Lavinia Derwent was the pen name of Scottish

Scotland

Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...

 author

Author

An author is broadly defined as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. Narrowly defined, an author is the originator of any written work.-Legal significance:...

 and broadcaster

Presenter

A presenter, or host , is a person or organization responsible for running an event. A museum or university, for example, may be the presenter or host of an exhibit. Likewise, a master of ceremonies is a person that hosts or presents a show...

 Elizabeth Dodd MBE

MBE

MBE can stand for:* Mail Boxes Etc.* Management by exception* Master of Bioethics* Master of Bioscience Enterprise* Master of Business Engineering* Master of Business Economics* Mean Biased Error...

 (1909 - 1989).

She was born in an isolated farmhouse in the Cheviot hills

Cheviot Hills

The Cheviot Hills is a range of rolling hills straddling the England–Scotland border between Northumberland and the Scottish Borders.There is a broad split between the northern and the southern Cheviots...

 some seven miles from Jedburgh

Jedburgh

Jedburgh is a town and former royal burgh in the Scottish Borders and historically in Roxburghshire.-Location:Jedburgh lies on the Jed Water, a tributary of the River Teviot, it is only ten miles from the border with England and is dominated by the substantial ruins of Jedburgh Abbey...

. She began making up stories about animals at an early age. Her most famous creation was "Tammy Troot" who entranced generations of children. She also wrote a best-selling book about an island called Sula which later featured in a film. The novels were: Sula (1969), Return to Sula (1971), The Boy From Sula (1973) and Song of Sula (1976).She also wrote a version of Greyfriars bobby (1985) Her autobiographical books, particularly A Breath of Border Air recreate a world when it was the more fundamental things of life that mattered. Her Border Bairn series is set around Jedburgh, and Lady of the Manse has a Berwickshire

Berwickshire

Berwickshire or the County of Berwick is a registration county, a committee area of the Scottish Borders Council, and a lieutenancy area of Scotland, on the border with England. The town after which it is named—Berwick-upon-Tweed—was lost by Scotland to England in 1482...

 setting.She wrote the wee kirk moose poem.

In the 1970s she co-presented the television series Teatime Tales (alternating with Molly Weir

Molly Weir

Mary Weir, better known as Molly Weir, was a Scottish stage actress, most notable for her role as the long-running character Hazel the McWitch in the BBC TV series Rentaghost. She was the sister of naturalist and broadcaster Tom Weir.Born in Glasgow and brought up in the Springburn area of the...

 and Cliff Hanley

Cliff Hanley

Clifford Leonard Clark Hanley was a journalist, novelist, playwright and broadcaster from Glasgow in Scotland...

) on STV in which she recollected stories from her own childhood.