March 8th , 1899
Eric Robert Russell Linklater CBE (8 March 1899 – 7 November 1974) was a Welsh-born Scottish poet, fiction writer, military historian, and travel writer. For The Wind on the Moon, a children’s fantasy novel, he won the 1944 Carnegie Medal from the Library Association for the year’s best children’s book by a British subject.
Linklater was born in Penarth, Vale of Glamorgan, Wales to Orcadian Robert Baikie Linklater (1865–1916), a master mariner, and Mary Elizabeth (c. 1867–1957), daughter of master mariner James Young.
He was educated at Aberdeen Grammar School and the University of Aberdeen, where he was President of the Aberdeen University Debater. He spent many years in Orkney and identified with the islands, where his father had been born. His maternal grandfather was a Swedish-born sea captain, so that he had Scandinavian origins through both parents. Linklater is an Orcadian name derived from the Old Norse; throughout his life he maintained a sympathetic interest in Scandinavia
