Dorothy Dunnett (1923–2001)
Author of The Game of Kings
About the Author
Dorothy Dunnett was born on August 25, 1923 in Dunfermline, Fife, Scotland. She attended Gillespie's High School for Girls. After graduation she attended Edinburgh College of Art, and transferred, upon her marriage, to Glasgow School of Art. From 1940-1955, she worked for the Civil Service as a show more press officer. Her first novel, The Game of Kings, was published in the United States in 1961 and in the United Kingdom the year after. During her lifetime, she wrote over 20 books including King Hereafter, the six-part Lymond Chronicles, and the eight-part House of Niccolo series. She was also a professional portrait painter and exhibited at the Royal Scottish Academy. In 1992 she was awarded the Office of the British Empire for services to literature. She died from cancer on November 9, 2001 at the age of 78. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Image credit: Photo by Alison Dunnett from DorothyDunnett.co.uk
Series
Works by Dorothy Dunnett
Associated Works
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Birthdate
- 1923-08-25
- Date of death
- 2001-11-09
- Gender
- female
- Education
- Gillespie's High School for Girls
- Occupations
- novelist
painter
press officer - Organizations
- Edinburgh Festival
- Awards and honors
- Order of the British Empire (Officer)
- Relationships
- Dunnett, Ninian (son)
Dunnett, Alastair MacTavish (husband) - Short biography
- According to her fan site, Dorothy Dunnett was pursuing a successful career as a professional portrait painter in the 1950s when she complained to her husband Alastair that she had run out of reading material. He suggested she write something herself. With the erudition and depth of research that was to become her trademark, she spent the next 18 months writing The Game of Kings. It was rejected by 5 British publishers before being published in the USA in 1961 and launching her writing career.
- Nationality
- UK
- Birthplace
- Dunfermline, Fife, Scotland, UK
- Places of residence
- Edinburgh, Midlothian, Scotland, UK
- Place of death
- Edinburgh, Midlothian, Scotland, UK
- Map Location
- Scotland, UK
Members
Discussions
Spoilers ahoy! Spoilerific discussion of Dorothy Dunnett's Rum Affair in The Green Dragon (March 2013)
Reviews
Hello, a happy Dunnett reader here. I started this series with excitement and some trepidation. What was it going to be like? You know what to expect from Dunnett, and you never know what to expect from Dunnett.
So, we are in the 1460’s – here is Flanders, here is Burgundy, here is Brittany, here is Milan...
Intrigues; back-stabbing; clandestine meetings; assassination attempts; avalanches; swashbuckling; duels (fought with oars, of all things!); battles; crazy fun escapades; merchant show more house machinations. What a great mix of ingredients! I had no idea I could care so much about trade in Renaissance Europe. Dunnett made it fascinating, glorious, exciting. I had no idea I could care about alum! (I had to google it, too!)
The writing brought me joy.
”Bruges was the multiple voice of working water; and the quality of brick-thrown echoes, and the hiss of trees and the flap of drying cloths in the flat-country wind, and the grunting, like frogs in a marsh, of quires of crucified clothes, left to vibrate in the fields of the tenters. Bruges was the cawing scream of the gulls, and the bell-calls.”
Let’s talk about the characters. Claes/Nicholas: a dyer’s apprentice who is anything but by the end of the book. Dunnett tries to fool you, talking about an “oak tree with dimples”. Claes gets beaten uo a lot and makes people laugh. But ”Claes was always making toys, and other people broke them.”. Me: I think these people and the world had better watch out. Dunnett does a lot of showing and no telling at all. Most characters, and Claes especially, remain obscure. The showing that is going on is akin to a stage magician’s – look into my hat; no, there was no hat. You get glimpses. Claes/Nicholas is a genius, ”He had only his brain, which absorbed instruction and held it, for ever.” I found that I was always ageing him in my head by 10 years or so – there is no way he is eighteen. (Suspension of disbelief is a useful thing.) I do like that my idea of him is not complete yet. There are seven more books to go, after all. As for the others – Katelina (awesome!), Julius, Tobie, Gregorio, Marion – I am so curious about them all. I am curious about the villains, too. They are quite delicious, all wearing a sign “I am the villain of this book, am I being villainous enough for you?” It reminded me of the moment in The Three Musketeers, when d’Artagnan meets de Rochefort for the first time – only Dumas spells it out much more than Dunnett.
