Author and former maths teacher Liz Strachan of Montrose and Aberdeen, has died aged 84.
She had a long career in education, mainly in Brechin and Montrose, before turning to writing in later years.
Liz, however, had always possessed a mastery of language and her career direction at university in Aberdeen was always finely balanced between maths and languages.
It was during a rainy holiday in Mallorca in 2008 that she spent time indoors jotting down funny anecdotes from her career.
Best seller
These were published the following year as A Slice of Pi and sold upwards of 100,000 copies.
A more serious maths book, Numbers Are Forever, followed and then came Easy as Pi.
But the genesis of Liz’s writing career can be traced to a family trauma the previous decade.
Her first granddaughter, Lauren, was born prematurely and was not expected to survive. Liz responded by writing a letter of Love which went on to win the 1991 European Letter Writer of the Year competition. Her grandchild not only survived but thrived.
Liz also wrote many articles and short stories for newspapers such as The Press and Journal and The Courier, and magazines including My Weekly and the Leopard.
Elizabeth Cooper Murray was born in Aberdeen to John Murray, a painter and decorator, and his wife, Eleanor Robertson Elrick, a bookkeeper, just months before the start of the Second World War.
She grew up with an elder brother, Gordon, and attended Mile End School before earning a scholarship to Aberdeen Academy.
Academic excellence
At both school and university she excelled at languages and maths but eventually opted to train as a maths teacher in the city after she left university in 1959.
Her early teaching career was in Aberdeen but after her marriage to Alexander (Sandy) in 1963 the couple had spells in Glasgow, Perth and Alloa. Son Murray was born in 1964 followed by Bruce in 1967.
The family returned to the north-east in 1968 and Liz taught first at Brechin High School then Montrose Academy before retiring in 1997.
Influential teacher
Murray said: “We have received nearly 500 messages from former pupils telling how our mother had been a positive influence on so many young lives. One told us she ‘was a special teacher who really spent time with those that were struggling’.”
Both Liz and Sandy loved the outdoors; hillwalking, golfing and spending time on the beach together.
Murray said: “Mum was a keen golfer and played at North Links Ladies and then Royal Montrose.
“How someone with no sight in her left eye (due to a major bleed behind her eye that robbed her of her sight) and then later macular degeneration in her right eye could play we’ll never know, but like everything in her life, she didn’t let a mere disability stop her or hold her back.”
Liz was a member of Angus Writers Circle and the Scottish Association of Writers and many of the short stories and articles she produced were published in newspapers and magazines.
It was her books, however, that propelled her into best-sellers lists not just in the UK but in the USA, Poland, Spain and elsewhere.
You can read the family’s announcement here.
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