13 Facts About Eric Linklater

1.

Eric Robert Russell Linklater CBE was a Welsh-born Scottish poet, fiction writer, military historian, and travel writer.

2.

Eric Linklater spent many years in Orkney and identified with the islands, where his father had been born.

3.

Eric Linklater's maternal grandfather was a Swedish-born sea captain, so that he had Scandinavian origins through both parents.

4.

Eric Linklater is an Orcadian name derived from the Old Norse; throughout his life he maintained a sympathetic interest in Scandinavia.

5.

Eric Linklater's third novel, Juan in America, was a hugely popular picaresque, with some of the extravagance of Byron's Don Juan, based on experiences of the absurdity of the Prohibition era, with its resulting gangsterism.

6.

Eric Linklater looks like a million dollars, but she only knows a hundred and twenty words and she's only got two ideas in her head.

7.

Eric Linklater wrote three children's novels: The Wind on the Moon, The Pirates in the Deep Green Sea and Karina With Love.

8.

Eric Linklater settled in Orkney with his new wife in 1933.

9.

Eric Linklater was commissioned as Captain and second-in-command of the Orkney Fortress Royal Engineers on 16 September 1938, but was effective commander.

10.

Eric Linklater moved back to the Scottish mainland in 1947 to Pitcalzean House, near Hill of Fearn in Ross-shire.

11.

On 1 June 1933 Eric Linklater married Marjorie MacIntyre, an Edinburgh-born, English-educated actress and campaigner for the arts and the environment.

12.

Eric Linklater died in Aberdeen on 7 November 1974 from thrombosis at the age of 75.

13.

Eric Linklater was buried in the churchyard at St Michael's, Harray on Mainland, Orkney.