The plotting is impeccable, and Dunnett, as always, excels at emotionally exhausting scenes. There were narrative choices I did not quite like, but they did not lessen my enjoyment. Oh, and my heart broke again. The dramatic reveals towards the end are very satisfying to any reader who likes intricate and intelligent plots. The ending is excellent. I am looking forward to the next book so, so, so much!
P.S. The ostrich is great, I loved the ostrich! 😆😆😆 show less
So, we are in the 1460’s – here is Flanders, here is Burgundy, here is Brittany, here is Milan...
Intrigues; back-stabbing; clandestine meetings; assassination attempts; avalanches; swashbuckling; duels (fought with oars, of all things!); battles; crazy fun escapades; merchant show more house machinations. What a great mix of ingredients! I had no idea I could care so much about trade in Renaissance Europe. Dunnett made it fascinating, glorious, exciting. I had no idea I could care about alum! (I had to google it, too!)
The writing brought me joy.
”Bruges was the multiple voice of working water; and the quality of brick-thrown echoes, and the hiss of trees and the flap of drying cloths in the flat-country wind, and the grunting, like frogs in a marsh, of quires of crucified clothes, left to vibrate in the fields of the tenters. Bruges was the cawing scream of the gulls, and the bell-calls.”
Let’s talk about the characters. Claes/Nicholas: a dyer’s apprentice who is anything but by the end of the book. Dunnett tries to fool you, talking about an “oak tree with dimples”. Claes gets beaten uo a lot and makes people laugh. But ”Claes was always making toys, and other people broke them.”. Me: I think these people and the world had better watch out. Dunnett does a lot of showing and no telling at all. Most characters, and Claes especially, remain obscure. The showing that is going on is akin to a stage magician’s – look into my hat; no, there was no hat. You get glimpses. Claes/Nicholas is a genius, ”He had only his brain, which absorbed instruction and held it, for ever.” I found that I was always ageing him in my head by 10 years or so – there is no way he is eighteen. (Suspension of disbelief is a useful thing.) I do like that my idea of him is not complete yet. There are seven more books to go, after all. As for the others – Katelina (awesome!), Julius, Tobie, Gregorio, Marion – I am so curious about them all. I am curious about the villains, too. They are quite delicious, all wearing a sign “I am the villain of this book, am I being villainous enough for you?” It reminded me of the moment in The Three Musketeers, when d’Artagnan meets de Rochefort for the first time – only Dumas spells it out much more than Dunnett.
The plotting is impeccable, and Dunnett, as always, excels at emotionally exhausting scenes. There were narrative choices I did not quite like, but they did not lessen my enjoyment. Oh, and my heart broke again. The dramatic reveals towards the end are very satisfying to any reader who likes intricate and intelligent plots. The ending is excellent. I am looking forward to the next book so, so, so much!
P.S. The ostrich is great, I loved the ostrich! 😆😆😆 show less
If George Mackay Brown’s Vinland was the kind of historical novel that uses history to make a statement about the present, then King Hereafter is the kind that attempts to immerse its readers as fully as possible in the past, not just by describing historical events but by trying to recreate the mindset of their chosen period, by making their readers think, feel and see the way their characters did, ideally without having a present point of view intrude on the scene at all. Nobody (at show more least nobody I have read so far) does this type of historical novel better than Dorothy Dunnett: her novels grab the reader and dunk them up to their eyebrows in the sights, sounds and smells of a distant epoch, barely letting them come up for air. This can prove quite challenging for readers who find themselves often called to actually work at understanding what is happening in her novels, retracing an intrigue from casually dropped hints or piecing together hidden conflicts by following up apparently innocuous references. King Hereafter is particularly dense even for Dorothy Dunnett and some parts (like the ecclesiastical factions and their power-games at the beginning of Part 3) proved particularly impenetrable.
In fact, this complete immersion seems to me to achieve for the historical novel what the stream of consciousness technique did for the modernist novel (most famously, James Joyce and Virginia Woolf), namely a radical perspectivism that abstains from all obvious auctorial intervention, leaving readers with no outside frame of reference and forcing them to puzzle things out and construct that frame on their own. Of course, that effect of immediacy – of an individual mind in stream of consciousness, of a historical period in Dunnett’s case – needs to be arranged, requires in fact a great deal of artifice and considerable skill to pull off successfully. And while she might not be quite up with the likes of Joyce and Woolf, Dorothy Dunnett without any doubt deserves to be considered among the greatest historical novelists of the twentieth century.
