Professor Emeritus Alexander Fenton CBE was an ethnologist and author of many books and articles on Scottish country life. He served as Senior Assistant Editor of the Scottish National Dictionary, and was Director of the National Museum of Antiquities of Scotland, of the School of Scottish Studies of the University of Edinburgh, and of the European Ethnological Research Centre, for which he was also a consultant. He was co-editor of Rural Land Use on the Atlantic Periphery of Europe: Scotland and Ireland (1994).