[1] Mary Mackie was born in Lincoln during the Second World War,[2] as the older daughter of Charles William Edward Whitlam,[3] and his wife Kathleen.
[6] Mary Mackie's books Cobwebs and Cream Teas (1990), Dry Rot and Daffodils (1994) and Frogspawn and Floor Polish (2003) are light-hearted accounts of life in the North Norfolk National Trust property Felbrigg Hall, where her husband was houseman (administrator) for seven years up to 1990.
[9] However, Mary Mackie's new researches, including two days spent working in the Royal Archive at Windsor, proved that there was a different side to this story.
Having written a commissioned history of Princess Mary's Royal Air Force Nursing Service entitled Sky Wards (2001 revised edition Wards in the Sky, 2014), Mary Mackie wrote a short illustrated book for the Highlanders' Museum in Ardersier, Scotland, entitled Hunstanton's Highland Heroes.
[11][12] Mackie's historical novel The People of the Horse (1987), about Queen Boudicca of the Iceni, was translated into Czech and Hungarian.