He was also television critic for the New Statesman between 19. His father died of a rare disease when Boyd was 26.īetween 19 Boyd was a lecturer in English at St Hilda's College, Oxford, and it was while he was there that his first novel, A Good Man in Africa (1981), was published. (Hons) in English & Philosophy, and finally Jesus College, Oxford. Boyd spent his early life in Ghana and Nigeria and, at the age of nine, went to a preparatory school and then to Gordonstoun school in Scotland, and, after that, to the University of Nice in France, followed by the University of Glasgow, where he gained an M.A. In the early 1960s the family moved to western Nigeria, where Boyd's father held a similar position at the University of Ibadan.

His father Alexander, a doctor specialising in tropical medicine, and Boyd's mother, who was a teacher, moved to the Gold Coast in 1950 to run the health clinic at the University College of the Gold Coast, Legon (now the University of Ghana). Boyd was born in Accra, Gold Coast, (present-day Ghana), to Scottish parents, both from Fife, and has two younger sisters.