- published: 20 Aug 2015
- views: 9456
Iain Pears (born in 1955) is an English art historian, novelist and journalist. He was educated at Warwick School, Warwick, Wadham College and Wolfson College, Oxford. Before writing, he worked as a reporter for the BBC, Channel 4 (UK) and ZDF (Germany) and correspondent for Reuters from 1982 to 1990 in Italy, France, UK and US. In 1987 he became a Getty Fellow in the Arts and Humanities at Yale University. Pears first came to international prominence with his best selling book An Instance of the Fingerpost (1997), which was translated into several languages. He is known for experimenting with different narrative structures, presenting four consecutive versions of the same events in An Instance of the Fingerpost, three stories interleaved in The Dream of Scipio (2002), three stories told in reverse chronological order in Stone's Fall (2009), and allowing the reader to switch between multiple narratives in the electronic book version of Arcadia (2015). He has also written a novel series featuring Jonathan Argyll, art historian. Pears currently lives with his wife and children in Oxford.
Ye banks and braes o' bonnie Doon
How can ye bloom sae fresh and fair?
How can ye chaunt, ye little birds,
And I sae weary, fu' o' care.
Ye'll break my heart, ye warbling birds
That wanton through the flowery thorn,
Ye mind me o' departed joys,
Departed, never to return.
Oft hae I roved by bonnie Doon
To see the rose and woodbine twine,
And ilka bird sang o' it's love,
And fondly sae did I o' mine.
Wi' lightsome heart I pu'd a rose
Fu' sweet upon it's thorny tree
But my fause lover stole my rose,