George Mann MacBeth was a Scottish poet and novelist. He was born in Shotts

Shotts

Shotts is a small rural town in North Lanarkshire, Scotland. It is located almost halfway between Glasgow and Edinburgh . As of the 2001 census, the population was 8,235...

, Lanarkshire

Lanarkshire

Lanarkshire or the County of Lanark ) is a Lieutenancy area, registration county and former local government county in the central Lowlands of Scotland...

.

When he was three, his family moved to Sheffield.
He was educated in Sheffield

Sheffield

Sheffield is a city and metropolitan borough of South Yorkshire, England. Its name derives from the River Sheaf, which runs through the city. Historically a part of the West Riding of Yorkshire, and with some of its southern suburbs annexed from Derbyshire, the city has grown from its largely...

 at King Edward VII School

King Edward VII School (Sheffield)

King Edward VII School is a secondary school and language college located in Sheffield, South Yorkshire, England. KES, named after the reigning monarch, was formed in 1905 when Wesley College was merged with Sheffield Royal Grammar School on the site of the former on Glossop Road...

 where he was Head Prefect in 1951 (photo), before going up to New College, Oxford

New College, Oxford

New College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom.- Overview :The College's official name, College of St Mary, is the same as that of the older Oriel College; hence, it has been referred to as the "New College of St Mary", and is now almost always...

, with an Open Scholarship in Classics.

He joined BBC Radio

BBC Radio

BBC Radio is a service of the British Broadcasting Corporation which has operated in the United Kingdom under the terms of a Royal Charter since 1927. For a history of BBC radio prior to 1927 see British Broadcasting Company...

 on graduating in 1955 from the University of Oxford

University of Oxford

The University of Oxford is a university located in Oxford, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest surviving university in the world and the oldest in the English-speaking world. Although its exact date of foundation is unclear, there is evidence of teaching as far back as 1096...

. He worked there, as a producer of programmes on poetry, notably for the BBC Third Programme

BBC Third Programme

The BBC Third Programme was a national radio network broadcast by the BBC. The network first went on air on 29 September 1946 and became one of the leading cultural and intellectual forces in Britain, playing a crucial role in disseminating the arts...

, until 1976. He was a member of The Group

The Group (literature)

The Group was an informal group of poets who met in London from the mid 1950s to the mid 1960s. As a poetic movement in Great Britain it is often seen as a being the successor to The Movement.-Cambridge:...

.

He resigned from the BBC to take up novel writing; he introduced a series of thrillers involving the spy, Cadbury. In his later post-BBC years, after divorcing his first wife, he married the novelist Lisa St Aubin de Terán

Lisa St Aubin de Terán

Lisa St Aubin de Terán is an award-winning English novelist, writer of autobiographical fictions, and memoirist.Lisa St Aubin de Terán was born in 1953 and brought up in Clapham in South London. She attended the James Allen's Girls' School...

, by whom he had a child, Alexander Morton George MacBeth, and after an acrimonious divorce, moved with his new wife, Penny, to Ireland to live in Tuam, County Galway. A few months later, George MacBeth was diagnosed as suffering from motor neurone disease, of which he died in early 1992. In the last poetry he wrote, MacBeth provides an anatomy of a cruel disease and the destruction it caused two people deeply in love. Penny and George had two children.

Poems from Oby (1982) was a Choice of the Poetry Book Society; Oby

Ashby with Oby

Ashby with Oby is a civil parish in the English county of Norfolk, which is located some north of Acle and north-west of Great Yarmouth. The parish largely comprises scattered farms, and is named for the tiny settlements of Ashby and Oby....

 is a Norfolk

Norfolk

Norfolk is a low-lying county in the East of England. It has borders with Lincolnshire to the west, Cambridgeshire to the west and southwest and Suffolk to the south. Its northern and eastern boundaries are the North Sea coast and to the north-west the county is bordered by The Wash. The county...

 village. He received a Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize

Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize

The Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize is a British literary prize established in 1963 in tribute to Geoffrey Faber, founder and first Chairman publisher Faber & Faber...

 for his work.

He died in Tuam

Tuam

Tuam is a town in County Galway, Ireland. The name is pronounced choo-um . It is situated west of the midlands of Ireland, and north of Galway city.-History:...

, County Galway

County Galway

County Galway is a county in Ireland. It is located in the West Region and is also part of the province of Connacht. It is named after the city of Galway. Galway County Council is the local authority for the county. There are several strongly Irish-speaking areas in the west of the county...

, Ireland

Ireland

Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...

.

Works

• A Form of Words (1954)
• The Broken Places (1963)
• Penguin Book of Sick Verse (1963) editor
• Lecture to the Trainees (1964) Fantasy Press
  Fantasy Press
  Fantasy Press was an American publishing house specialising in fantasy and science fiction titles. Established in 1946 by Lloyd Arthur Eshbach in Reading, Pennsylvania, it was most notable for publishing the works of authors such as Robert A. Heinlein and E. E. Smith...
  
