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Born in Alyth, Sharp was adopted and raised in Greenock. Leaving school at 14 Sharp did a variety of jobs before moving to London with the intention of writing.

In 1965, his screenplay 'A Knight in Tarnished Armour' was broadcast by the BBC. He also published his first novel 'A Green Tree in Gedde', which won the Scottish Arts Council Award in 1967, the same year he published 'The Wind Shifts'.

Sharp emigrated to the USA where he found critical and popular success writing film screenplays, also moving into television in the 1980s and 1990s. His feature film projects included The Osterman Weekend (1982), Rob Roy (1995) and Dean Spanley (2008).
Sharp married four times and had a total of six children

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Sharp

Born to Alexander Halley Low and Dorothy LIndesay Gregory, Alex JS Low attended Seaford College. His father and grandfather, AG Low, were both keen amateur photographers, and Alex learned basic techniques from his father; by the age of ten, his pictures were being published in the local press.

Alex developed his photographic skills whilst doing his RAF National Service in 1955-1956, after which he matriculated at a local polytechnic. However, finding the course very basic, Alex rarely attended, preferring to develop the skills he had learned at a course at the Leica factory, which he had attended while he was serving in Germany. Using his own Leica camera, Alex began building up is own 'unauthorised' portfolio, his photographs winning the most stars of merit from a prestigious judging panel at an exhibition of students' work held by the polytechnic. Despite this achievement, Alex was not welcomed back to the polytechnic, being deemed as 'undisciplined'.

Alex determined to become a photo-journalist and continued to build his portfolio, travelling around the UK and Europe capturing scenes like the Dog Market at Club Row and villages around the Mediterranean coast. Originally getting small magazine assignments, in 1960 he was offered a job as staff photographer with the Pictorial Press agency, who worked in collaboration with the US based Globe Photos Inc. However, Alex continued to shoot images like the ban the bomb marches, as opposed to the agencies' film world shoots. Meeting and working with Simon Guttman expanded his assignments into picture stories centred around the arts, but by 1964, this work was declining and Alex had a brief spell working in TV for BBC 2 with Chris Brasher. In the same year, the new colour supplement 'Weekend Telegraph' was planned and Alex was invited to join the team as its first picture editor and only staff photographer. In that capacity he worked on major picture stories in many parts of the world, including the Isle of Wight pop festival, Californian hippy communes, Club Méditerranée, Corfu, the drug problem in 1960's Hong Kong and several projects across India, where he became friends with the last Maharaja of Bikaner.

In 1971, Alex became a director of Tom Stacey Ltd, in 1971 , His first project was a 20 volume series, the 'Peoples of the World' which have been published in 14 languages around the world, but not published in the UK. Alex has written that this 'was a great challenge. We assembled a team of eminent anthropologists to advise us and write the copy. We divided a map of the world into 18 appropriate areas, one for each volume, with two additional volumes for Man the Craftsman and The Future of Mankind. Each volume was to be 144 pages. The photographs came from the files of photographers all over the world, many of whom I knew as friends through my work at the Telegraph, and also from anthropologists and historic picture collections. These books have become a unique record of the peoples of the Earth, just before and in the middle of the 20th century, before their cultures were destroyed by the spread of 20th century western civilisation and globalisation.'

By 1979, Alex had moved to Cornwall, where he and his partner, Sally, ran Coombe Farm Country Guest House until 1999.

Alex has four children with Marianne Wenzel and Sally Wickes. In recent years, Alex has lived in Devon, and with the help of partner Anna Philpott, has gathered and organised the archive of his ancestors' papers.

Anna MacDonald was born in Dundee, the eldest of six children. She was educated at Rockwell Primary School and Rockwell Secondary School, then worked for a number of companies in Dundee, including Watson and Philip and Burndept-Vidor. Anna also worked at the University of Dundee, where she was the operator of the first word processer the University used.

A prolific and award winning poet, Anna MacDonald produced several collections of verse, and was also the author of booklets about old Dundee. Much of her poetry relates to Dundee and its culture. Her poem 'Oor Wullie' was widely used in conjunction with the Oor Wullie Bucket Trail in Dundee in 2016 and Oor Wullie's Big Bucket Trail in 2019, while her poem 'Adele Penguin' was been used to promote Maggie's Penguin Parade in Dundee in 2018. Her poetry has been used in schools and material produced by Verdant Works. Anna also translated the Japanese poem Furusato into English for the Nagano Winter Olympic Games in 1998.

Anna MacDonald was also recognised for her contributions to traditional music, and for many years performed as part of the 'Temperance Two Showband' with her second husband Clifford Inglis, who died in 2018. She was also the author of an unpublished autobiography which gives a frank account of her life and provides an invaluable insight into working class life in twentieth century Dundee. A year before his death, Cliff Ingles wrote his autobiography "I Belonged to Glasgow" which includes some of Anna's poems.

Anna died in 2022.

