Born in Ranish on the Isle of Lewis in 1945, Hector Macdonald worked for the Met Office for several years before beginning a career at the Stornoway Gazette in 1979. This was the first outlet for his weekly columns before he was poached by the West Highland Free Press. Under the tutelage of Brian Wilson he found a true home for a style of writing that could be described as thought provoking, sometimes irreverent, but nearly always funny. Over a period of more than fifteen years he wrote in the region of eight hundred columns for the West Highland Free Press before his death in 1995.