40 Scottish autobiographers

Emma Margaret Asquith, Countess of Oxford and Asquith, known as Margot Asquith, was a British socialite, author, and wit. She was married to H. H. Asquith, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, from 1894 until his death in 1928.

Janet Bathgate née Greenfield (1806–1898) was a working-class Scottish writer who is remembered for her autobiographical Aunt Janet's Legacy to Her Nieces, Recollections of Humble Life in Yarrow in the Beginning of the Century. Despite very little schooling, she taught herself to read and write, becoming a schoolteacher herself.

Walter Dalrymple Maitland Bell, known as Karamojo Bell, was a Scottish adventurer, big game hunter in East Africa, soldier, decorated fighter pilot, sailor, writer, and painter.

Francis Martin Patrick Boyle is a Scottish comedian and writer. He is known for his cynical and often controversial sense of humour.

Fred Bremner (1863–1941) was a Scottish photographer. His portraiture work in British India, spanning 1882 to 1922, preserves a record of life in the period.

Captain Eric Melrose "Winkle" Brown, CBE, DSC, AFC, Hon FRAeS, RN was a Scottish Royal Navy officer and test pilot who flew 487 types of aircraft, more than anyone else in history.

James Gordon Brown is a British politician who was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Labour Party from 2007 to 2010. He served as Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1997 to 2007. Brown was Member of Parliament (MP) from 1983 to 2015, first for Dunfermline East and later for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath.

Lady Elizabeth Campbell, known as Liza Campbell, is an artist, calligrapher, columnist, and writer, born in the north of Scotland and currently living in London, England. She is the second daughter of Hugh Campbell, 6th Earl Cawdor (1932–1993), by his first wife, the former Cathryn Hinde. She is the last child of an Earl Cawdor to have been born at Cawdor Castle, which has previously been erroneously associated with Shakespeare's Macbeth.

Very Reverend Alexander Carlyle DD FRSE was a Scottish church leader, and autobiographer.

Archibald Joseph Cronin was a Scottish physician and novelist. His best-known novel The Citadel (1937) tells of a Scottish doctor in a Welsh mining village, who later shoots up the career ladder in London. Cronin had seen the venues as a medical inspector of mines and later as a doctor in Harley Street. The book promoted still controversial ideas on medical ethics and helped to inspire the National Health Service. Another popular mining novel of his, set in the North East of England, is The Stars Look Down. Both have been filmed, as have Hatter's Castle, The Keys of the Kingdom and The Green Years. His novella Country Doctor instigated a long-running BBC radio and TV series, Dr. Finlay's Casebook, which was revived many years later.

James Herbert Curle was a Scottish mining engineer, traveller, writer, eugenicist, and philatelist. He wrote The Gold Mines of the World as well as autobiographical and travel works of a philosophical turn.

Sir Thomas Dalyell, 11th Baronet, known as Tam Dalyell, was a Scottish Labour Party politician who was a member of the House of Commons from 1962 to 2005. He represented West Lothian from 1962 to 1983, then Linlithgow from 1983 to 2005. He is particularly well known for his formulation of what came to be known as the "West Lothian question", on whether non-English MPs should be able to vote upon English-only matters after political devolution. He was also known for his anti-war, anti-imperialist views, opposing the Falklands War, the Gulf War, the War in Afghanistan and the Iraq War.

Donovan Phillips Leitch is a Scottish singer, songwriter and guitarist. He developed an eclectic and distinctive style that blended folk, jazz, pop, psychedelia, and world music. He has lived in Scotland, Hertfordshire (England), London, California, and since at least 2008 in County Cork, Ireland, with his family. Emerging from the British folk scene, Donovan reached fame in the United Kingdom in early 1965 with live performances on the pop TV series Ready Steady Go!.

(Walter) Archibald Elliott, Lord Elliott MC was a Scottish lawyer and judge. In 1971, he became the first president of the newly established Lands Tribunal for Scotland, and in 1978 took on the additional office of chairman of the Scottish Land Court. Since then, both offices have been held concurrently.

Grace Dalrymple Elliott was a Scottish courtesan, writer and spy resident in Paris during the French Revolution. She was an eyewitness to events detailed in her memoirs, Journal of my life during the French Revolution published posthumously in 1859. She was mistress to the Duke of Orléans and to the future George IV, by whom she is said to have borne an illegitimate daughter. Elliott trafficked correspondence and hid French aristocrats escaping from the French Revolution. She was arrested several times but managed to avoid the guillotine, and was released after the death of Robespierre.

Ralph Erskine was a Scottish churchman.

Sir Alexander Chapman Ferguson is a Scottish former football manager and player widely known for managing Manchester United from 1986 to 2013. He is considered by many to be one of the greatest managers of all time and he has won more trophies than any other manager in the history of football.

George MacDonald Fraser was a Scottish author and screenwriter. He is best known for a series of works that featured the character Flashman.

Robert Kerr "Rikki" Fulton, OBE was a Scottish comedian and actor best remembered for writing and performing in the long-running BBC Scotland sketch show, Scotch and Wry. He was also known for his appearances as one half of the double act, Francie and Josie, alongside Jack Milroy. Suffering from Alzheimer's disease in his later years, Fulton died in 2004, aged 79.

