Ian Mitchell (author)

Ian Mitchell is a Scottish author, who grew up mainly in South Africa. He is the author of "Isles of the West: a Hebridean Voyage" and "Isles of the North: a Voyage to the Realms of the Norse". Both books are concerned with apparently virtuous environmental NGO's which operate in rural Scotland but which, in the point of view of the author, actually do damage to it. Mitchell is a critic of bodies like the RSPB and Scottish Natural Heritage, and has compared aspects of their behavior to that of the Nazis [http://bubl.ac.uk/org/tacit/tac/tac55/letteryo.htm] .

Mitchell was founder and director of an organisation called People Too, described by him as an "organisation founded to defend rural communities from the imposts of centralised bureaucracy". With the relocation of Scottish Natural Heritage to Inverness, People Too relocated the headquarers of the conservation bureaucracy to a rural area (though most of the Edinburgh staff resigned rather than move into the community they had been administering)Fact|date=January 2008. It accordingly decided to disband.

Mitchell has also written a book called "The Cost of a Reputation", about the Aldington-Tolstoy libel trial which took place in London in 1989 and which concerned a controversial British Army operation in May 1945 by which tens of thousands of Cossack and Yugoslav refugees from Stalin and Tito were handed over, for the most part illegally, to the dictators. Best estimates are that half of them subsequently perished at the hands of the CommunistsFact|date=January 2008. The book mainly concerns the London trial, at which, the late Lord Aldington, who had issued the illegal orders in 1945 as Staff Brigadier, perjured himself. In this, as an ex-Deputy Chairman of the Conservative Party, he was assisted by both the Foreign Office and the Ministry of Defense.

Mitchell is currently working on what he describes as an indoor travel book about the judges and courts in Scotland, to be called "The Justice Factory". He lived for fifteen years on the Hebridean island of Islay, where he has three children. He now lives in Moscow.

External links

Mitchell's current Moscow photo-blog: [http://russianrambles.blogspot.com]
* [http://www.land-care.org.uk/environment/current_topics/2004/august2004/rspb_false_mitchell_11-_08/rspb_false_mitchell_11_08.html A letter from Mitchell explaining some of his criticisms of the RSPB]
* [http://www.mountaineering-scotland.org.uk/nl/book42.html Critical review of The Isles of The West]
* [http://www.mountaineering-scotland.org.uk/nl/book42.html Appreciative review of The Isles of The West]
* [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/2326037.stm 2002 BBC news story about capercaillie]
* [http://www.land-care.org.uk/social_economic/current_topics/2005/may2005/sca_mitchell_02_05/sca_mitchell_02_05.html Transcript of paper given by Mitchell to the Scottish Countryside Alliance in 2005]
* [http://bubl.ac.uk/org/tacit/tac/tac55/letteryo.htm Letter from Mitchell explaining some of his views]