Scots among new entries in biographical dictionary

Columnist and Senior Features Writer

Thursday 3 January 2013

A CLUTCH of Scottish names, including eminent broadcaster Sir Ludovic Kennedy, artist Craigie Aitchison and nationalist Sir Neil MacCormick are among those added to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography today.

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SUSAN SWARBRICK

The latest edition of the tome, first published in 1885 and recording the lives of notable figures throughout British history, sees 225 men and women who died in 2009 join its long and illustrious list.

Edinburgh-born Kennedy, variously a Royal Navy officer, author and television presenter, campaigned against miscarriages of justice, including that of the Guildford Four and Birmingham Six, and had a key role in the abolition of the death penalty in this country.He is joined on the list by artist Aitchison – whose distinctive style was dubbed part Lowry, part Matisse – famed for his landscapes influenced by happy childhood recollections of the Isle of Arran. "I do mostly black people, dogs, religious pictures and still lifes," the painter once remarked.Mr MacCormick, meanwhile, a towering figure in Scottish intellectual and public life, played a key part in reconciling the gradualist and fundamentalist wings of the SNP. Regius Professor of Public Law at Edinburgh University for 36 years, he was responsible for successive versions of a draft constitution for an independent Scotland and later a Nationalist MEP.Other new entries include Glasgow artist and journalist Cordelia Oliver, a tireless figure in the promotion of Scottish theatre and opera; Maurice Lindsay, a poet and cultural historian; and Church of Scotland minister Maxwell Craig, a leading advocate of ecumenicalism whose vocal opposition to the closures of Scottish steel works and coal mines brought him into regular conflict with Margaret Thatcher.The 2009 edition of the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography will also pay tribute to the last surviving veterans of the First World War, Henry Allingham, Bill Stone and Harry Patch; novelist JG Ballard; former general secretary of the Transport and General Workers Union, Jack Jones; and reality television star the late Jade Goody.Public health scientist Michael Russell, who established the view of cigarette smoking as primarily nicotine-seeking behaviour; Dinah Williams, an early post-war champion of organic farming; and Sir John Mortimer, best known as the creator of Rumpole of the Bailey, are also included.Dr Lawrence Goldman, editor of the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, said: "As the national record of people who have shaped British life, the Oxford DNB's new edition enables us to reflect on some of the key developments in our recent past: discoveries in medicine and science, who we read, how we choose to entertain ourselves, or what and how we commemorate. "The biographies of the 225 men and women now added to Oxford DNB chart these changes through the stories of people who shaped almost a century of our history – from the pre-wireless years of the Western Front to a television-inspired culture of instant celebrity."

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Scots among new entries in biographical dictionary

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