Alastair Niven

Last updated

Alastair Niven
OBE LVO Hon FRSL
Born
Alastair Neil Robertson Niven

(1944-02-25) 25 February 1944 (age 80)
Edinburgh, Scotland
NationalityEnglish
Education Dulwich College; Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge; University of Ghana; University of Leeds
Occupation(s)Literary scholar and author
Awards Benson Medal, 2021

Alastair Neil Robertson Niven OBE LVO Hon FRSL (born 25 February 1944) [1] is an English literary scholar and author. He has written books on D. H. Lawrence, Raja Rao, and Mulk Raj Anand, and has been Director General of The Africa Centre, Director of Literature at the Arts Council of Great Britain and of the British Council, a principal of Cumberland Lodge, and president of English PEN. In 2021, Niven was chosen as the recipient of the Benson Medal from the Royal Society of Literature, awarded for exceptional contribution to literature. [2]

Contents

Education

Born in Edinburgh, Scotland, [3] Niven was educated at Dulwich College in London and at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, [3] [4] [5] and was then a Commonwealth Scholar for two years (1968–69) at the University of Ghana, [4] [5] where he "first researched in the field of African literature", [4] receiving his master's degree and lecturing in English literature there. [3] [4] [5] He next lectured in English literature at the University of Leeds, [4] [5] where he received his Doctorate, [3] and then taught English Studies at Stirling University (1970–78), [4] [6] where he was given charge of Commonwealth literature. [5]

Scholarship and academic work

In the 1970s, Niven wrote the first of several books. [5] [7] His 1978 study, D. H. Lawrence: The Novels, was reviewed as "an excellent introduction to Lawrence as an artist and as a thinker", [8] and as "particularly useful for its full treatment of the neglected or downgraded novels". [9] Niven's 1980 book, D. H. Lawrence: The Writer and His Work, was reviewed in the Los Angeles Times Book Review as "a brief yet substantial commentary on the Lawrence work", though with "few fresh insights". The review noted that Niven "does focus some welcome attention on several less-lauded works", and that Niven's "defense of Lawrence's underrated plays should interest any serious Lawrence scholar." [10]

Niven was Director General of The Africa Centre in London from 1978 to 1984. [11] He was at various times "an executive member of the Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies and a member of the Commonwealth Institute Working Party on Library Holdings of Commonwealth Literature". [5] From 1987 to 1997, he was Director of Literature at the Arts Council of Great Britain, and from 1997 to 2001 was the British Council's director of literature. [6]

Booker Prize work and other literary activities

He was a judge for the Booker Prize in 1994, [12] and for the Man Booker Prize in 2014. [13] In 2017, Niven argued that allowing American authors to contend for the Booker award would not lead to American dominance, pointing to authors from other countries having won recent international literary awards. [14] The following year, he opposed efforts to drop American authors from contention for the Booker Prize. [15] In support of the wide international eligibility of applicants, he described "the development of the English language into a number of different Englishes, which can then be compared and contrasted" as "one of the unifying features of the literature." [7]

In 2000–2001, Niven served on the International Advisory Board of the Raja Rao Award for Literature. [16] He was Principal of the King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Foundation of St. Catherine at Cumberland Lodge in Windsor from 2001 to 2013, [11] [17] and "held the unique double of being Director of Literature at the Arts Council of Great Britain (later Arts Council England) for 10 years and Director of Literature at the British Council for four." [11] [13] He was president of English PEN from 2003 to 2007, [11] [18] and Chairman of the Commonwealth Writers' Prize. [11]

In the 2012 Birthday Honours, Niven was made a Lieutenant of the Royal Victorian Order (LVO), personally conferred by Queen Elizabeth II. [19] [20] He was a jury member for the 2012 DSC Prize for South Asian Literature. [21]

In 2017, he was Chair of Judges for the Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation. [22]