William Gallacher was a Scottish trade unionist, activist and communist. He was one of the leading figures of the Shop Stewards' Movement in wartime Glasgow and a founding member of the Communist Party of Great Britain. He served two terms in the House of Commons as the last Communist Member of Parliament (MP).

Janey Godley is a Scottish stand-up comedian, actress and writer from Glasgow.

George Alexander Eugene Douglas Haig, 2nd Earl Haig, was a British artist and peer who succeeded to the earldom of Haig on 29 January 1928, at the age of nine upon the death of his father, Field Marshal the 1st Earl Haig. Until then he was styled Viscount Dawick. Throughout his life, he was usually known to his family and friends as Dawyck Haig.

Sir Christopher Andrew Hoy, MBE is a British racing driver and former track cyclist from Scotland who represented Great Britain at the Olympic and World Championships and Scotland at the Commonwealth Games.

Lulu Kennedy-Cairns, OBE, is a Scottish singer, actress, television personality and businesswoman. She is noted for her powerful singing voice.

George Mackay Brown was a Scottish poet, author and dramatist, whose work has a distinctly Orcadian character. He is considered one of the great Scottish poets of the 20th century.

Sir Edward Montague Compton Mackenzie, was an English-born Scottish writer of fiction, biography, histories and a memoir, as well as a cultural commentator, raconteur and lifelong Scottish nationalist. He was one of the co-founders in 1928 of the Scottish National Party along with Hugh MacDiarmid, RB Cunninghame Graham and John MacCormick. He was knighted in 1952.

Isabella Fyvie Mayo was a Scottish poet, novelist, suffragist, and reformer. With the help of friends, Fyvie Mayo published poems and stories, using the pseudonym, Edward Garrett. Fyvie Mayo spent most of her life living in Aberdeen, where she was the first woman elected to a public board. Fyvie Mayo was described as an "ethical anarchist, pacifist, anti-imperialist and anti-racist campaigner"; and her "home was an asylum for Asian Indians."

Sir James McGrigor, 1st Baronet, LLD was a Scottish physician, military surgeon and botanist, considered to be the man largely responsible for the creation of the Royal Army Medical Corps. He served as Rector of the University of Aberdeen.

Francis McLintock MBE is a former Scotland international footballer and football manager. He also worked as a sports agent and football pundit in his later life.

7 May 1891 |birth_place = Liverpool, England |death_date = 12 April 1988 (aged 96)

Joseph Mitchell was a Scottish civil engineer.

Margaret Oliphant Wilson Oliphant was a Scottish novelist and historical writer, who usually wrote as Mrs. Oliphant. Her fictional works encompass "domestic realism, the historical novel and tales of the supernatural".

George Neilson Patterson also known as Khampa Gyau and Patterson of Tibet, was a Scottish engineer and missionary who served as medical officer and diplomatic representative of the Tibetan resistance movement during the Chinese invasion of Tibet.

James George Semple Lisle (1759–1815) was a Scottish adventurer and confidence trickster. He used numerous aliases, taking Lisle as a surname additional to his original name, and published in 1799 The Life of Major J. G. Semple-Lisle, an autobiography, from Tothill Fields Prison.

Margaret Frances Skinnider was a revolutionary and feminist born in Coatbridge, Scotland. She fought during the 1916 Easter Rising in Dublin as a sniper, among other roles, and was the only female wounded in the action. As a scout, she was praised for her bravery. Sadhbh Walshe in The New York Times refers to her as "the schoolteacher turned sniper".

James H. "Jim" Sutherland was a Scottish-born soldier and professional hunter, who shot between 1,300 and 1,600 elephants in his life.

Annie Shepherd Swan, CBE was a Scottish journalist and fiction writer, who wrote mainly under her maiden name, but also as David Lyall and later Mrs Burnett Smith. As a writer of romantic fiction for women, she published over 200 novels, serials, stories and other fiction between 1878 and her death in 1943. She has been called "one of the most commercially successful popular novelists of the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries". Swan was politically active during the First World War, as a suffragist, a Liberal activist, and a founder-member and vice-president of the Scottish National Party.

Thomas Telford FRS, FRSE was a Scottish civil engineer, architect and stonemason, and road, bridge and canal builder. After establishing himself as an engineer of road and canal projects in Shropshire, he designed numerous infrastructure projects in his native Scotland, as well as harbours and tunnels. Such was his reputation as a prolific designer of highways and related bridges, he was dubbed The Colossus of Roads, and, reflecting his command of all types of civil engineering in the early 19th century, he was elected as the first President of the Institution of Civil Engineers, a post he held for 14 years until his death.

Lucy Bethia (Colquhoun) Walford was a Scottish novelist and artist, who wrote 45 books, the majority of them "light-hearted domestic comedies". Accurate writing was a big consideration for her.

Duncan James Williamson was a Scottish storyteller and singer, and a member of the Scottish Traveller community. The Scottish poet and scholar Hamish Henderson once referred to him as "possibly the most extraordinary tradition-bearer of the whole Traveller tribe."