Andro Linklater

Born: December 10, 1944 Died: November 3, 2013

Andro Linklater, who has died aged 68, was a journalist and writer who was most famous for his book Measuring America which focused on the unpromising subject of how the system of measuring land in the United States was developed. He also worked as a journalist and wrote several biographies including one of Compton Mackenzie.

He was born in Edinburgh, the youngest of four children to the novelist Eric Linklater and the actress Marjorie MacIntyre. When Andro was still very young, the family moved to Orkney. After school at Winchester, he read modern history at New College, Oxford, and took some time to progress to his career as a writer.

After a period working as a tutor in France and another spell working for the Liberal party, he went to Jordanhill College in Glasgow to train as a teacher and then began working in a school in London.

It was the death of his father that changed things. Eric Linklater had been working on a history of the Black Watch and it was Andro who completed it (it was published in 1977). This then led to a position working with The Daily Telegraph as a feature writer.

He remained there for several years, while working on other projects, including a book for children Amazing Maisie and the Cold Porridge Brigade, which was published in 1978.

This was followed by An Unhusbanded Life, a biography of Charlotte Despard, the suffragist and Sinn Fein activist and the book on Compton Mackenzie, which appeared in 1988.

His reputation as a writer now established, his next book , Wild People: Travels with Borneo's Head-Hunters, was an eccentric work of non- fiction about the Iban people of Sarawack.

A follow-up to Measuring America appeared in 2007 called The Fabric of America and then, in 2012, Why Spencer Perceval Had To Die: the Assassination of a British Prime Minister, which explored the idea that the Prime Minister may have been killed as part of a plot by slave traders. For a long time, Mr Linklater also reviewed books for The Spectator.

He lived in a number of places during his life. For a time, he lived on the uninhabited island, Isle Martin on Loch Broom; later, after his marriage, he lived in Kent.

He is survived by his wife Marie-Louise, his brother Magnus and his sisters Alison and Kirstin.