SOURCE: “Azure Puddles,” in London Review of Books, Vol. 9, No. 10, May 21, 1987, p. 20.

In the following review of Andro Linklater's biography of Mackenzie, Bayley reflects on Mackenzie's intriguing life.

Staying at about the age of eleven with a friend whose father was a doctor, I was put in a room where the only reading-matter was a medical textbook and the first volume of what was to become Compton Mackenzie's quadrology, The East, West, South and North Winds of Love. I embarked on it with hope and confidence, but after only a few pages had to give up and turn for entertainment to the medical book. Considering myself a mature and experienced reader, I was much chagrined at this and confessed my defeat to no one—it was too shaming. Mackenzie's novels were a household word at the time. Everybody devoured them. What was wrong with me? It is a...