Brian D Osborne

• (born 1941 - died June 2008) - Helensburgh

Brian D Osborne was born in Glasgow in 1941 and grew up in Helensburgh and now lives in Kirkintilloch. After a brief career in bookselling he worked in public libraries becoming District Librarian of Midlothian in 1983 and Chief Officer: Libraries and Museums in Strathkelvin in 1989. He was President of the Scottish Library Association in 1992 and was at various times Honorary Publications Officer for the Association. He was a member of the Scottish Book Marketing Group, a member of the Grants to Publishers Panel and of the Literature Committee of the Scottish Arts Council.

He retired from librarianship in 1995 to concentrate on writing and has written three historical biographies and collaborated on a large number of other books on Scottish literature, history and culture. He also wrote regularly for magazines in the United Kingdom and the United States an collaborated on writing two plays.

Recent works include Writing Biography and Autobiography and (jointly with Ronald Armstrong) Scotland’s Great Ships. His most recent project was a history of the Home Guard in Scotland from 1940-1944 due to be published in 2009 by Birlinn as The People’s Army. Brian was Honorary Secretary of the Society of Authors in Scotland from 2002 to 2007 and was on the Board of Publishing Scotland as a representative of Network Members.

Brian had a special interest in the works of the Scottish novelist and short-story writer Neil Munro (1863-1930) and has written extensively on Munro and, with Ronald Armstrong, edited collections of his writing. He was also Secretary of The Neil Munro Society.

• Para Handy - notes and introductory material - with Ronald Armstrong - 1992
• Erchie & Jimmy Swan - notes and introductory material - with Ronald Armstrong - 1993
• Scotland 1945 - with Robert Craig - 1995
• The Ingenious Mr Bell - 1995
• Scottish Dates - with Ronald Armstrong - 1995
• Glasgow's River - with Donald Robertson & Iain Quinn - 1996
• Scotch Obsessions - Ronald Armstrong - 1996
• Discovering Scottish Writers - edited with Alan Reid - 1997
• Braxfield; The Hanging Judge? - 1997
• Echoes of the Sea; Scotland and the Sea: An Anthology - edited with Ronnie June - 1998
• The Scottish Heather Book - 1998
• Mungo’s City - edited with Ronald Armstrong - 1999
• Cradle of the Scots: An Argyll Anthology - edited with Ronald Armstrong & Ronald Renton - 2000
• Wicked Men and Fools: A Scottish Crime Anthology - edited with Ronald Armstrong - 2000
• The Last of the Chiefs, Alasdair Ranaldson Macdonell of Glengarry - 2001
• The Ingenious Mr Bell, a life of Henry Bell - second edition - 2001
• The Clyde at War with Ronald Armstrong - 2001
• The Complete Para Handy - (2nd edition) - edited with Ronnie Armstrong - 2002
• Advocating Libraries - edited with Rennie McElroy, Alan Reid & Alan G D White - 2002
• Erchie, My Droll Friend - edited with Ronnie Armstrong - 2002
• Jimmy Swan, The Joy Traveller - edited with Ronnie Armstrong - 2002
• That Vital Spark; a Neil Munro anthology - edited with Ronnie Armstrong - 2002
• Exploring New Roads: Essays on Neil Munro - edited with Ronald Renton - 2003
• Glasgow, A City at War - with Ronald Armstrong - 2003
• The Sporting Scot - edited with Ronald Armstrong - 2003
• Writing Biography & Autobiography - 2004
• Scotland’s Great Ships - with Ronald Armstrong - 2007
• The People's Army - 2009