Ian M Malcolm

Ian left his Dundee school at the age of fourteen in 1939 and, after a brief period as an evacuee, began work as an apprentice clerk in a jute office. In 1943, he became a radio officer/purser with Alfred Holt & Co., owners of the Blue Line and the Glen Line, and remained with them until he resigned in September, 1951.

After leaving the sea, he worked for two years as a clerk in Dundee, but disliked the job so much that he went to work at GPO Coast Stations, spending a year at Wick Radio, followed by two years at Portishead Radio Station at Highbridge in Somerset. In August, 1956, he resigned from the GPO to train as a teacher at Edinburgh University and Moray House and entered teaching in 1961.

His first appointment, by request, was to Logie Junior Secondary School, in Dundee, where he had been a pupil, but spent only one term there before moving to Viewforth Secondary School, which subsequently became a High School, in Kirkcaldy. In 1965, he was promoted Principal Teacher of Modern Studies and retired in 1987.

All his seagoing memoirs were serialized in Nautical Magazine over several years and he was a regular contributor to that magazine from 1993 and until it was incorporated into Sea Breezes in 2011. He has also recorded six audio books, covering all his voyages.

He first book was Dundee Memories, published by Birlinn in 2005 but it is now out of print.