Anne Macaulay

Macaulay was born in Aithernie, Fife in Scotland near Lundin standing stones, the youngest child of Alison and Sir David Russell.^[2] Her family soon moved to Silverburn near Lundin Links where her father managed a paper-making business through the Great Depression and had interests in religion, archaeology, industry and a good sense of family values.^[3] She attended St Leonards School in St Andrews during the Second World War going on to briefly attend the University of Edinburgh which she departed for South Africa she learned how to fly an aeroplane. Around this time her brother, Patrick Russell died and she accompanied her father to Istanbul where he had funded an archaeological excavation. It was here that she met Bill Macaulay, curator of the Glasgow Museum of Art and an expert in mosaics and Byzantine art whom her father held in high esteem. In 1953, they married and moved to Johnsburn House in Balerno near the Pentland Hills.^{[citation needed]} Together they had five children, the last in born in 1957. She developed an interest in classical guitar, which she learned to play to a high standard. This led to an interest in Pythagorean mathematics and its relationship with music. It was from this that her interest in stone circles and prehistoric geometry developed and she began to read the work of Alexander Thom. Over the next several years, she proceeded to resurvey much of Thom's work and travelled widely to Turkey, Malta, Egypt, Greece and throughout the British Isles in search of further evidence of his ideas.

After the break up of her marriage to Bill in 1971 she worked for 17 years trying to bring her work and the mass of data she had recorded into order. Her work became well known to other academics and musicians such as Professor Jay Kappraff, Keith Critchlow, Andrew Glazewski and Paul Segovia. She lectured at conferences and symposia in the United States and the UK and in 1994 was awarded an Honorary Fellowship by the University of Edinburgh.^[4] Macaulay's research interests included the origin of the alphabet, history of the guitar, the deity Apollo, and pythagorean mysteries. She was a trustee of the Salisbury Centre^[5] in Edinburgh and lectured for the Research into Lost Knowledge Organization (RILKO). She died early, in 1998, but her family said of her "She was fortunate to walk with many who knew the ancient ways, and she uncovered the truth as easily as drinking a cup of tea".^[2]