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http://www.ianhamiltonfinlay.com/ RSA Annual Exhibition Catalogue 2007, p.27; "Obituary - IAN HAMILTON FINLAY HRDSA (1925-2006) Ian Hamilton Finlay was born in Nassau, Bahamas in 1925. Educated in Scotland, Ian left school at 13 and was evacuated to Orkney. He later had only one year at Glasgow School of Art prior to the outbreak of war, receiving wartime service in the Royal Army Medical Corps (RASC). After the war Hamilton Finlay returned to Orkney, which he described in "Arcady", and became a shepherd. He began to write short stories, many of which were published in the Glasgow Herald, and also short plays. After moving to Edinburgh in the late 1950s he founded the Wild Hawthorn Press, which began in 1961 by publishing the works of avariety of contemporary artists, but late rconcentrated more exclusively on Hamilton Finlay's own work. Experimenting with concrete poetry, his first poem in sandblasted glass wa sshown at the cambridge International Exhibition of Concrete Poetry in 1964. In 1966 he settled with his second wife Sue at Stonypath in the Southern Uplands, near Dunsyre, Lanarkshire, where they set about creating a poetic garden, later named Little Sparta (the reference was a riposte to the view of Edinburgh as "the Athens of the North.") For many, Hamilton Finlay's poetic garden represented his most impressive achievement. It is now preserved by aTrust which was founded on his 70th birthday. Machine guns, tanks and other instruments of war featured prominently at Little Sparta and also in Hamilton Finlay's installations and exhibitions elsewhere, other concerns were as strongly to the fore. Landscape and its relationship to language was a long-standing subject, while boats, sails and puzzles were recurring themes. In 1985 he was short-listed for the Turner Prize. Dubbed by one critic "the Capability Brown of Conceptual Art", in 1991 Finlay transformed the grounds of Stockwood Park Craft Museum and gardens near Luton. Other landscape installations were sited in Stuttgart, Vienna, Otterlo, Strasbourg, Eindhoven, San Diego and Brittany, and his work was exhibited worldwide. There were major shows at the Serpentine in London (1999) and at the National Museum of Scotland (2003). He received Honorary degrees from the Universities of Glasgow, Heriot-Watt and Aberdeen, and an Honorary Professorship from the University of Dundee. In 2005 he was made [an] Honorary Member of the Royal Scottish Academy."