James Alexander Mackay (21 November 1936 – 12 August 2007) was a prolific Scottish writer and philatelist whose output of philatelic works was rivalled only by Fred Melville.[citation needed] He was described by John Holman, editor of the British Philatelic Bulletin, as a "philatelic writer without equal"[1] but his reputation was damaged by a conviction for theft from the British Museum early in his career, which cost him his job there, and multiple accusations of plagiarism.
James Mackay was born in Inverness on 21 November 1936. He was educated in Glasgow, where he also attended the university. Later in life Mackay was awarded a Doctor of Literature (D.Litt.) degree by Glasgow University.
He married Renate.[2]
Interested in stamps and the postal system from an early age, he wrote two acclaimed histories of the Scottish posts; one limited to St. Kilda and, in 1978, his History of Scottish Postmarks, 1693–1978, the definitive work on the subject. He became a prolific philatelic author, especially on English, Irish and Scottish postmarks and also produced popular Postal History Annuals and island series books. He wrote some 200 books and at least 10,000 articles. Mackay's interest in the postal history of St Kilda had been formed during his time stationed there during his army service in the 1950s.
In 1972 Mackay was dismissed from his job as an assistant keeper at the British Museum in London after he was convicted at the Old Bailey of stealing valuable proof stamps.[3] He had pleaded guilty to five charges of stealing progressive proofs on loan from the Crown Agents from the Museum in 1965 and 1966 and was fined £1000. He had exchanged the proofs with dealer Clive Feigenbaum for Winston Churchill-themed stamps.[4]
He was the editor of The Burns Chronicle from 1976 to 1992, which under his stewardship reached a level of quality and diversity it has not achieved before or since.[citation needed] He then turned to biography, where he was less successful. Through the 1980s he worked on a biography of Robert Burns which was published in 1992 to favourable reviews and which won the Saltire Society Book of the Year Award. Subsequent biographies of Allan Pinkerton and William Wallace received more mixed reviews.
1996 saw the release of Michael Collins: A Life, a work about the life of the famed Irish revolutionary which received excellent reviews.
Mackay also wrote books under a number of different pseudonyms, including Ian Angus, William Finlay, Bruce Garden, Alex Matheson and Peter Whittington.[5][6]
In 1998, he published a biography of Alexander Graham Bell. It was on the market briefly before Robert V. Bruce published a damning indictment, detailing sustained plagiarism of his own work, Alexander Graham Bell and the Conquest of Solitude. Far from being a little-known work, the latter had in fact been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in 1973. The indictment, published in the American Historical Association's house journal, counted instances of plagiarism on 80 per cent of the pages published. Mackay paid his publishers to withdraw the book from circulation, and Bruce agreed not to sue.[7][8]
Mackay then published a biography of John Paul Jones, the founder of the US Navy. While initially well received, and the subject of flattering reviews in the trade press, it was soon discovered that it was practically a copy of what those same reviews had marked as the last work on the man, that by Samuel Eliot Morison in 1942. That biography too had won the Pulitzer. Columbia University history professor David Armitage was quoted in the New York Times as saying that the book was "a spectacular and sustained act of plagiarism."[9][10]
Despite these accusations, Mackay continued to be commissioned to write articles for the philatelic press, and it has been said that almost the entire text of some editions of Stamp & Coin Mart, a popular British magazine, were written by him.
Mackay died on 12 August 2007 at the age of 70 in Glasgow.[11]
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