Compton MacKenzie

Born in West Hartlepool in 1883 into a theatrical family, he was educated at St Paul's School and Magdalen College, Oxford before becoming one of the most prolific British writers of the 20th century. Over a long career, he produced novels, biographies, histories, memoirs, essays, children's writing, and criticism.

He is especially remembered for novels such as Sinister Street, The Monarch of the Glen, and Whisky Galore, books that helped make his name with both general readers and critics. During the First World War he served with British intelligence in the eastern Mediterranean, an experience that later fed into his nonfiction as well as the air of adventure found in some of his work.

He also became an important public voice in Scottish cultural life and was one of the co-founders of the National Party of Scotland in 1928. Knighted in 1952, he continued writing late into life and died in Edinburgh in 1972, leaving behind an unusually large and varied body of work.