Tributes have been paid to a creative Airdrie librarian turned author who “just loved writing” and published four books including a series of Westerns.
Anne Leishman, who spent four decades helping readers at the town’s library on Anderson Street, saw her own historical romance novel hit the shelves in 1984, followed by the adventure trilogy during the 2010s.
She died earlier this month, aged 71, at the home on Rosebank Street in Clarkston where she was born in August 1951 and where she spent her entire life – and relatives are fondly remembering her as “wonderfully talented, gentle, and full of love and kindness”.
“Fanatical reader” Anne began working at Airdrie library aged just 20 and became a familiar face to readers of several generations over the next 40 years; and she also used her considerable artistic talents to create special displays and friezes for visitors to enjoy.
She realised a long-held ambition with the publication of her debut work, Laurel, and appeared at that time in a BBC documentary where she was interviewed by prominent poet and playwright Liz Lochhead.
With time for writing limited by her busy job, her later books came around and after the time of her retirement, with the publications of Western stories Creekback, Captain Talbot’s Reckoning and Constarry Crossing between 2010 and 2015.
Anne told the Airdrie and Coatbridge Advertiser in a 2011 interview: “Telling stories is what I was famous for when I was at school. I wake up in the middle of the night and I have to get up and write, [and] when I write down whatever is in my head it’s like a relief.”
The youngest of six siblings, she had attended Clarkston Primary and Airdrie High before taking up her first job in a fruit shop on Graham Street and then working as a clerk in Glasgow before beginning her long spell at Airdrie library.
In addition to her loves of writing and art, she was also a film buff, with family saying she would “get to the cinema as often as she could” – while she even appeared as an extra in an episode of 1980s TV detective show Bergerac after chancing upon its filming while on holiday in Jersey.
Her nephew, Garry Saunders, told Lanarkshire Live: “Anne’s house was full of books and research material for her novels – she verified information as much as possible to be accurate because she knew readers would pick up on anything inexact and knew this was an important element to a good read.
“From a young age she would write plays and would get family and friends to play the characters. She had begun a fifth book but sadly wasn’t able to finish it due to poor health; but we’ve found so many writings like poems, short stories, scribblings and observations as well as artwork from the library which she’d kept and a portfolio including oil, pastel, charcoal, pencil and pointillism works.
Garry described Anne’s lifelong home in Clarkston as “the hub” for the extended family, saying: “Everybody went there as that was the gathering place for parties and birthdays – and Anne was an avid picture-taker so we have lots of the family that she’s taken of the different generations, which we’ll treasure.”
He said: “We remember Anne as gentle, soft, friendly, kind and talented. She was endlessly optimistic, full of curiosity and wonder and treasured each moment with family and friends, and we all cherished those times with her.
“She was so kind, generous, creative and thoughtful; she’d give you her last and was always happy to see everybody. People loved being in her company and it’s testimony to her that everybody was all around her over the festive season and right up until she passed away.”
Anne is survived by eight of her 10 nieces and nephews and their families. Her funeral service will take place at Clarkston parish church this Friday, January 20, at 1pm.
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