The Scottish author Dorothy Dunnett (1923-2001) wrote two series of historical novels set in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries respectively, a standalone novel about the historical King Macbeth which propounded a theory that he was the same person as Earl Thorfinn the Mighty of Orkney, and seven contemporary thrillers featuring British spy Johnson Johnson. She was also a portrait painter whose work was exhibited at the Royal Scottish Academy.
She was born Dorothy Halliday in Dunfermline on 25 August 1923. Her parents moved to Corstorphine, near Edinburgh, when she was a child and she attended James Gillespie School for Girls; as she often noted in speeches, this was the school also attended by Muriel Spark and immortalised in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, but Dorothy was younger and
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Citation: Hopkins, Lisa. "Dorothy Dunnett". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 11 August 2023 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=15090, accessed 31 October 2024.]
