Christopher Whyte
Encyclopedia
He was born in 1952 in Glasgow
Glasgow
Glasgow is the largest city in Scotland and third most populous in the United Kingdom. The city is situated on the River Clyde in the country's west central lowlands...
and graduated from St. Aloysius' College
St. Aloysius' College, Glasgow
St. Aloysius' College is a selective fee-paying independent Jesuit school in Glasgow, Scotland. It was founded in 1859, and named after the famous Jesuit, Aloysius Gonzaga. Its strong Jesuit ethos emphasises practice of the Roman Catholic faith both in the church and in the community, with many...
and, later, Cambridge University. For many years he lived in Italy before moving back to Scotland in 1985 to teach Scottish literature
Scottish literature
Scottish literature is literature written in Scotland or by Scottish writers. It includes literature written in English, Scottish Gaelic, Scots, Brythonic, French, Latin and any other language in which a piece of literature was ever written within the boundaries of modern Scotland.The earliest...
at Glasgow University (from 1990 until 2005). Since then he has lived in Budapest
Budapest
Budapest is the capital of Hungary. As the largest city of Hungary, it is the country's principal political, cultural, commercial, industrial, and transportation centre. In 2011, Budapest had 1,733,685 inhabitants, down from its 1989 peak of 2,113,645 due to suburbanization. The Budapest Commuter...
as a full-time writer.
Whyte first published some translations of modern poetry into Gaelic, including poems by Pier Paolo Pasolini
Pier Paolo Pasolini
Pier Paolo Pasolini was an Italian film director, poet, writer, and intellectual. Pasolini distinguished himself as a poet, journalist, philosopher, linguist, novelist, playwright, filmmaker, newspaper and magazine columnist, actor, painter and political figure...
(first publication, 1980), Konstantinos Kavafis, Yannis Ritsos and Anna Akhmatova
Anna Akhmatova
Anna Andreyevna Gorenko , better known by the pen name Anna Akhmatova , was a Russian and Soviet modernist poet, one of the most acclaimed writers in the Russian canon.Harrington p11...
. He then published two collections of original poetry in Gaelic, Uirsgeul (Myth), 1991 and An Tràth Duilich (The Difficult Time), 2002. In the meantime he started to write prose in English and has published four novels, Euphemia MacFarrigle and the Laughing Virgin (1995), The Warlock of Strathearn (1997), The Gay Decameron (1998) and The Cloud Machinery (2000).
In 2002 he won a Scottish Research Book of the Year award for his edition of Sorley Maclean
Sorley MacLean
Sorley MacLean was one of the most significant Scottish poets of the 20th century.-Early life:He was born at Osgaig on the island of Raasay on 26 October 1911, where Scottish Gaelic was the first language. He attended the University of Edinburgh and was an avid shinty player playing for the...
's Dàin do Eimhir (Poems to Eimhir), published by the Association for Scottish Literary Studies
Association for Scottish Literary Studies
The Association for Scottish Literary Studies is a Scottish educational charity, founded in 1970 to promote and support the teaching, study and writing of Scottish literature. Its founding members included the Scottish literary scholar Matthew McDiarmid...
. Whyte has also compiled some anthologies of present-day Gaelic poetry and written critical articles and essays.