Ian Livingstone, author/entrepreneur

[alexanderlivingstone]

Hi, out of curiosity I was wondering if any members are related to Ian Livingstone the British author of the Fighting Fantasy series and co-founder of Games Workshop? I've been a fan of his for quite sometime and it only crossed my mind now to ask in this forum. In the RPG Book/Videogame world he is quite famous .

Alex
Barrie, Ontario

[Kyle MacLea]

Alex,

I'd love to hear more about him! Can you suggest any links?

Kyle=

[alexanderlivingstone]

Forsure Kyle,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Livingstone

This is a wiki link that is very accurate as I have cruised through it and learned a bit that I didn't know. He as won some distinguished awards in the UK. a BAFTA, OBE, CBE are a few.

He has just stepped down as Life President of Eidos, which is a massive videogame company. That was big news since many didn't know that a Brit was the Life President of a huge Japanese game company.

Alex

[Canadian Livingstone]

Hi Alexander,
Dr. Livingstone is the most famous of the Scottish Livingstones whose ancestors resided in the highlands and lowlands of Scotland, but as in the case of this gentleman you mentioned there have been a number of Livingstones/Livingstons out there who have distinquished themselves over the years in their careers throughout the world. By the early 1800's Scottish Livingstones were residing in British North America, the American States, Australia and England where employment and settlement opportunities existed for both experienced Scottish tradesman and impoverished tenant farmers. Some looking for work found a new life in newly industrialized lowland Scotland and England. Dr. Livingstone's grandfather Neil Livingston left his croft on the Isle of Ulva in the Mull, Argyllshire area with his family in 1792 finding work in a lowland Lanarkshire mill in Blantyre near Glasgow.

The first Livingstones/Livingstons to migrate to the British North America were those who were of some means a could afford to leave, but later on others impoverished tenant farmers particularly in highland Argyllshire were compelled to leave their tenant farms as their landlords in the 1800's began clearing tenants for more profitable sheep farming.

Other options for Livingstones still residing in Scotland was the British Army and a number of highland Livingstones found an escape from a subsistence existence as a tenant farmer in Argyllshire for a life as a private in a highland regiment in the late 1700's and 1800's. A number of scottish Livingstones/Livingstons joined the British Army as early as the mid 18th century french colonial war in America, during the American Revolution of the 1770's and early 1780's and later in the late 1700's and early 1800's during Britain's conflict with Napoleon. Highlanders with their broadswords and feared highland charges had proven themselves in the 1745 Jacobite Rebellion and the British Army quickly decided that their former advisaries would make excellent fighting men in their colonial war in the 1750's and 1760's against the French.

In Canada, Livingston's mainly from Mull and Morvern, Western Argyllshire took up settlement in Cape Breton and elsewhere in Nova Scotia and PEI by the early 1800's. The other destination for early Livingston Scottish settlers was Upper Canada in the early 1800's where Scots established Scotch communities in Halton County near York in the early 1820's and later other Counties such as Simcoe County where your family settled as new settlement areas in the 1830's were opened up in Upper Canada.

Today there are lots of Livingstones/Livingstons residing in Great Britain, America, Canada, Australia and New Zealand who have no doubt found some success in their careers and in their communities. We are often referred to as being a small highland clan, but like you I quite often find someone in the news someone of interest with the name Livingstone or Livingston whose roots no doubt at some point in time could be traced back to a family somewhere in Scotland.

regards,

Donald