Rosemary Goring, journalist, editor, writer
Rosemary Goring graduated with an MA in Economic and Social History in 1984. Rosemary spent three decades as a journalist, first at Scotland on Sunday and then at The Herald. She has also published six books, including a two-part biography and two historical novels, and is now a full-time writer.
Rosemary Goring arrived at St Andrews from Dunbar in 1980, matriculating as a French major, before switching to History in her first week. Never having studied history in school, she described her surprise “to discover I was a history student.”
Studying Economic and Social history, Rosemary described a course that focused on history through the prism of economic contexts and human experiences. “[We studied] how people lived, what affected them, what political and economic currents immediately impacted them – revolution, plague, famine – and changes in demography,” she recalled. Within economic and social history, Rosemary was drawn to the medieval and early modern periods, particularly Scottish history. “I was immensely lucky to study with T.C. Smout”, she explained, describing him as “one of the finest-ever historians of Scottish history. He really made Scottish history come alive.” For Rosemary, the tutorials and seminars in her third and fourth years were formative, giving her the space to discover her interests through conversation and argument. “That experience really sets you up for life,” she explained.
“When I was doing my history degree, I was really conscious that I wanted to write, and that studying history would be helpful for that,” Rosemary said. After graduating, she started out with a job in publishing, where she worked for several years. “I also was writing in my own time,” she explained. “Because publishing was so poorly paid, I started to do freelance journalism as well, to earn some extra income.” Her freelance work enabled Rosemary to transition from being an editor in a publishing house to being a literary editor for a newspaper. She has been working for newspapers ever since.
Rosemary started out with Scotland on Sunday, where she was literary editor for seven years. She then moved to The Herald as literary editor and columnist, later also running the books pages for The Sunday Herald and latterly The National as well. Rosemary was a full-time journalist until 2016 when she went freelance to give her more time to work on her books. A Herald columnist and reviewer, she writes for a variety of other publications and also abridges books for Radio 4.
Her first books were written while she was working full time at the newspaper. “Having been a journalist has really helped with [accessible writing] because you’re always talking to somebody directly, trying not to be academic; it’s all about the story and making it as clear and engaging as possible,” she explained. “When I was running books pages, the thing that I was aware of was that nobody needed to read these, you had to give them a reason to. I think that’s the same with writing popular history – you want to draw people in.” This involves a lot of research but also conversational writing, making readers feel like they’re “eye to eye” with her.
Rosemary’s first book, Scotland: The Autobiography: 2,000 Years of Scottish History by Those Who Saw it Happen (2007, updated edition 2014), was a collection of eye-witness accounts spanning 2000 years of Scottish history. This was followed by Scotland: Her Story: The Nation’s History by the Women Who Lived It (2018), a history of Scotland entirely as seen as through the eyes of women — in their own words, through newspaper accounts of what happened to them, through diaries, journals, and court records. “When you read either of those anthologies, it’s like jumping from one track on a CD or one piece of music to another. Jazz to folk to rock – a different voice, a different pace. People think and write differently, which is a nice thing because it gives it so much texture,” Rosemary explained.
Constructing these anthologies involved long processes of historical investigation. “What’s really hard about doing a book like that is finding the voices of people who don’t usually get into history books,” she said. “So you have to look for them really hard.” Even then, she says, you’re often “only really seeing their footprints and then trying to piece together what life was like for them.”
In addition to these anthologies, Rosemary has written historical fiction, publishing After Flodden in 2013 and its sequel Dacre’s War in 2015. Both novels revolve around the Battle of Flodden, a disastrous battle in 1513 that wiped out the Scottish army and the leadership of the country. Navigating the intersection of history and fiction was an opportunity for Rosemary to put herself “imaginatively for a prolonged period into that time and try to picture what it would have been like.” She is fascinated by the day to day experience, and how that looked “in a period of such turmoil, a time so violent that your life often hung on a thread. Even if nothing terrible was happening in the world, even if it was the most peaceful year possible, life was still so different from today, and people’s outlook was so different.”
Rosemary’s latest work is a two-part biography of Mary, Queen of Scots. The first volume, Homecoming: The Scottish Years of Mary, Queen of Scots (2022), is set during her time in Scotland, and the second, Exile: The Captive Years of Mary, Queen of Scots (2025), is set during her captivity in England. Rosemary’s work often involves many hours of research. “I had to think about all the sources that I’m already aware of and then read up various books, look at their sources and then really just live in the library,” she explained.
As someone who writes for wide audiences, Rosemary takes a very broad definition of history. She explores big battles and political turning points but also social way-markers. For Scotland: Herstory, for example, she covered various aspects of life, from childbirth to changes in the way women were able to work or franchise for women. “I find it fascinating, I find it much more interesting in lots of ways because you’re trying to tease out what really happened for half of the population that is so often completely overlooked.” She was also determined to look beyond “the kind of women who were educated and could leave a trace of themselves in writing”, and to present the lives of women across a range of social backgrounds. “I didn’t want everything to be aristocratic and middle class.”
Rosemary may no longer be a full-time journalist, but her time in the industry still shapes her writing. “If you’ve been a journalist, you see a blank page and you fill it,” she says. “One of the good things about a journalist’s training is that you meet deadlines. They’re horrible things but you just have to sit down and actually write.” Meeting those deadlines often involves early mornings and lots of coffee. “I get started early in the morning, that’s my best time for working, but you just work the hours you have to work,” she explained. “When I was working full-time, if I wanted to get my novels written I would get up at five in the morning and get a couple of hours of writing done before I went to work,” she recalled. “Fitting it around work was essential, though it was quite tiring.”
For current history students, Rosemary’s advice is to read. And “read more than you’re expected to read – I wish I’d done more of that,” she says. “It’s good to read beyond the set texts. Just by browsing through the stacks in the library you sometimes find something that’s original, something that might cast an extra light on what you’re studying.” When she was at St Andrews, Rosemary describes being “quite a reader – I spent a lot of time reading, walking, or just with my friends. How dull does that make me sound!”
An early experience with primary historical sources was formative to Rosemary’s future. “I was in the records office in Edinburgh, looking at smuggling accounts from excise officers and other law enforcers in the early 18th century.” Rosemary still recalls the excitement of “seeing these original records and unfolding them and not knowing who had ever looked at these since they were catalogued and put away – that was just electrifying. There were even records in Robert Burns’ handwriting, because he was an excise man in Dumfries.” Rosemary also remembers finding records of Scots who had become overseers of slave plantations. “You just think – this had all been swept under the carpet,” she recalled. “That actually was quite a transformational summer spent with these records. Suddenly you just feel so close to the past.”
History continues to be at the centre of Rosemary’s writing. Her next project is a trilogy set in the 18th century, moving between Scotland and America and Canada.
This profile was written by Mrunmayi Kamerkar, then a third-year student of International Relations and Modern History, who interviewed Rosemary Goring in June 2026.