About the author.

Iain M.M. Johnstone, Edinburgh born, is a retired schoolteacher who taught in various schools in the Lothians and lives in East Lothian. History has always interested him, resulting in his first novel, ‘Acheson’s Haven’ - The King and The Witches, based on the true story of a Prestonpans schoolteacher, John Cunningham, caught up in the monstrous intrigues of the Scots king, James VI, in the late 16th. century, which resulted in the barbaric witch hunts that lasted up to the 18th. century, resulting in the murders and torture of thousands of innocent Scots.
He had intended writing this tale in Old Scots, but when he started looking up the old words in Scots Dictionaries, he was rather put out to find that most of the etymologies for Scots words were given as Old English- i.e. Anglo-Saxon. He abandoned that plan and wrote his book in standard English, and its sequel, ‘Château de Carzac’, which followed the adventures in France and Scotland of John Cunningham’s Scots friends.
Whilst waiting on research material for another historical novel, Château de Carzac, the sequel to Acheson’s Haven, he set out to produce a quick little book on Scots place names. His initial lighthearted approach was soon replaced with the sobering revelation that possibly the greater part of Scots place names have been given a wrong etymology, because of what Robert Louis Stevenson called the Anglo-Saxon heresy (ASH), with serious implications for the history taught in schools today. It also shows that the major contributor to the non-Celtic Scots tongue was Old Norse, and not some variant of a northern English early speech. After two years of intensive study and discoveries, the books (one on East Lothian, Viking Place Names of East Lothian the other the whole of Scotland) are close to publication.

However, because of his revolutionary findings, he wishes to explain/discuss with interested persons some of the basis for his rejection of the ASH shortly before publication.

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