Christian Miller

Christian Miller, the youngest of a family of six, was born in 1920. Brought up on her father’s estate in the highlands of Scotland, she was educated by governesses. After the death of her father, the estate was inherited by her elder brother, and the rest of the family moved to London, where – at eighteen – she became a debutante. During the Second World War, having started as an aircraft fitter working on heavy bombers, she became a technical adviser in the Ministry of Production. She married during the war and had two daughters, and it was not until the 1960s that she started writing, beginning with short stories, which were widely translated. A Childhood in Scotland (1981) first appeared in The New Yorker, and received a Scottish Arts Council Book Award in 1982.