Fiona Rintoul

Originally from Glasgow, Fiona is an author, journalist and tour guide based in Scotland.

Languages are her passion, and she studied German at Leipzig University before the fall of the Berlin Wall. The experience of living in a communist country made a huge impression on her, and she later wrote a novel that drew on her experiences of being a Westerner in East Germany in the 1980s. The Leipzig Affair won the Virginia prize for women’s fiction and was serialised on BBC R4's Book at Bedtime with Douglas Henshall in the lead role.

Fiona is also the author of two books about whisky and a book about pathfinding in the islands of Lewis and Harris called A Place Like This, which will be published in 2027. She is a former Times columnist, and her journalism has appeared in a range of outlets, including the Glasgow Herald, the Financial Times and Handelsblatt.

Fiona is a fluent French and German speaker and a member of the Western Isles Tour Guide Association. She is currently learning Scottish Gaelic.