About

I am a freelance historian and writer living in rural Perthshire, Scotland, having once been a senior lecturer in Medieval and Environmental History at the University of Stirling and Director of the Centre for Environmental History hosted jointly at Stirling and St Andrews. But two decades ago, I swapped the cut and thrust of academic life for self-employment, which has been both liberating and wonderful. I have published quite a few books, both non-fiction – including Under the Hammer: Edward I and Scotland; Macbeth, A True Story; Scotland from Prehistory to the Present; A History of Scotland’s Landscapes with Piers Dixon (which was long-listed for the Highland Book Prize) – and fiction – Dark Hunter and Lies of the Flesh.

Once upon a time, when the millennium was still shiny and new, I presented a TV series on Scottish History for BBC Scotland called In Search of Scotland, as well as numerous radio programmes. I’ve sat on the Saltire Society’s panel for the History Book Prize, was a member of the Arts and Humanities Research Council’s Landscape and Environment programme steering group and the Royal Society of Edinburgh’s working group on the Teaching of History in Scottish Schools, as well as representing the United Kingdom at the European Society for Environmental History. I am currently a Trustee of the Strathmartine Trust.

But when I’m not wrestling with the past, I love to be out and about in the mountains with my husband and/or son, preferably with my camera. Though I’ve written about Scottish landscapes before, this is the first time I’ve been able to combine my own experience of being out in it with the history imprinted in it.