威廉·波伊

威廉·博伊德，CBE（英语：William Boyd，1952年3月7日—），英国小说家和编剧。

简介

威廉·博伊德出生在加纳阿克拉，并在加纳和尼日利亚度过早期生活。他曾就读于登斯顿学校; 然后在尼斯大学，法国格拉斯哥大学，最后牛津大学耶稣学院。

1980年至1983年，他是在牛津大学圣希尔达学院讲师，他的第一部小说《人在非洲》出版。

作品

《人在非洲》

《赤子之心》

《不息》

William Andrew Murray Boyd (born 7 March 1952) is a Scottish novelist, short story writer, screenwriter, and film director. He is best known for his novels, which include A Good Man in Africa (1981), Any Human Heart (2002), and Restless (2006), many of which have received critical acclaim and literary awards. Boyd has also written screenplays for film and television, including Chaplin (1992), and directed the World War I drama The Trench (1999).

His work is characterised by its narrative vitality and range, earning him numerous accolades including the Whitbread First Novel Award, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and the Costa Book Award. A number of his works are what he describes as "whole-life" novels which follow a protagonist through the highs and lows of a varied and often remarkable life. He regularly fuses fact with fiction and his lead characters encounter well-known historical figures. He was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2005 for services to literature. John Self, writing for The Booker Prizes, described Boyd’s work as “vigorous, entertaining novels” produced by an “exceptionally fertile imagination,” and praised his fiction as “fully committed to his stories and characters.”

Biography

Boyd was born in Accra, Gold Coast (present-day Ghana), to Scottish parents, both from Fife, and has two younger sisters. His father Alexander, a doctor specialising in tropical medicine, and Boyd's mother, who was a teacher, moved to the Gold Coast in 1950 to run the health clinic at the University College of the Gold Coast, Legon (now the University of Ghana). In the early 1960s, the family moved to western Nigeria, where Boyd's father held a similar position at the University of Ibadan. Boyd spent his early life in Ghana and Nigeria and, at the age of nine, went to a preparatory school and then to Gordonstoun school in Scotland, and, after that, to the University of Nice in France, followed by the University of Glasgow, where he gained an M.A. (Hons) in English & Philosophy, and finally Jesus College, Oxford. His father died of a rare disease when Boyd was 26.

Between 1980 and 1983, Boyd was a lecturer in English at St Hilda's College, Oxford, and it was while he was there that his first novel, A Good Man in Africa (1981), was published. He was also a television critic for the New Statesman between 1981 and 1983.

Boyd was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2005 for services to literature. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and an Officier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. He has been presented with honorary Doctorates in Literature from the universities of St. Andrews, Stirling, Glasgow, and Dundee and is an honorary fellow of Jesus College, Oxford. Boyd is a member of the Chelsea Arts Club.

Boyd met his wife Susan, a former editor and now a screenwriter, while they were both at Glasgow University. He has a house in Chelsea, London, and a farmhouse and vineyard (with its own appellation Château Pecachard) in Bergerac in the Dordogne in southwest France.

In August 2014, Boyd was one of 200 public figures who were signatories to a letter to The Guardian opposing Scottish independence in the run-up to September's referendum on that issue.

In March 2025, Boyd featured on BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs.