Educationalist, welfare specialist and politician. Born Veronica Lyle in Perthshire, into the Greenock sugar-refining family and the grand-daughter of Archibald Sinclair, 1st Viscount Thurso, Linklater was educated at Cranbourne Chase School, the Sorbonne in Paris, North London Polytechnic and the University of Sussex.
In 1967, she married author Magnus Linklater (b. 1942). She became involved with child welfare and prison reform. In 1992, he founded a school for children challenged by education in her parent's former home at Butterstone, to the northeast of Dunkeld. She has subsequently become involved with numerous charities, perhaps most notably President of the Society of Friends of Dunkeld Cathedral and as a Director of the Maggie's Cancer Care Centres. She was a founding patron of Queen Margaret University College and has served as a member of the court of Napier University in Edinburgh.
In 1997, she was created a Life Peer as Baroness Linklater of Butterstone and is an active Member of the House of Lords, taking the Liberal-Democrat whip. She died in Dunkeld.