Norah Montgomerie and Julian Brooks

Norah Montgomerie was born in London but spent most of her life in Scotland with her husband William Montgomerie, the Scottish poet. Together they collected and published many collections of nursery rhymes and Scottish folk tales and independently she was well known for her compilations of children’s stories - To Read and to Tell, More Stories to Read and to Tell. Her interest in Finn MacCoul spanned many years and she was disappointed that it never found a wider audience in her lifetime. She died in 1998.

Julian Brooks is Norah’s grandson. He is a film-maker and photographer from Tackley in Oxfordshire. Trained as a wildlife cameraman he now works mainly in the field of arts and commercial video as well as high-speed photography. He and his wife Ingunn Haugen from Hornindal in Norway have reassembled this collection of tales from a box of Norah’s original manuscripts.