King Hereafter is somewhat unusual among Dunnett’s novels – for one thing, it is not part of a series but a stand-alone, for another, it is her only novel that has an actual historic figure as its main character. Or possibly two, for the novel has also something like a thesis, namely that Thorfinn, Earl of Orkney was identical with MacBeth, King of Alba (best known from Shakespeare’s play, of course). Apparently, that view is not shared by all historians, but whatever its historical plausibility, Dunnett makes it work for King Hereafter – work on several levels, even. Thorfinn does come across as a convincing, well-rounded character – he does remind one somewhat of Lymond at the start, but I suppose that was unavoidable even though Dorothy Dunnett goes out of her way to make him look different and keeps reminding her readers that he is dark-haired and not particularly good-looking. I would not even put it beyond her that she made the characters intentionally similar, just to then be able to show how they are changed by time and circumstances into two very different people – Thorfinn is changed by being a ruler (this is even one of the themes of the novel) and while the whole of the Lymond saga encompasses only a couple of years, events in King Hereafter span several decades so that we follow Thorfinn as he matures with age.
But even as she merges her two historical originals seamlessly into a single, convincing and fascinating character, there is a split running through King Hereafter – but one that is quite intentional and in fact constitutive for the novel’s basic structure. King Hereafter is divided into four parts, but is really two-part in structure – the first part is about the protagonist’s rise until he becomes secure in his position as King of Alba, the second part describes his rule and eventual downfall; one might say that the first one is about Thorfinn, Earl of Orkney, and the second about MacBeth, King of Alba. At first sight, one might suspect that it is here that the seams where Dunnett stitched her protagonist together become visible, but far from that, for as it turns out the novel is precisely about the movement from small, tribal communities to larger, centralised societies as well as (hardly a coincidence of course) from Pagan polytheism to Christian monotheism. Thorfinn embodies that shift – you really have to read the novel to appreciate just how wonderful a job Dunnett does with this – even though we see him consistently from an outside perspective the novel conveys how he is not so much torn as rather stretched between two epochs and two ways of living, both an earl and a king , a pagan at heart but still trying to come to terms with rising Christendom. And even though it costs him his life, he does in way succeed in the end, achieving the both the opposing goals of managing to keep Orkney an independent earldom while forging Scotland into a kingdom that will endure even after his death. By having its protagonist have a leg in both periods, so to speak, King Hereafter manages to impressively show what is gained and what is lost by the shift from one to the other. And it mirrors it on a formal linguistic level as well – while the first part of the novel is clearly modelled after Icelandic Sagas, telling about heroic deeds and single combat in a language that is both simple but flexible and highly rhythmic, the second part resembles more a historical chronicle, recording diplomatic maneuvers and battles between armies in a language that seems visual rather than verbal, written rather than recited – sound and rhythm being replaced by sight and colour.
I seem to remember reading somewhere that Dunnett herself considered King Hereafter her best work, but I’m inclined to take that as an author’s fondness for her least popular work. As I’m writing this, I have yet to read her House of Niccolo series, but I think overall this novel falls somewhat short of the Lymond Chronicles at their best. King Hereafter certainly has a grander, by far more epic sweep than the earlier series, but precisely because of that lacks somewhat in the fine details that made the Lymond novels stand out so brightly and vividly. Having said that, I hasten to add that King Hereafter is a splendid novel, and worth several dozen minor novels on Vikings, Scotland or medieval history in general. As is usual with Dorothy Dunnett, the novel boasts several unforgettable set pieces, the oar-walking at the beginning alone – breathtakingly exciting and wonderfully exhilarating – is sure to remain in every reader’s memory. I really, really need to start on her Niccolo series soon. show less
In fact, this complete immersion seems to me to achieve for the historical novel what the stream of consciousness technique did for the modernist novel (most famously, James Joyce and Virginia Woolf), namely a radical perspectivism that abstains from all obvious auctorial intervention, leaving readers with no outside frame of reference and forcing them to puzzle things out and construct that frame on their own. Of course, that effect of immediacy – of an individual mind in stream of consciousness, of a historical period in Dunnett’s case – needs to be arranged, requires in fact a great deal of artifice and considerable skill to pull off successfully. And while she might not be quite up with the likes of Joyce and Woolf, Dorothy Dunnett without any doubt deserves to be considered among the greatest historical novelists of the twentieth century.
