[6][7] She ran against Charles Kennedy in the 1983 United Kingdom general election as an SNP candidate,[8] and was an active member of the party.

[3] Matheson met Ian Hamilton, Gavin Vernon and Alan Stuart while studying in Glasgow, (all four were members of the Scottish Covenant Association), with whom she made the plan to bring back to Scotland the Stone of Destiny from Westminster Abbey.

[5] Police attended her family home to question her about the theft, at which point she lied, and told them that it was in a nearby peat bog.

[14] Matheson never married, and died at the age of 84, in Aultbea's Isle View Nursing Home, where she had lived for 20 years, and cared for by a relative, and former pupils.

[4] In the wake of her death, she was celebrated as a key figure in modern Scottish Nationalism,[15] by Angus MacNeil (MP) as a "feisty and funny woman",[16] and by Charles Kennedy, with whom she became friends after standing against him in 1983, as an "inspirational force.