34 Facts About Naomi Mitchison

Naomi Mary Margaret Mitchison, Baroness Mitchison was a Scottish novelist and poet.

Naomi Mitchison's parents came from different political backgrounds, her father being a Liberal and her mother from a Conservative, pro-imperialist family.

Naomi Mitchison's service was much curtailed after she caught scarlet fever.

Naomi Mitchison was a prolific writer of more than 90 books in her lifetime, across a multitude of styles and genres.

In 1932, Naomi Mitchison was commissioned by Victor Gollancz to edit a guide to the modern world for children.

Naomi Mitchison wrote on planes or in trains as prompted by the situation.

Naomi Mitchison's 1938 book The Moral Basis of Politics was a treatise on ethics and politics that she had worked on for three years.

In 1952, Naomi Mitchison went to Moscow as a member of the Authors' World Peace Appeal.

Naomi Mitchison frequently visited Africa, especially Botswana, where she was made a sort of tribal mother to the baKgatla people.

Naomi Mitchison turned to fantasy, such as Graeme and the Dragon, science fiction such as Memoirs of a Spacewoman and Solution Three, fantasy such as the humorous Arthurian novel To the Chapel Perilous, non-fiction such as African Heroes, and children's novels, poetry, travel and a three-volume autobiography.

Naomi Mitchison was unsure exactly how many books she had written, often claiming there were about 70.

Naomi Mitchison was a good friend of the writer JR R Tolkien, and one of the proof readers of The Lord of the Rings.

Naomi Mitchison, like her brother, was a committed socialist in the 1930s.

Naomi Mitchison visited the Soviet Union in 1932 as part of a Fabian Society group and expressed some misgivings about the direction of Soviet society.

An active anti-fascist, Naomi Mitchison travelled to Austria, where she undertook the risky task of smuggling documents and left-wing refugees out of the country.

Naomi Mitchison stood unsuccessfully as a Labour Party candidate for the Scottish Universities in 1935, at a time when universities were still allowed to elect MPs.

Naomi Mitchison supported the Scottish National Party candidate, William Power in the parliamentary by-election for the Argyllshire constituency in 1940.

Naomi Mitchison's name was on George Orwell's list of people, prepared in March 1949 for the Information Research Department set up at the Foreign Office by the Labour government, who were considered to have pro-communist leanings and so be inappropriate to write for the IRD.

Naomi Mitchison was councillor for the East Kintyre ward on Argyll County Council from 1945 to 1966.

Naomi Mitchison initiated the council's school picture scheme under which a fund was established to purchase paintings by contemporary Scottish artists and loan them to schools.

Naomi Mitchison became a spokeswoman for the island communities of Scotland.

Naomi Mitchison was a friend of Seretse Khama and an advisor to the Bakgatla tribe of Botswana.

Naomi Mitchison was a vocal campaigner for women's rights, advocating birth control, and was elected a Life Fellow of the Eugenics Society in 1925 before leaving in objection to the group's politics.

Naomi Mitchison was on the founding council of North Kensington Women's Welfare Centre in London in 1924.

Naomi Mitchison was present and supporting a Stop the Seventy Tour rally, aiming to halt the apartheid South African rugby and cricket tours of Britain in December 1969.

Naomi Mitchison was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 1985 New Year Honours.

Naomi Mitchison stated that to experience two world wars in a lifetime was too much.

Naomi Mitchison died at Carradale on 11 January 1999 at the age of 101, and was cremated at the Clydebank crematorium on 16 January.

On 11 February 1916, Naomi married the barrister Gilbert Richard Mitchison, who was a close friend of her brother.

Naomi Mitchison was then on leave from the Western Front; like her, he came from a well-connected and wealthy family.

Naomi Mitchison became a Queen's Counsel, then a Labour politician, and eventually a life peer as Baron Mitchison of Carradale in the County of Argyll, on retirement for his political work.

Naomi Mitchison played an active part in her husband's political career and in his constituency duties.

Naomi Mitchison wrote him love poems and missed him greatly after he broke off the relationship, considering it incompatible with his marriage to another woman in 1928.

Naomi Mitchison mitigated her sorrow by undertaking a risky mission to help persecuted socialists in fascist-dominated Austria.