  
• Penguin Modern Poets 6 (1964) with Jack Clemo
  Jack Clemo
  Reginald John Clemo was a British poet and writer who was strongly associated both with his native Cornwall and his strong Christian belief. His work was considered to be visionary and inspired by the rugged Cornish landscape...
  
   and Edward Lucie-Smith
  Edward Lucie-Smith
  John Edward McKenzie Lucie-Smith is a British writer, poet, art critic, curator, broadcaster and author of exhibition catalogues.-Biography:Lucie-Smith was born in Kingston, Jamaica, moving to the United Kingdom in 1946...
  
  
• A Doomsday Book: Poems and Poem-games (1965)
• Missile Commander (1965)
• Penguin Book of Animal Verse (1965) editor
• The Calf (1965)
• The Twelve Hotels (1965)
• Noah's Journey (1966)
• Crab Apple Crisis (New Worlds, Oct 1966)
• The Colour of Blood (1967)
• Poetry 1900 to 1965 (1967) anthology, editor
• The Screens (1967)
• The Humming Birds. A Monodrama (1968)
• A Death [A Poem] (1969)
• A War Quartet (1969)
• Night of Stones (1969)
• The Penguin Book of Victorian Verse (1969) editor
• The Burning Cone (1970)
• Jonah and the Lord (1970)
• Noah and the Lord (1970)
• Poems (1970)
• The Bamboo Nightingale (1970)
• The Falling Splendour, Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson (1970) editor
• The Hiroshima Dream (1970)
• The Snow Leopard (1970)
• Two Poems (1970)
• A Prayer Against Revenge (1971)
• Free Form Poetry Two (1971) with Bob Cobbing
  Bob Cobbing
  Bob Cobbing was a British sound, visual, concrete and performance poet who was a central figure in the British Poetry Revival.-Early life:...
  
  
• The Orlando Poems (1971)
• Collected Poems 1958–1970 (1972)
• A Farewell (1972)
• A Litany (1972)
• Lusus, A Verse Lecture (1972)
• Shrapnel (1972)
• Prayers (1973)
• A Poet's Year (1973)
• My Scotland: Fragments of a State of Mind (1973)
• The Vision (1973)
• Elegy for the Gas Dowsers (1974)
• In the Hours Waiting for Blood to Come (1975)
• The Journey to the Island (1975)
• The Transformation (1975)
• The Book of Cats (1976) editor with Martin Booth
  Martin Booth
  Martin Booth was a prolific British novelist and poet. He also worked as a teacher and screenwriter, and was the founder of the Sceptre Press.-Early life:...
  
  
• Last Night (1976)
• The Samurai (1976) thriller
• The Survivor (1977) novel
• Buying a Heart (1978)
• The Seven Witches (1978) thriller
• The Saddled Man (1978)
• Poem for Breathing (1979)
• Poetry 1900-75 (1980) anthology, editor
• Poems of Love and Death (1980)
• Typing a Novel About the War (1980) poem
• Cadbury and the Samurai (1981) thriller
• Poems from Oby (1982) Oby is a Norfolk parish
• The Born Losers (1982)
• The Rectory Mice (1982)
• The Katana: A Novel Based on the War Diaries of John Beeby (1982) also as A Kind of Treason
• The Long Darkness (1983)
• Anna's Book (1983)
• Facts and Feelings in the Classroom (1983) editor with Martin Booth
• The Lion of Pescara (1984)
• The Long Darkness (1984)
• Dizzy's Woman (1986) Disraeli letters
• The Cleaver Garden (1986)
• The Story of Daniel (1986)
• A Child of the War (1987): an autobiographical account of his life pre-Oxford
• Anatomy of Divorce (1988)
• Collected Poems, 1958-1982 (1989)
• Another Love Story (1991)
• Trespassing. Poems from Ireland (1991)
• The Testament of Spencer (1992) novel
• Selected Poems (Enitharmon Press
  Enitharmon Press
  Enitharmon Press is an independent British publishing house specialising in poetry.The name of the press comes from the poetry of William Blake: Enitharmon was a character who represented spiritual beauty and poetic inspiration. The press's logo "derives from a Blake woodcut".-History:The Press was...
  
  , 2002) edited by Anthony Thwaite
  Anthony Thwaite
  Anthony Simon Thwaite, OBE, is an English poet and writer. He is married to the writer Ann Thwaite. He was awarded the OBE in 1992, for services to poetry. He was mainly brought up in Yorkshire and currently lives in Norfolk....
  
  
• Bedtime Story

Sources

• Book Rags