Brian D Osborne

Brian D Osborne was born in Glasgow in 1941 and grew up in Helensburgh. After a brief career in bookselling he worked in public libraries becoming District Librarian of Midlothian in 1983 and Chief Officer: Libraries and Museums in Strathkelvin in 1989. He was President of the Scottish Library Association in 1992 and was at various times Honorary Publications Officer for the Association. He was a member of the Scottish Book Marketing Group, a member of the Grants to Publishers Panel and of the Literature Committee of the Scottish Arts Council.

He retired from librarianship in 1995 to concentrate on writing and has written three historical biographies and collaborated on a large number of other books on Scottish literature, history and culture. He also wrote regularly for magazines in the United Kingdom and the United States an collaborated on writing two plays.

Recent works include Writing Biography and Autobiography and (jointly with Ronald Armstrong) Scotland’s Great Ships. Brian D Osborne died in 2008 and his final project was a history of the Home Guard in Scotland from 1940-1944, The People’s Army. Brian was Honorary Secretary of the Society of Authors in Scotland from 2002 to 2007 and was on the Board of Publishing Scotland as a representative of Network Members.

Brian had a special interest in the works of the Scottish novelist and short-story writer Neil Munro and has written extensively on Munro and, with Ronald Armstrong, edited collections of his writing. He was also Secretary of The Neil Munro Society.