Ronald Frame Biography

Scottish novelist, short-story writer, and playwright, born in Glasgow, educated at Glasgow University and at Oxford. In his volumes of short stories Frame has displayed his gift for ironic counterpoint and the evocation of period. Among these are Watching Mrs Gordon (1985); A Long Weekend with Marcel Proust (1986), which contained short stories and a novella, ‘Prelude and Fugue’, about a young woman condemned to relive her experiences in the Blitz; and A Woman of Judah (1987), again containing short stories and a novella. His first novel, Winter Journey (1984), was followed by several others including Sandmouth People (1986), which dealt with one day in the life of a small seaside town during the 1950s, Penelope's Hat (1989), and Bluette (1990). His next novel, Underwood and After (1991), set in the 1950s, describes a young boy's infatuation with the sophisticated London ‘set’ presided over by the charming but sinister figure of Mr Chetwynd. Like several of his fictions, the novel focuses around a grand house (the eponymous ‘Underwood’), whose symbolic meaning reflects the ambiguous nature of the society of which it is the centre. The Sun on the Wall (1994), a trio of novellas on related themes, contains similar ambiguities; its final story, also set in a large house in the Scottish Highlands, concerns the break-up of a family—undermined by its failure to confront the truth about the past.