His father worked in the Admiralty, and his mother was at one time a professional ice-skater. Although Banks was an only child his parents came from large Scots families, and he has numerous relatives. In 1963 the family moved to the west-coast town of Gourock, and in 1972 Banks went to Stirling University, where he studied English literature, philosophy, and psychology. During the vacations he worked as a hospital porter, estate worker, pier porter, road worker, dustman, and gardener; the experiences gleaned from four years of what he later called "wee daft jobs and travelling" doubtless inform his ability to capture the traits and idiosyncrasies of a diverse range of people. One of these jobs, as a technician for British Steel at their Nigg Bay site near Inverness in northeast Scotland, provided him with the landscape that features in The Wasp Factory (1984). Another job, for IBM in Greenock, may account for his knowledge of early computer systems, which forms a part of
The Crow Road (1992). In 1980 he traveled south to England in search of employment and worked as a clerk in a London law firm; something of these years appears in the convincing evocation of North London in
Walking on Glass (1985).
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