. In 1924 he turned with zest to the potentialities of the wireless and was soon an acknowledged master of the new medium. In early studios he became the first disc-jockey, acted as compère behind a microphone 18 inches from the floor, and enraptured listeners with his descriptions of romantic islands. Still the owner of Jethou, with its miniature woods and walled garden, in 1925 he also bought the Shiant Isles in the Outer Hebrides, a 'wild corner of fairy land' and the home of barnacle geese, puffins and seals. Sir Compton now became deeply involved in Scottish nationalism, supporting Cunninghame Graham at the Glasgow rectorial election and speaking up and down the country for the new National Party. But the twenties was also a period of notable literary fertility and included in his own two Capri books, Vestal Fire and Extraordinary Women, recently described in The Times Literary Supplement as 'two of the funniest novels in the language'. It is impossible to do justice to the teeming variety of this Octave, its host of amusing episodes, and fascinating encounters with men like Chesterton, Tim Healy and Scott Fitzgerald - or with the original of Whisky Galore and other highland comedies. (Inside cover)
