Sir Alastair MacTavish Dunnett (26 December 1908 – 2 September 1998) was a Scottish

Scotland

Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...

 journalist and newspaper editor. He edited The Daily Record

Daily Record (Scotland)

The Daily Record is a Scottish tabloid newspaper based in Glasgow. It had been the best-selling daily paper in Scotland for many years with a paid circulation in August 2011 of 307,794 . It is now outsold by its arch-rival the Scottish Sun which in September 2010 had a circulation of 339,586 in...

newspaper for nine years and The Scotsman

The Scotsman

The Scotsman is a British newspaper, published in Edinburgh.As of August 2011 it had an audited circulation of 38,423, down from about 100,000 in the 1980s....

newspaper from 1956 to 1972. In 1975 he became chairman of Thomson Scottish Petroleum and was much involved in the establishment of the oil terminal at Flotta

Flotta

Flotta is a small island in Orkney, Scotland, lying in Scapa Flow. The island is known for its large oil terminal and is linked by Orkney Ferries to Houton on the Orkney Mainland and Lyness and Longhope on Hoy....

 in Orkney. From the 1950s to the 1980s he was involved in many Scottish cultural activities including being governor of the Pitlochry

Pitlochry

Pitlochry , is a burgh in the council area of Perth and Kinross, Scotland, lying on the River Tummel. Its population according to the 2001 census was 2,564....

 Festival Theatre (1958–1984). He was awarded an honorary degree of LLD by the University of Strathclyde

University of Strathclyde

The University of Strathclyde , Glasgow, Scotland, is Glasgow's second university by age, founded in 1796, and receiving its Royal Charter in 1964 as the UK's first technological university...

 in 1978 and was knighted on 4 July 1995.

He published a book of short stories (Heard tell, 1947), a description of a kayaking voyage round the coast of Scotland (Quest by canoe, 1950, republished in 1969 as It's too late in the year and in 1996 as The canoe boys), several books on Scottish topics and an autobiography (Among friends, 1984).

Dunnett married Dorothy Halliday on 17 September 1946; as Dorothy Dunnett

Dorothy Dunnett

Dorothy Dunnett OBE was a Scottish historical novelist. She is best known for her six-part series about Francis Crawford of Lymond, The Lymond Chronicles, which she followed with the eight-part prequel The House of Niccolò...

 she was a celebrated artist and historical novelist, author of the Lymond Chronicles

Lymond Chronicles

The Lymond Chronicles is a series of six novels, written by Dorothy Dunnett, which were first published between 1961 and 1975. The series is set in mid-sixteenth century Europe and the Mediterranean and tells the story of a young Scottish nobleman, Francis Crawford of Lymond, from 1547 through...

and The House of Niccolo

The House of Niccolò

The House of Niccolò is a series of eight historical novels by Dorothy Dunnett set in the mid-fifteenth century European Renaissance. The protagonist of the series is Nicholas de Fleury , a boy of uncertain birth who rises to the heights of European merchant banking and international political...

. They had two sons, Ninian and Mungo.