Naomi Mitchison

Born Naomi Margaret Haldane in 1897 in Edinburgh, Naomi Mitchison was a Scottish novelist and poet who wrote over 90 books in a wide range of genres, from historical, children’s and science fiction. Her father, John Scott Haldane, was a physiologist. She was educated at the Dragon School, Oxford, as well as at home by a governess. She started a science degree at Oxford University, but suspended her studies to become a VAD nurse during WWI. After catching scarlet fever, she returned to her studies.

Mitchison married barrister Gilbert Richard Mitchison in 1916, who later became an MP and then Lord. Together they had seven children, and lived in Carradale House on the Mull of Kintyre from 1939. Politically left wing, she stood as a Labour Party candidate in 1935, but was unsuccessful. She was a member of the Argyll County Council and later the Highland and Island Advisory Council. She was also a feminist, and wrote widely on issues of sex, birth control and rape.

She was a prolific writer, and her first novel was The Conquered, was published in 1923. Her most successful books include The Corn King and the Spring Queen (1931), Early in Orcadia (1987) and the controversial novel in We Have Been Warned, which was subject to censorship (1935). Many of her earlier novels were set in the classical era, and she also wrote historical Aurthurian fantasies such as To the Chapel Perilous (1955). She wrote a three-volume autobiography between 1973 and 1985. Naomi Mitchison travelled widely, and wrote about her travels and set some novels in Africa.

As a journalist, she wrote for newspapers and magazines such as The New Statesman and The Guardian.

In 1981 she was appointed a CBE. She never took the title Lady, despite being married to a life peer. Naomi Mitchison died in 1999, aged 101, at her house in Carradale. A biography of her, The Nine Lives of Naomi Mitchison, was written by Jenni Calder.