Tributes to Allan Massie, author and Scotsman journalist, who has died aged 87

placeholder image — Allan Massie | Claudia Massie

Author Ian Rankin has led tributes to the author, critic and newspaper man

Allan Massie, the author, columnist and The Scotsman’s chief literary critic who wrote for the paper for 50 years, has died aged 87.

Mr Massie had been suffering from what he described as “wretched cancer” and passed away on Tuesday at the home of his daughter, Claudia, surrounded by his family.

“It was all entirely peaceful and pain free, here in Doune surrounded by family with the dandie dinmont barking outside in the garden. As these things go, it couldn’t have been a better death,” his daughter said.

It is estimated Mr Massie reviewed some 3,500 books for The Scotsman since starting at the paper in 1975, with the writer also contributing hugely to the sports pages, where his columns on rugby and cricket ran for over three decades.

Scotland team manager Gregor Townsend was a particular fan of his work and praised his “astute analysis” and “excellent rugby brain”.

Mr Massie could often be seen cheering on his beloved Selkirk RFC, usually with an Afghan beret on his head and a Gitane in his mouth, at the club’s Philiphaugh Stadium, which was just a stone’s throw from his house.

Author Ian Rankin has led tributes to Mr Massie, who taught him at Edinburgh University during his time as writer in residence in the early 1980s.

Rankin said: “Allan was such a huge help to me. The writers in residence I’d met at Edinburgh Uni had all been poets but I’d moved from poetry to prose.

“Then Allan arrived and I started showing him stuff. I then entered a short story contest sponsored by Sinclair Computers and The Scotsman. Allan was the judge and I was runner-up to Iain Crichton Smith. A huge fillip.

“Allan was also editing New Edinburgh Review and took a story or two for that. Then, after Polygon had published my first novel The Flood, Allan introduced me to his editor at Bodley Head, Euan Cameron. Euan took my first Rebus novel Knots and Crosses. And that was that. Allan even provided a quote for the jacket.I was in my infancy as a published writer but Allan was there at the delivery! We kept in touch forever after.”

He added: “Allan was throughout this period a terrific and largely underrated writer - novels, non-fiction, book reviews and other journalism. It was a privilege to get to know the man behind the work. I’ll always be grateful to him.”

Mr Massie wrote more than 25 novels, starting with Change and Decay in All Around I See in 1978. The Last Peacock (1980) won a literary award and was followed by The Death of Men, a thriller based on the 1978 kidnapping and murder by terrorists of Italian statesman Aldo Moro.

His mid-European trilogy of A Question of Loyalties (1989), The Sins of the Father (1991) and Shadows of Empire (1997), was considered by the author to be among his best work.

Widely published in France, he was honoured with a Knighthood of the Order of Arts and Letters and then a CBE six years later, in 2013.

Mr Massie was born in 1938 in Singapore during a spell that his father, Sandy, worked on a rubber plantation in Malaya.

Back home in Scotland, he was raised by his mother in Kintore and Inverurie in Aberdeenshire. He took up a scholarship at Glenalmond College before heading to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he read history and graduated in 1960. Then, he worked as a teacher at Drumtochty Castle School in Kincardineshire, which was run by the parents of his future wife, Alison, who sadly died in 2022.

He is survived by his three children Alex, Claudia and Louis.