Alasdair Gray - a short biography
Childhood and Youth: 1934 - 1954
Painting and Plays: 1954 - 1980
Success: 1981 - Present

Alasdair James Gray was born in Riddrie, east Glasgow, on 28 December 1934. His father, Alexander Gray, worked in a cardboard box cutting factory (after being wounded by shrapnel in the belly during WW1), his mother, Amy Fleming, worked in a clothes shop. His parents met while on a rambling outing organised by the Holiday Fellowship and had married in 1931. Alasdair's sister, Mora Jean, was born in 1937. He attended Riddrie primary school until the start of WW2.

In 1940, Alasdair, Mora and their mother were evacuated from the city of Glasgow. Their first new residence was on a farm in Perthshire, where Alasdair's eczema and asthma became a problem - this stay is recounted in book 1 of Lanark - then they moved to the town of Stonehouse in Lanarkshire - an experience used for Jock's childhood in 1982, Janine.
في عام 1940 تم ترحيل الام والاب والابنة من جلاسكو الى مزرعة في بيتشير حيث اثر العيش هناك سلبا على صحة السدير واشتدت الاكزما والازمة عليه
They were reunited with their father in 1942 when he got the job managing a hostel for munitions workers near Wetherby, West Yorkshire. (As an aside, part of the munitions factory itself now houses the British Library's Document Supply Centre, the UK's centre for interlibrary loans.)
عاد لينضم الى والده مرة ثانية عام 1942 بعد ان حصل والده على عمل
Alasdair attended the local church school where he sang in the choir and displayed early literary talent by adapting an episode from Homer's Odyssey to perform as a school play.
After the war ended, Alasdair's father could not find a professional job, despite five years experience managing hostels, and got work as a wage clerk for a building firm. In 1946, Alasdair started at Whitehill Senior Secondary School. On Saturday mornings, for several years, he attended Art Appreciation classes at Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum. At Whitehill, his English and Art teachers were encouraging, but Alasdair was torn by an obligation to his parents to also study for the qualifications that would allow him to enter university should he wish.
In 1952, Alasdair's mother died in the same year he entered Glasgow Art School.
ماتت امه عام 1952 وكان عمره عندها 18 عاما
In 1954, Alasdair began writing sections of what would eventually be published in 1981 as Lanark. The chapter entitled 'The War Begins' won a prize from the Observer newspaper when entered as a short story into a competition. He also wrote, and published, three of the stories that were eventually collected in Unlikely Stories, Mostly before 1957 - 'The Star', 'The Spread of Ian Nicol' and 'The Cause of Some Recent Changes'. Gray's art school years, and much of his childhood, can be worked out from the Thaw sections of Lanark, which are largely autobiographical.
In 1973, his father, who now lived in Alderly Edge, Cheshire, died.
عام 1973 مات والده