He was extraordinarily intelligent, utterly self-taught, but, boy, was he complicated.
He complicated his retirement from safe Central Fife by contesting hopeless South Hams that same year.
Torn between two cultures, he complicated matters further by spending a year in Australia, his father's birthplace.
The deft manner in which he complicated the characters he invented for his stories is largely missing from his descriptions of the people he knew.
WHEN a federal judge ruled last week that a California ballot measure banning same-sex marriage violated the Constitution, he complicated the political strategy of Meg Whitman, the personable Republican billionaire who wants to be our next governor.
He complicated his run for governor by divorcing his wife of more than 34 years shortly before announcing his candidacy and was dogged throughout his time in office by complaints that his romantic relationship with a leader of state employees' union left him in an untenable conflict of interest.