In 2019, he supported a fundraiser to preserve an antique annotated copy of D. H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover used as an exhibit in the famous obscenity trial, R v Penguin Books Ltd . Having written two books about Lawrence, Niven commented: "He has served me well and the least I can do now is help in his hour of need." [23]

Niven's memoir, In Glad or Sorry Hours, was published in February 2021 [24] [25] [26] (Starhaven, ISBN   9780936315485). [27]

Awards and honours

Publications

In addition to his books, Niven "is the author of over fifty articles on aspects of Commonwealth and post-colonial literature, and has also written extensively about the welfare of overseas students". [31]

Related Research Articles

The Society of Authors (SoA) is a United Kingdom trade union for professional writers, illustrators and literary translators, founded in 1884 to protect the rights and further the interests of authors. In 2020 membership stood at over 12,000. The SoA is a member of the European Writers' Council.

Lawrence Scott FRSL is a novelist and short-story writer from Trinidad and Tobago, who divides his time between London and Port of Spain. He has also worked as a teacher of English and Drama at schools in London and in Trinidad. Scott's novels have been awarded (1998) and shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers' Prize and thrice nominated for the International Dublin Literary Award. His stories have been much anthologised and he won the Tom-Gallon Short-Story Award in 1986.

The Benson Medal is a medal awarded by the Royal Society of Literature in the UK.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Aamer Hussein</span> Pakistani critic and short story writer (born 1955)

Aamer Hussein is a Pakistani critic and short story writer

Valentine David Cunningham, OBE, MA, DPhil (Oxon), is a retired professor of English language and literature at the University of Oxford, and emeritus fellow in English literature at Corpus Christi College, Oxford.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">American University in Cairo Press</span> Academic publisher

The American University in Cairo Press is the leading English-language publisher in the Middle East.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Omar Saif Ghobash</span> Emirati diplomat and author

Omar Saif Ghobash is the Assistant Minister for Culture and Public Diplomacy in the UAE and an author. He was appointed ambassador of the United Arab Emirates to France on 24 November 2017, having previously served as UAE ambassador to Russia from 2009 to 2017. Ghobash authored the book, Letters to a Young Muslim, which was written as a series of letters to his eldest son about what it means to be Muslim in the 21st century.

The Commonwealth Poetry Prize was an annual poetry prize established in 1972, for a first published book of English poetry from a country other than the United Kingdom. It was initially administered jointly by the Commonwealth Institute and the National Book League.

The Banipal Prize, whose full name is the Saif Ghobash–Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation, is an annual prize awarded to a translator for the published English translation of a full-length literary work in the Arabic language. The prize was inaugurated in 2006 by the literary magazine Banipal which promotes the diffusion of contemporary Arabic literature through English translations and the Banipal Trust for Arab Literature. It is administered by the Society of Authors in the UK, and the prize money is sponsored by Omar Saif Ghobash and his family in memory of Ghobash's late father Saif Ghobash. As of 2009, the prize money amounted to £3000.

Humphrey T. Davies was a British translator of Arabic fiction, historical and classical texts. Born in Great Britain, he studied Arabic in college and graduate school. He worked for decades in the Arab world and was based in Cairo from the late 20th century to 2021. He translated at least 18 Arabic works into English, including contemporary literature. He is a two-time winner of the Banipal Prize.

Wajdi al-Ahdal is a Yemeni novelist, short story writer and playwright. Laureate of the International Prize for Arabic Fiction (IPAF) in 2008, is known for his contemporary literary style and sometimes socially critical works, some of which have been censored in Yemen. Until 2019, he has published five novels, four collections of short stories, a play and a film screenplay.