Examples of Anna MacDonald's poetry can be found at http://bygone.dundeecity.gov.uk/people/anna-macdonald
Cliff Inglis is featured on this podcast from the 2017 Dundee Literary Festival: https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/literarydundeepodcast/episodes/2017-10-17T22_00_00-07_00

Heath's thesis was written in the 3rd and final year of her Teacher Training at City of Birmingham College of Education where she studied from September 1970 till June 1973, gaining a full Certificate of Education, with Merits in the Study of Education and also in the Main and Subsidiary subjects, Drama and Music. In 1972 Heath married and changed her surname to Linstead. She has since reverted to using her maiden name, Heath.

On deposit, Heath provided the following context and information: 'The study, or dissertation, is titled The Appeal of Comics and their Potential Influence on Children, and reflects my early interest in children's reading, and an ongoing fascination with the acquisition of reading skills. I have enjoyed a long and varied career in teaching, initially full- time in middle schools, then, after raising a family, as a supply teacher for the last 25 years. This has included many different teaching environments and situations, from language support in state schools to music at the local Montessori school, from nurseries to 6th forms, special needs, private tuition and whole class teaching. My daughter chose a Steiner education for her son. At his school, only Capital letters were used in the early stages, as is the case with comic strip speech bubbles. I gave her my study, as my young grandson soon became an a avid reader of comics. Now he is 15, competently literate, studying for GCSEs. It was during their recent house move that this document came to light. I dipped into it and found its naivety slightly embarrassing, until I reminded myself it was a work of its time by a 20 year old. I then read most of it again with some amusement. With a general election imminent and a government currently populated with public school boys, the attitudes and antics of Winker Watson at Greytowers, (pages 67-69) take on a contemporary flavour. Certainly the prevalence of the comic teacher in this study, and the issues discussed regarding that role will have helped me question and shape my own stance in the classroom, by default! Historically, this study is a bit of a relic from a point in time when significant change was happening. For instance, at a time when colleges were making requests for all work to be typed, it is probably one of the last degree level dissertations to be written by hand! Although, at that time, the Cert. Ed. did not officially count as a degree, the B Ed had recently been introduced, requiring a further year of study. Meanwhile, the James Report gave rise to new regulations. Graduates taking teaching posts needed a teaching qualification in addition to their specialist subject. Consequently, in 1973, our college population swelled with the influx of Post Graduate Certificate of Education students. They were quick to socialise and some gamely joined the 'extras' in our final Drama assessment production of the Marat/Sade by Peter Weiss. Innovation in the 70's is a familiar subject. In education, middle schools were emerging, bridging the division between junior and secondary schools; a new subject, drama, appeared on some timetables. Interested in both, I chose the junior/secondary age range and Drama as my main subject. Middle schools came and went, Drama eventually became a GCSE subject, now taught in many secondary schools. It was a good time to study. The modest grant, available for students from low income families, taught domestic economy and facilitated a great opportunity to learn to live independently. The necessity to take holiday work broadened social awareness. College policy of assessed Teaching Practice every year, increasing in length and responsibility, ensured readiness for the classroom, a probationary year, and, finally, registered teacher status complete with a number.' Heath also commented on the presentation and condition of the thesis: 'In the days before scanning, sellotape was my method of presenting source material for illustration. After 42 years it is perishing and has left rectangular stains where I have rolled it round to make an invisible mount. (If 2-sided tape was available, then, I hadn't heard of it!) Several cuttings from comics have become detached, but seem to be in the right places. There may be some confusion as to which side should be showing. If the context isn't clear, the way the cutting has been trimmed round the frame may indicate the right way up. Also the sellotape stains show through to the right side and can be matched to their original place on the page. Where there are several cuttings on one page, the arrangement is not significant. I think one or two cuttings are missing. Some full page examples are included, and are referenced at the foot of the page. Some were stuck together in pairs, back to back with small rolls of sellotape. In these cases, only the outer sides are relevant to the study, and are referenced at the foot of the page. Sample pages from large format comics have been mounted on 2 sheets of A4, joined with sellotape at the outer edge to reinforce the fold. They open out from the centre. Before photocopiers and computer print outs, the quality of the sample survey sheets in the Appendix was typical of formal duplicated print outs in schools and colleges at the time. I think I had these done, for a fee, at the college office. Just a little more history: When multiple copies were needed, the Banda machine was the source of all worksheets, and in my case, song sheets too. Text, illustrations and notation were done by hand on a choice of plain, lined, or squared, shiny, carbon-backed paper. Writing out music for songs became much easier when I came across a pack of carbon 'Masters' with blank music staves.'

A. D. Foote was born in Toxteth and educated in Manchester from 1938 and at Balliol College, Oxford, from 1949 where he read Classics and English.

Foote suffered from schizophrenia from the age of 26. After he recovered from an illness he spent some years as Warden of the International Voluntary Service Centre in London. To get a quieter job he worked at the National Central Library in Malet Place till 1965.

In 1969 he moved to Dundee where his family stayed; he had to spend the first 5 years in hospital. There, he edited a quarterly magazine for the patients which ran up to 22 issues.

A. D. Foote has been writing poetry and short stories as a vocation, and from 1985 earning income as a translator. He speaks Finnish, Polish, Hungarian, Cornish, Arabic, Ido and Interlingua.