A Life In Pictures

Name: A Life In Pictures
Author: Alasdair Gray

Alasdair Gray

“I was learning that I could have what I wanted if it was in words, pictures or songs, which are the only dependable forms of magic.”

Available as Hardback, eBook

The autobiography in words and pictures of one of Britain’s most fascinating and acclaimed writers and artists, Alasdair Gray

Alasdair Gray is known throughout the world for his writing, but he is also a highly regarded artist who not only illustrates and designs his own books, but has created many beautiful and intriguing portraits, paintings, posters and murals.

Alasdair started painting and writing from an early age, and in his seventies he’s still vigorously doing both. In this autopictography he gathers together the work that has mattered most to him over the years, and weaves the story of his life through and around these pictures in his own unmistakable style.

A beautifully and copiously illustrated book, designed by himself, this is life as seen by one of the millennium’s most entertaining and wry creative geniuses.

“Gray is a true original, a twentieth century William Blake.”
observer

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“A necessary genius.”
Ali Smith

“A master at rummaging in the dustbins of the mind.”
daily Telegraph

“A great writer, perhaps the greatest writer living in Britain today.”
Will Self

“A Life in Pictures is a truly remarkable visual and literary biography…[by]…Glasgow’s resident genius.”
the Glasgow Herald

Alasdair Gray

Born in 1934, Alasdair Gray graduated in design and mural painting from the Glasgow School of Art. Since 1981, when Lanark was published by Canongate, he authored, designed and illustrated seven novels, several books of short stories, a collection of his stage, radio and TV plays and a book of his visual art, A Life in Pictures. In November 2019, he received a Lifetime Achievement award by the Saltire Society. He died in December 2019, aged eighty-five.