Margaret Halliday

Margaret Halliday was born in Guildford, England, in 1949. She was born with green fingers and itchy feet and satisfied the former first with a year's training in Hastings Alexandra Park, followed by a horticultural course at the West of Scotland Agricultural College.

She fell in love with Scotland, married a Scotsman and raised two children, while working in scientific research and studying to doctorate level. She qualified as a science teacher and taught in various schools and colleges in Edinburgh.

In 1986 her marriage broke up, partly because of those itchy feet and in 1988 she went to live in Istanbul, where she taught biological sciences at Marmara University for five years which gave her the opportunity to travel extensively in Turkey and Greece. Following this she taught English in Budapest and Damascus, exploring these countries and their environs in her holidays. She returned to Turkey and taught biology at a school for gifted children near Istanbul.

At the age of 50 she ventured as far as India, undeterred by being diagnosed with MS and osteoarthritis. She was an avid writer of diaries throughout and planned to expand them into short stories on retirement. These stories have evolved into 'Prana Soup - an Indian odyssey' which was published in November 2013.

She continued to travel extensively and between her trips to India cycled round Ireland and the Scottish Highlands. Later she spent a year flying round the world, spending time in Hong Kong, Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, Bali and New Zealand, as well as visiting friends and relatives in Hungary, Turkey and Canada.

While in New Zealand she became a 'woofer' (a worldwide worker on an organic farm), spending five months on both the North and South Islands and returning for a further six months, when she bought a small van and travelled to locations off the beaten track.

Back in Scotland she continued life as a 'woofer' for three more years. She settled in Edinburgh, virtually travelling through her writing, although she still went on the occasional trip. She has completed a second book about her experience of being a single mother in the late sixties, Good Vibrations, a story of a single 60s mum (2015) and has written about her time as a woofer, WWOOFing North and South (2016).

She then wrote a fictional book, The Belly Dancer (2018) using her knowledge of Istanbul. Next came a book based on her global travels, Stranger than Fiction, True Stories from around the World (2020). Her sixth book, COVID Alert and other stories was published in January 2023.

In March 2022 the MS finally got to her and she went into a care home near Edinburgh. In September 2025 she published Living the Dream, about three years of living in a care home which she’s managed to fill with humour.