These circumstances enabled him to become, perforce, a writer, and in the early 1940s he began to publish news stories, reviews, and eventually a regular column in Orkney's weekly newspaper. These newspaper pieces became a permanent feature of his working life: his final column for the
Orcadian appeared a week before his death on 13 April 1996.
Brown's life was also colored by a fondness for drink, which bordered on alcoholism. He spent ten years in what he called "a desert of time" doing little other than drinking and writing occasional pieces for the newspaper, together with some early poems. Then, in 1951, he was invited to become a mature student at an adult education college in Dalkeith, near Edinburgh. This establishment, designed to provide a foundation for degree study, was run by the Orkney poet Edwin Muir. Brown, who admired Muir's work, agreed to attend, and completed his studies there in 1952, before going to Edinburgh University two years later. At this time Brown read Muir's The Story and the Fable (1940), which interweaves the quotidian life of the Orkney Islanders with the matter of myth and legend.
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