During a long life Compton Mackenzie produced 112 books and was active in many areas. His enthusiasms were as varied as religion, spying, ancient and modern Greece, islands, the gramophone, Scottish nationalism, the Indian army under the Raj and new broadcast media. Over time his writing often represented, and helped to pay for, these passions. His early work, such as Carnival (1912) and Sinister Street (2 vols., 1913, 1914), was a critical success, and after 1940 he gained a new audience with well-crafted comedies such as The Monarch of the Glen (1941) and Whisky Galore (1947). Mackenzie was one of the last voices to speak from memory of the late Victorian and Edwardian periods. His ten-volume autobiography c…
2884 words
Citation: Booth, Howard J.. "Sir Compton Mackenzie". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 23 June 2004 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=2857, accessed 22 November 2024.]
