Boyd, William Andrew Murray (1952– )

Ghanaian-born British novelist and short-story writer. He won wide critical acclaim for A Good Man In Africa (1981; filmed in 1994), which won the Whitbread Award for best first novel and the Somerset Maugham award.

A Good Man in Africa is a dark comedy about an alcoholic British civil servant who gets drawn into local corruption in the fictional African capital where he is stationed, while the country falls into chaos. Other works include An Ice-Cream War (1982), Stars and Bars (1984; filmed in 1988), The New Confessions (1987), Brazzaville Beach (1990), The Blue Afternoon (1993), Armadillo (1998; filmed for BBC in 2001), Any Human Heart (2002), and Restless (2006). His fictional biography Nat Tate: An American Artist 1928–1960 (1998) duped several prominent art critics, who claimed to have heard of the fictional painter.

Boyd was educated at Gordonstoun School, Glasgow University, and Oxford University. He was a lecturer at St Hilda's College, Oxford, 1980–83. He has been awarded honorary doctorates in literature from St Andrews University and Stirling University in Scotland.