Baroness Linklater of Butterstone Peer

Address:
House of Lords
London
SW1A 0PW

BIOGRAPHY

Veronica Linklater was born Veronica Lyle in 1943, and was created a Life Peer in 1997, taking the title Baroness Linklater of Butterstone. She was educated at Cranbourne Chase School and the Universities of Sussex and London.

In 1967, she became a Child Care Officer for the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, and between 1970 and 1985, she became Governor to three Islington schools. From 1971 to 1977, she co-founded the Visitors’ Centre at Pentonville Prison, and her continuing interest in this field led to her involvement with the Winchester Prison Project, Prison Reform Trust from 1981 to 1982.

Between 1983 and 1987, she became Founder, Administrator and then Consultant to The Butler Trust, and has been a Trustee since 1987. She was a London Justice of the Peace for three years from 1985 to 1988 and between 1989 and 1997, a Member of the Children’s Panel in Edinburgh South. Since 1989, she has been Co-Ordinator, Trustee and Vice Chairman of Pushkin Prizes (Scotland), and in that same year, she became President of the Society of Friends of Dunkeld Cathedral.

From 1990 to 1996, she was a Committee Member of the Gulliver Award for Performing Arts in Scotland, and in 1991, she became a Trustee of the Esmee Fairbairn Charitable Trust. She was Founder and has been Executive Chairman of The New School, Butterstone, since 1991. Since 1993, she has been Patron of the Sutherland Trust and was a member of the Young Musicians Trust from 1993 to 1997. As a Liberal Democrat candidate, she contested the Perth and Kinross seat in May 1995. From 1997, Veronica has been a Director of the Maggie Keswick Jencks Cancer Caring Centres Trust, and from 1998 to 1999, she was a Member of the Beattie Committee on post-school provision for young people with special needs in Scotland.

Her career indicates her abiding interests in children’s welfare, education and special needs, and prison reform. She lists her leisure time activities as music, the theatre and gardening. She married journalist and broadcaster, Magnus Linklater, in 1967, and they have two sons and a daughter.