King Hereafter is somewhat unusual among Dunnett’s novels – for one thing, it is not part of a series but a stand-alone, for another, it is her only novel that has an actual historic figure as its main character. Or possibly two, for the novel has also something like a thesis, namely that Thorfinn, Earl of Orkney was identical with MacBeth, King of Alba (best known from Shakespeare’s play, of course). Apparently, that view is not shared by all historians, but whatever its historical plausibility, Dunnett makes it work for King Hereafter – work on several levels, even. Thorfinn does come across as a convincing, well-rounded character – he does remind one somewhat of Lymond at the start, but I suppose that was unavoidable even though Dorothy Dunnett goes out of her way to make him look different and keeps reminding her readers that he is dark-haired and not particularly good-looking. I would not even put it beyond her that she made the characters intentionally similar, just to then be able to show how they are changed by time and circumstances into two very different people – Thorfinn is changed by being a ruler (this is even one of the themes of the novel) and while the whole of the Lymond saga encompasses only a couple of years, events in King Hereafter span several decades so that we follow Thorfinn as he matures with age.
But even as she merges her two historical originals seamlessly into a single, convincing and fascinating character, there is a split running through King Hereafter – but one that is quite intentional and in fact constitutive for the novel’s basic structure. King Hereafter is divided into four parts, but is really two-part in structure – the first part is about the protagonist’s rise until he becomes secure in his position as King of Alba, the second part describes his rule and eventual downfall; one might say that the first one is about Thorfinn, Earl of Orkney, and the second about MacBeth, King of Alba. At first sight, one might suspect that it is here that the seams where Dunnett stitched her protagonist together become visible, but far from that, for as it turns out the novel is precisely about the movement from small, tribal communities to larger, centralised societies as well as (hardly a coincidence of course) from Pagan polytheism to Christian monotheism. Thorfinn embodies that shift – you really have to read the novel to appreciate just how wonderful a job Dunnett does with this – even though we see him consistently from an outside perspective the novel conveys how he is not so much torn as rather stretched between two epochs and two ways of living, both an earl and a king , a pagan at heart but still trying to come to terms with rising Christendom. And even though it costs him his life, he does in way succeed in the end, achieving the both the opposing goals of managing to keep Orkney an independent earldom while forging Scotland into a kingdom that will endure even after his death. By having its protagonist have a leg in both periods, so to speak, King Hereafter manages to impressively show what is gained and what is lost by the shift from one to the other. And it mirrors it on a formal linguistic level as well – while the first part of the novel is clearly modelled after Icelandic Sagas, telling about heroic deeds and single combat in a language that is both simple but flexible and highly rhythmic, the second part resembles more a historical chronicle, recording diplomatic maneuvers and battles between armies in a language that seems visual rather than verbal, written rather than recited – sound and rhythm being replaced by sight and colour.
I seem to remember reading somewhere that Dunnett herself considered King Hereafter her best work, but I’m inclined to take that as an author’s fondness for her least popular work. As I’m writing this, I have yet to read her House of Niccolo series, but I think overall this novel falls somewhat short of the Lymond Chronicles at their best. King Hereafter certainly has a grander, by far more epic sweep than the earlier series, but precisely because of that lacks somewhat in the fine details that made the Lymond novels stand out so brightly and vividly. Having said that, I hasten to add that King Hereafter is a splendid novel, and worth several dozen minor novels on Vikings, Scotland or medieval history in general. As is usual with Dorothy Dunnett, the novel boasts several unforgettable set pieces, the oar-walking at the beginning alone – breathtakingly exciting and wonderfully exhilarating – is sure to remain in every reader’s memory. I really, really need to start on her Niccolo series soon. show less
This book is such a pleasure to read!
It is well written, clever, and keeps moving through the trials of the divided House of Niccolo, from Bruges to Tabriz. Nicholas has reinvented himself at the beginning and continues to do so under stress until nearly the last page, goaded by those who both understand him and have found him useful. All of the deep historical detail is folded in as part of the plot and never seems like any sort of info dump.
