Murray, Isobel. Scottish Novels of the Second World War. Edinburgh: Word Power Books, 2011.

See "George Mackay Brown and Beside the Ocean of Time," pp. 148–64. "George Mackay Brown was called up to serve in the Second World War, but was found unfit to serve: the diagnosis was tuberculosis. Nonetheless the war was a huge part of his life experience in Orkney, and made a huge impact on his imagination, and consideration of war in general is certainly essential to a measured view of his work. The trouble in the present context is, that his imagination so often went beyond the Second World War, and indeed into a future too awful for many of us to contemplate" (p. 149). He is especially preoccupied with the possibility of nuclear war.

Murray also discusses Greenvoe and Time in a Red Coat at length.