2005

Our President in 2005/6 was:

James Robertson

He proposed the Toast to Sir Walter at our 97th Annual Dinner on Friday 3rd March 2006 in The Balmoral Hotel, Edinburgh

James Robertson was born in Sevenoaks, Kent in 1958, and grew up in Bridge of Allan, Stirlingshire from the age of six. He was educated at Glenalmond College before studying history at Edinburgh University. He later returned to Edinburgh to write a PhD thesis on ‘The Construction and Expression of Scottish Patriotism in the Works of Walter Scott’. He worked in various jobs, including bookselling, before becoming a full-time writer. His first book of short stories was published in 1991, and since then he has published more than sixty books and pamphlets, among them three further collections of stories, seven novels, poetry pamphlets, works of non-fiction and - through the Itchy Coo imprint, which he co-founded in 2002 - many books in Scots for young readers. His novel News of the Dead was awarded the Walter Scott Prize for historical fiction in 2022.



From 1993 to 1995 he was writer-in-residence at Brownsbank Cottage, the former home of Hugh MacDiarmid, near Biggar in Lanarkshire. He holds honorary doctorates from the Open University and Stirling University, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.