Writer, artist and film-maker;

Born September 24, 1911;

Died November 7, 2006.

ELIZABETH, or Betty as she was known, author, painter and film-maker, was born in Aberdeen, only child of Annie and Alexander Balneaves.

She graduated from Aberdeen Art College and married the psychiatrist Dr James Johnston, who was of Shetland extraction, in 1934. Although they were separated for several years, Jim supported her in her work throughout their married life.

Betty wrote six books, made a number of documentary films, drew portraits in pastel and charcoal and painted many landscapes, particularly of Shetland and Cullen.

In Shetland, which she first visited with Jim in 1934, she is perhaps best known for The Windswept Isles (1977), which she wrote during the 20 or so years she and Jim lived in retirement in the old manse at Bigton in the 1960s and 1970s. This was her tribute to the people and the islands who she felt had adopted her.

During those years she also made a documentary film on Shetland for the BBC. Although painting was her first love, it was her writing that brought her to a wider public attention, one of the first signs of her literary talent being a poem published in 1945 in Poetry Scotland, the series of Scottish poetry books published by William MacLellan.

In the early 1950s, Betty travelled alone to Pakistan, spending time in Karachi and at the frontier with Afghanistan, where she stayed for several years, resulting in The Waterless Moon (1955) and Peacocks and Pipelines (1958), both of which received critical acclaim. Later, she returned with her son, Stewart, resulting in a third book on the area between the Hindu Khush and the Karakoram, The Mountains of the Murgha Zerin (1972) and some rare film footage of this remote area and its culture.

At a later date they returned to the Sunderbunds (in then East Pakistan), this time concentrating on documentary film-making. In 1959, between her second and third books, Betty visited the area being flooded by the new Kariba Dam in southern Rhodesia, where Stewart was working.

Here she made a documentary film of the effects of the flooding on wildlife and wrote the story of a colourful Scottish game supervisor entitled Elephant Valley (1962). Just before this trip, Betty worked as a publicity officer for Edinburgh Zoo and, as with everything she did, she made use of this experience in her only work of fiction, Murder in the Zoo (1974).

Betty had a great zest for life, travel, cooking, uisge beatha and good company that continued into her old age, becoming computer literate at 90 and spending her final years sending and receiving e-mails from her family and many grandchildren across the globe.

During this time she also began putting together the text for her final publication, her memoirs, which, alas, she could not finish. Betty was an only child and it never ceased to astonish her that she had so many descendants.

She died quietly in Elgin just eight weeks after celebrating her 95th birthday with most of her immediate family. She is survived by her four children, 13 grandchildren and 11 great grandchildren.