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Eric Robert Russell Linklater
(8 March 1899 – 7 November 1974) was a Welsh-born Scottish writer of novels
and short stories, military history, and travel books. For The Wind on the
Moon, a children's fantasy novel, he won the 1944 Carnegie Medal from the
Library Association for the year's best children's book by a British
subject.
Linklater was born in Penarth,
Vale of Glamorgan, Wales, to the Orcadian master mariner Robert Baikie
Linklater (1865–1916) and his wife Mary Elizabeth (c.1867–1957), daughter of
James Young, also a master mariner. He was educated in Aberdeen Grammar
School and Aberdeen University, where he was President of the Aberdeen
University Debater. He spent many years in Orkney, and identified strongly
with the islands, where his father had been born. His maternal grandfather
was a Swedish-born sea captain, and he thus had Scandinavian origins through
both parents. Linklater is a local Orkney name derived from the Old Norse,
and throughout life he maintained a sympathetic interest in Scandinavia.
Linklater served in the Black Watch in 1917–18 before receiving a bullet
wound. He then became a sniper. His experiences of trench warfare are
described graphically in his memoir Fanfare for a Tin Hat (1970) and at one
remove in his 1938 novel The Impregnable Women, which describes an imaginary
war against France.
Abandoning medical studies in Aberdeen, Linklater spent 1925–27 in Bombay,
India as an assistant editor of The Times of India and then travelled
extensively before returning to Aberdeen as an assistant to the professor of
English and then spending 1928–30 as a Commonwealth fellow at Cornell and
Berkeley.
As a writer, Linklater's career took off in 1929. Although his greatest
success came in the early years of that career, he was to publish 23 novels,
three volumes of stories, two books of verse, ten plays, three works of
autobiography, and another 23 books of essays and histories. His third
novel, Juan in America, was a hugely popular picaresque, with some of the
extravagance of Byron's Don Juan, based on his experiences of the absurd
during the Prohibition, with its resulting gangsterism. It is sprinkled with
memorable remarks: "I've been married six months. She looks like a million
dollars, but she only knows a hundred and twenty words and she's only got
two ideas in her head. The other one's hats." The character returned in Juan
in China (1937).
Linklater also wrote three children’s novels, The Wind on the Moon (1944),
The Pirates in the Deep Green Sea (1949) and Karina With Love (1958). The
first of these is about two sisters, whose adventures include becoming
kangaroos and rescuing their father from a Hitlerian tyrant, enlisting the
anthropomorphic help of a puma and a falcon. Its combination of storytelling
skill and treatment of wider themes such as imprisonment and freedom won it
the Carnegie Medal.
Linklater's Orcadian and Scottish sympathies led him to some literary and
political involvement in the Scottish Renaissance, culminating in his
unsuccessful National Party of Scotland candidacy in the East Fife
by-election of 1933. Magnus Merriman (1934) was an acerbic fictionalized
description of the debacle. He settled in Orkney with his new wife, Marjorie
MacIntyre, in 1933.
The author's attitude to war and the moral implications of diplomacy became
sharper in Judas (1939), which explores the concepts of loyalty and
treachery amidst a strong indictment of the desertion of Czechoslovakia by
Britain and France in the name of appeasement. His own military career in
World War II began with the Royal Engineers in Orkney, went on to the
publicity department of the War Office, and culminated in service in Italy
in 1944–45, which led to his novel about an equivocal Italian soldier,
Private Angelo (1946), which contrasts nationalism with a sense of national
community: "I hope you will not liberate us out of existence," is a remark
Angelo makes. As one reference work puts it, Angelo "lacks 'the great and
splendid gift' of courage, and consequently makes a poor soldier, although
he is especially assiduous in retreating, and ultimately deserts." In 1952
Linklater published a semi-official account of The Campaign in Italy.
Linklater moved back to the Scottish mainland in 1947 to Pitcalzean House,
near Hill of Fearn. in Ross-shire. His abilities and reputation as a
novelist waned somewhat, but he turned to historical writing, and with great
effect to autobiography. He went to Korea in 1951 as a temporary
lieutenant-colonel.
Linklater served as rector of Aberdeen University in 1945–48 and received an
honorary degree the following year. He was appointed CBE in 1954, served as
deputy lieutenant of Ross and Cromarty county in 1968–73, and was elected a
fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1971.
Linklater married Marjorie MacIntyre (1909–1997), an Edinburgh-born,
English-educated actress and campaigner for the arts and the environment, on
1 June 1933. She later became active in local politics, and on the Scottish
Arts Council in 1957–63. They had four children. Their elder son, Magnus
Linklater (born 1942), is a journalist and former editor of The Scotsman and
their second, Andro Linklater, is also a writer and journalist. Their elder
daughter, Alison (born 1934), is an artist. Their younger daughter, Kristin
Linklater, is an actor, voice teacher and author of Freeing the Natural
Voice, and their grandson by Kristin, Hamish Linklater, is also an actor.
Eric Linklater died in Aberdeen on 7 November 1974 and was buried at Harray
on Mainland, Orkney.
Information derived from Wikipedia at,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Linklater
Main works
Fiction:
White Maa's Saga (1929)
Poet's Pub (1929)
Juan in America (1931)
The Men of Ness (1932)
The Crusader's Key (1933)
Magnus Merriman (1934)
Ripeness is All (1935)
The Impregnable Women (1938)
Judas (1939)
Private Angelo (1946) - war satire. ISBN 0-907675-61-1
A Spell for Old Bones (1949)
Mr Byculla (1950)
A Sociable Plover and other Stories and Conceits - (1957)
The House of Gair (1953)
The Dark of Summer (1956)
Juan in China
A Man Over Forty (1963)
A Terrible Freedom (1966)
The Faithful Ally (1956)
The Goose Girl and Other Stories
Non-fiction:
Ben Jonson and King James: Biography and Portrait) (1931)
The Man on My Back (1941) autobiography
The Northern Garrisons (1941)
The Thistle And The Pen (1950)
Laxdale Hall (1951) - on which the movie Scotch on the Rocks (1953) is
based.
Figures in a Landscape (1952)
A Year of Space (1953) travel
The Ultimate Viking (1955) - the history of Sweyn Asleifsson
Orkney and Shetland (1965)
The Prince in the Heather (1965) - the story of Bonnie Prince Charlie's
escape
The Conquest of England (1966)
The Survival of Scotland (1968) - history of Scotland's independence
Fanfare for a Tin Hat. A Third Essay in Autobiography (1970)
The Voyage of the Challenger (1972)
The Campaign in Italy
The Highland Division
Children'sThe Wind on the Moon (1944), winner of the Carnegie Medal[1]
The Pirates in the Deep Green Sea (1949)
OtherThe Devil's in the News (drama, 1929)
A Dragon Laughed & other poems (1930)
Ripeness is All (1935)
The Merry Muse (1959)
You can download this
book here in pdf format
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