All I've got against golf is it takes you so far from the clubhouse.

Linklater is a local Orkney name derived from the Old Norse and throughout life he maintained a sympathetic interest in Scandinavia. This dubs Parnell's work as "one of the most uncritical biographies I have ever read" and takes issue with Linklater's outdated "Chesterbelloc" style and conservative social and historical assumptions. Magnus Merriman (1934) was an acerbic fictionalized description of the debacle.

For The Wind on the Moon a children's fantasy novel he won the 1944 Carnegie Medal from the Library Association for the year's best children's book by a British subject.