Mark Douglas-Home

Mark Douglas-Home, born on 31 August 1951, is a Scottish author and journalist. He served as the editor of The Herald, a Scottish newspaper, from 2000 to 2005.

Early Life and Education:

Douglas-Home was born to Edward Charles Douglas-Home and Nancy Rose Straker-Smith. He was educated at Eton College, a boarding school in England. He pursued higher education at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa, where he served as the editor of the student newspaper Wits Student. During his time in South Africa, he was involved in producing anti-apartheid cartoons, which led to his deportation from the country in 1970 by the government at the time.

Career:

Douglas-Home’s journalism career includes roles at several publications. He worked as a reporter for the North London Weekly Herald, the Sunday Express, and the Edinburgh Evening News. He later held positions such as Scotland Correspondent for The Independent, news editor and assistant editor for The Scotsman, deputy editor of Scotland on Sunday, and editor of The Sunday Times Scotland.

In 2000, he was appointed editor of The Herald, a major broadsheet newspaper in Scotland. During his tenure, the newspaper introduced new daily themed magazines and maintained higher circulation figures than The Scotsman. He left The Herald in December 2005, amidst controversy over budget cuts imposed by the ownership company, Newsquest, which he was resistant to.

Literary Work:

Douglas-Home is also an author of fiction. His first novel, "The Sea Detective," was published in May 2011 by Sandstone Press, with a new edition released by Penguin in November 2015. The novel was well-received, with The Scotsman praising it for elevating Scottish crime fiction standards. Its sequel, "The Woman Who Walked into The Sea," was described as "simply intoxicating" by the Library Journal in the United States. He subsequently published "The Malice of Waves" in May 2016 and "The Driftwood Girls" in January 2020, completing a series of crime novels set along the Scottish coast.

Family and Personal Life:

Mark Douglas-Home belongs to a noble family; his family holds the title of Earl of Home in the Peerage of Scotland. His family members include the previous holder of the title, Alec Douglas-Home, the former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, and his cousin, David Alexander Cospatrick Douglas-Home, the current Earl of Home. He is married to Colette Douglas-Home, a psychotherapeutic counselor and former journalist and columnist. They have two children named Rebecca Douglas-Home and Rory Douglas-Home.

Bibliography:

- The Sea Detective (2011)

- The Woman Who Walked into the Sea (2013)

- The Malice of Waves (2016)

- The Driftwood Girls (2020)