Maia Tabet is an Arabic-English literary translator with a background in editing and journalism. Born in Beirut, Lebanon, in 1956, she was raised in Lebanon, India, and England. She studied philosophy and political science at the American University in Beirut and lives between the United States and Cyprus.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">James Berry (poet)</span> Jamaican poet (1924–2017)

James Berry, OBE, Hon. FRSL, was a Jamaican poet who settled in England in the 1940s. His poetry is notable for using a mixture of standard English and Jamaican Patois. Berry's writing often "explores the relationship between black and white communities and in particular, the excitement and tensions in the evolving relationship of the Caribbean immigrants with Britain and British society from the 1940s onwards". As the editor of two seminal anthologies, Bluefoot Traveller (1976) and News for Babylon (1984), he was in the forefront of championing West Indian/British writing.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ellah Wakatama Allfrey</span> Zimbabwean editor and literary critic (born 1966)

Ellah Wakatama, OBE, Hon. FRSL, is the Editor-at-Large at Canongate Books, a senior Research Fellow at Manchester University, and Chair of the AKO Caine Prize for African Writing. She was the founding Publishing Director of the Indigo Press. A London-based editor and critic, she was on the judging panel of the 2017 International Dublin Literary Award and the 2015 Man Booker Prize. In 2016, she was a Visiting Professor & Global Intercultural Scholar at Goshen College, Indiana, and was the Guest Master for the 2016 Gabriel Garcia Marquez Foundation international journalism fellowship in Cartagena, Colombia. The former deputy editor of Granta magazine, she was the senior editor at Jonathan Cape, Random House and an assistant editor at Penguin. She is the series editor of the Kwani? Manuscript Project and the editor of the anthologies Africa39 and Safe House: Explorations in Creative Nonfiction.

Maya Jaggi is a British writer, literary critic, editor and cultural journalist. In the words of the Open University, from which Jaggi received an honorary doctorate in 2012, she "has had a transformative influence in the last 25 years in extending the map of international writing today". Jaggi has been a contributor to a wide range of publications including The Guardian, Financial Times, The Independent, The Literary Review, The Times Literary Supplement, The New York Review of Books, The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, New Statesman, Wasafiri, Index on Censorship, and Newsweek, and is particularly known for her profiles of writers, artists, film-makers, musicians and others. She is also a broadcaster and presenter on radio and television. Jaggi is the niece of actor and food writer Madhur Jaffrey.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Margaret Busby</span> Publisher, writer and editor (born 1944)

Margaret Yvonne Busby,, Hon. FRSL, also known as Nana Akua Ackon, is a Ghanaian-born publisher, editor, writer and broadcaster, resident in the UK. She was Britain's youngest and first black female book publisher when she and Clive Allison (1944–2011) co-founded the London-based publishing house Allison and Busby in the 1960s. She edited the anthology Daughters of Africa (1992), and its 2019 follow-up New Daughters of Africa. She is a recipient of the Benson Medal from the Royal Society of Literature. In 2020 she was voted one of the "100 Great Black Britons". In 2021, she was honoured with the London Book Fair Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2023, Busby was named as president of English PEN.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Youssef Rakha</span> Egyptian writer

Youssef Rakha is an Egyptian writer. His work explores language and identity in the context of Cairo, and reflects connections with the Arab-Islamic canon and world literature. He has worked in many genres in both Arabic and English, and is known for his essays and poems as well as his novels.

Hena Maes-Jelinek was a Czech-born Belgian literary scholar. She has been called "one of the founding mothers of the study of Commonwealth Literature and, later, Postcolonial studies in Europe", who "pioneered the study of Caribbean literature in Belgium and Europe". She wrote extensively on the Guyanese writer Wilson Harris.

Boyd Tonkin Hon. FRSL is an English writer, journalist and literary critic. He was the literary editor of The Independent newspaper from 1996 to 2013. A long-time proponent of foreign-language literature, he is the author of The 100 Best Novels in Translation (2018). He has been involved with leading literary prizes such as the Man Booker International Prize and the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. In 2020 Tonkin was the recipient of the Benson Medal from the Royal Society of Literature.