It is well written, clever, and keeps moving through the trials of the divided House of Niccolo, from Bruges to Tabriz. Nicholas has reinvented himself at the beginning and continues to do so under stress until nearly the last page, goaded by those who both understand him and have found him useful. All of the deep historical detail is folded in as part of the plot and never seems like any sort of info dump.
“Evil matters. So does love. So does pity. My pilgrim,” said Dame de Doubtance gently, “you have still three bitter lessons to learn.”
Bitter lessons indeed. This book broke my heart in too many places to count. I should not be surprised, really, Dunnett had done it before. I put the book aside for many days, because the emotional turmoil at last became too much for me to bear. I gathered my courage and dived back – and Dunnett promptly broke my heart yet again. Danse Macabre is show more mentioned at one point, and this is what the long, desperate quest feels like.
Oh, Lymond. There were battles of all kinds, so many yet to come. I hope that you will let love come to you. Sometimes it’s amazing how much you care for imaginary people…
“Duty, friendship, compassion I do owe to many. But love I offer to none.”
“Duty, friendship, compassion. Which moved him to die for you?”
I loved the partnership of Lymond and Jerott and tempests between them.
“Lymond grinned. “When the clay for thee was kneaded, as they say,” he remarked, “they forgot to put in common sense.”
I loved Marthe – so gifted, so angry, so damaged, so sharp, so clever, so resilient. Her scenes with Lymond at the very end are touching and harrowing at the same time. Give me more Marthe, please.
“I never expect anything,” said Marthe. “It provides a level, low-pitched existence with no disappointments.”
Philippa’s storyline requires suspension of disbelief. Somehow, I was happy to oblige. In the beginning, she does so many right things for the wrong reasons and wrong things for the right reasons, and I wanted to shake her. I ended up admiring and cheering (yes, that’s the same me who screamed “Philippa the brat!” at earlier books). What a journey, what a coming of age, what a spirit… Philippa’s storyline was the only thing that brought me small morsels of joy from time to time.
And so... five stars it is. Because of the characters (book constraints are almost too narrow for them!) - so flawed, so beautifully rendered. Because of the story arcs. Because of the power of storytelling. Because of the dialogues. Because of those turns of phrase that made me fall in love with the written word all over again, as though for the first time. Oh, am I doing this series justice? I don’t think I am. show less
Bitter lessons indeed. This book broke my heart in too many places to count. I should not be surprised, really, Dunnett had done it before. I put the book aside for many days, because the emotional turmoil at last became too much for me to bear. I gathered my courage and dived back – and Dunnett promptly broke my heart yet again. Danse Macabre is show more mentioned at one point, and this is what the long, desperate quest feels like.
Oh, Lymond. There were battles of all kinds, so many yet to come. I hope that you will let love come to you. Sometimes it’s amazing how much you care for imaginary people…
“Duty, friendship, compassion I do owe to many. But love I offer to none.”
“Duty, friendship, compassion. Which moved him to die for you?”
I loved the partnership of Lymond and Jerott and tempests between them.
“Lymond grinned. “When the clay for thee was kneaded, as they say,” he remarked, “they forgot to put in common sense.”
I loved Marthe – so gifted, so angry, so damaged, so sharp, so clever, so resilient. Her scenes with Lymond at the very end are touching and harrowing at the same time. Give me more Marthe, please.
“I never expect anything,” said Marthe. “It provides a level, low-pitched existence with no disappointments.”
Philippa’s storyline requires suspension of disbelief. Somehow, I was happy to oblige. In the beginning, she does so many right things for the wrong reasons and wrong things for the right reasons, and I wanted to shake her. I ended up admiring and cheering (yes, that’s the same me who screamed “Philippa the brat!” at earlier books). What a journey, what a coming of age, what a spirit… Philippa’s storyline was the only thing that brought me small morsels of joy from time to time.
And so... five stars it is. Because of the characters (book constraints are almost too narrow for them!) - so flawed, so beautifully rendered. Because of the story arcs. Because of the power of storytelling. Because of the dialogues. Because of those turns of phrase that made me fall in love with the written word all over again, as though for the first time. Oh, am I doing this series justice? I don’t think I am. show less
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