Eric Linklater

Twenty-four years later, during his tenure as Rector of the University of Aberdeen, his play To Meet the Macgregors was performed as the 1946 Student Show.

Altogether he published 23 novels, three volumes of stories, two of verse, ten plays, three works of autobiography and 23 of essays and histories.

[8] 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 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.

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 amid a strong indictment of the desertion of Czechoslovakia by Britain and France in the name of appeasement.

It was decided to raise new units of anti-aircraft and coastal artillery in Orkney to defend the Scapa Flow naval base, with a fortress company of the Royal Engineers to support them.

The unit consisted of a single company headquartered at Kirkwall, mainly to operate the electrical generators for the Scapa Flow defences and man the searchlights for the guns.

The men were called out from farms and villages shortly before the outbreak of World War II and served through the winter of 1939/1940, when Orkney received a number of Luftwaffe raids.

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.

He was appointed CBE in 1954, served as deputy lieutenant of Ross and Cromarty in 1968–1973, and was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1971.