Eric Robert Russell Linklater (8 March 1899 - 7 November 1974) was a British writer, known for more than 20 novels, as well as short stories, travel writing and autobiography, and military history.
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Linklater was born in Penarth, Vale of Glamorgan, Wales, and 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 mother was the daughter of a Swedish-born sea captain[1] who had become a naturalized British citizen and married an Englishwoman. He thus had Scandinavian origins through both parents (the name Linklater is a local Orkney name derived from the Old Norse), and throughout life he maintained a sympathetic interest in Scandinavia.
He was initially a medical student and then went into journalism, becoming a full time writer in the 1930s.
He stood, unsuccessfully, in the East Fife by-election of 1933 as the National Party of Scotland candidate.
Linklater had four children. His elder son, Magnus Linklater (born 1942), is a journalist and former editor of The Scotsman. His second son, Andro Linklater, is also a writer and journalist. His elder daughter, Alison, is an artist and was born in 1934. His younger daughter, Kristin Linklater, is an actor, voice teacher and author of Freeing the Natural Voice, and his grandson by Kristin, Hamish Linklater is also an actor.
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| Preceded by Stafford Cripps |
Rector of the University of Aberdeen 1945–1948 |
Succeeded by Baron Tweedsmuir |