References

  1. Miranda H. Ferrara, ed. (2004). The Writers Directory 2005. St. James Press. p. 1246. ISBN   978-1-55862-528-0.
  2. "RSL announces 44 new Fellows and Honorary Fellows". The Royal Society of Literature. 6 July 2021.
  3. 1 2 3 4 "Alastair Niven". DSC Prize for South Asian Literature. 5 May 2011. Retrieved 29 November 2019.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 6 H. H. Anniah Gowda, The Literary Half-yearly – Volume 13, 1972, p. 201.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Hena Maes-Jelinek, Commonwealth Literature and the Modern World, 1975, p. 179.
  6. 1 2 "Niven, Alastair (Neil Robertson)", Encyclopedia.com.
  7. 1 2 Leanne Dohy, "10 Questions for Alastair Niven", Calgary Herald , 8 May 2003, p. E2.
  8. J. Michaels, "Alastair Niven, DH Lawrence: The Novels", International Fiction Review (1979), p. 179.
  9. H. T. Moore, "DH Lawrence: The Novels, by Alastair Niven", The Yearbook of English Studies , 1981, p. 354.
  10. Dennis O'Gorman, "D. H. Lawrence: The Writer and His Work", Los Angeles Times Book Review, 30 November 1980, p. 12.
  11. 1 2 3 4 5 "Alastair Niven, LVO, OBE". Harris Manchester College. Archived from the original on 27 April 2019. Retrieved 27 November 2019.
  12. Full details of the winners, judges and shortlisted books for all the Booker prizes (1969–2008), The Guardian , 10 October 2008.
  13. 1 2 "Man Booker Prize announces 2014 judging panel". BBC News. 12 December 2013.
  14. "British novelists need not fear an American takeover of the Booker prize". The Guardian. 22 October 2017.
  15. Cain, Sian (2 February 2018). "Publishers call on Man Booker prize to drop American authors". The Guardian.
  16. "Professional Notes" Archived 27 November 2019 at the Wayback Machine , World Englishes, Vol. 20, No. 1 (Wiley-Blackwell 2001), pp. 117–118.
  17. ALA Bulletin: A Publication of the African Literature Association, Volume 28, 2001, p. 16.
  18. Sharp, Robert (13 December 2007). "Speech by Alistair Niven at PEN AGM 2007". English PEN.
  19. "No. 60173". The London Gazette (Supplement). 16 June 2012. p. B3.
  20. "The Director of The Nehru Centre invites you to an evening with Shanta Acharya" (PDF). June 2015. Retrieved 15 August 2022.
  21. "Chinaman wins Asian literary prize". dailymirror.lk. 22 January 2012.
  22. "The 2017 Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation". The Banipal Trust for Arab Literature. Retrieved 10 August 2022.
  23. Flood, Alison (24 May 2019). "Lady Chatterley trial: thousands raised to keep judge's copy in UK". The Guardian.
  24. "Operating as usual". Starhaven. 30 December 2020. Retrieved 11 February 2021.
  25. Barringer, Terry (22 June 2021). "Book Review – In glad or sorry hours: a memoir". The Round Table: The Commonwealth Journal of International Affairs. Retrieved 13 August 2023.
  26. "Review by Robert Richardson of "In Glad or Sorry Hours: A Memoir" by Alastair Niven". Everybody's Reviewing. 9 May 2022. Retrieved 13 August 2023.
  27. de Chamberet, Georgia. "Review | In Glad or Sorry Hours – a memoir, Alastair Niven | Starhaven Press". BookBlast. Retrieved 13 August 2023.
  28. United Kingdom list: "No. 56070". The London Gazette (Supplement). 30 December 2000. p. 24.
  29. "Alastair Niven". The Royal Society of Literature. Retrieved 10 August 2022.
  30. "Honorary Fellow, Alastair Niven OBE LVO, wins Benson Medal". Harris Manchester College, University of Oxford. Retrieved 10 August 2022.
  31. ALA Bulletin: A Publication of the African Literature Association, Volume 28, 2002, p. 16.
  32. Adrian Roscoe, The Columbia Guide to Central African Literature in English, 2007, 153.