MARIJAUNA is not normally on the list of household necessities grandparents tend to ask for when their grandchildren pop in for a visit.
But when your grandmother is the eccentric novelist Naomi Mitchison, then anything is possible.
"I don't know if it's true or not but she said in her tribe in Botswana the people who smoked grass were the older people," laughs Amanda Mitchison, th
e Edinburgh-born author – who as an obedient granddaughter, and a university student at the time, duly took a few grams to her 80-something gran.
Not that Naomi was impressed. "She took a puff and said 'very weak'," says Amanda, laughing at the memory. "She gave the impression she hadn't tried it before but that probably wasn't true considering the life she had led."
Feminist, politician, traveller and prolific writer (she penned more than 90 books), Naomi, who died aged 101 in 1999, certainly lived life to the full – including in the 1960s becoming adoptive mother to the chief of the Bakgatla tribe in Bechuanaland (later Botswana), who she was still visiting in her 90s.
And, says Amanda, she had definitely tried LSD decades before as part of experiments conducted by Brave New World author and her friend Aldous Huxley. "She really hated it," Amanda says.
With writing something of a family tradition – Amanda's mother, the late social historian Rosalind Mitchison, was world renowned for her History of Scotland – it's perhaps not surprising that the former St George's School pupil has just brought out a book of her own. But there is certainly a lot to live up to.
"I don't think I am really like my mother or my grandmother to be honest," says the 49-year-old. "But they were obviously a great influence. My grandmother was definitely a ballsy woman, my mother perhaps more low key and respectable."
But it's not a low key approach that Amanda is aiming for when she dresses up, complete with a blue wig, to promote her own work, children's book My First Pet Dragon.
The humorous, gory guide to keeping a large fire-breathing dragon as a pet is written by Amanda's alter ego – Professor Georgie Blink.
"It was my agent's idea to create the persona of Georgie Blink. She basically said there was no way I could put my own name to this book or I would never be allowed to write seriously again. But I've never had a problem making a fool out of myself.
"Unfortunately, my sons are so embarrassed when I dress up though, particularly because of the wig," she laughs. "It's clearly not what normal mums do and they think I look about 100 years old."
It's all a far cry from Amanda's 15 years on Fleet Street, working for The Independent and The Sunday Telegraph as a celebrity interviewer, grilling stars such as Vanessa Redgrave, Lenny Henry, Paul Whitehouse – and the BBC chat show host Jonathan Ross, currently suspended from his highly-paid job for making an obscene phone call along with comedian Russell Brand to Fawlty Towers actor Andrew Sachs.
"I really didn't like that radio interview at all but I really liked him when I met him. He was very funny and warm," Amanda remembers.
But she isn't sad to have left that world behind. "You could just be a doorstop or an oven glove, for all these people care. And I really didn't want to be an oven glove any more."
Now she's concentrating on her children's writing – inspired by the numerous pet guides she had bought for her two young sons who were eager to have any sort of animal possible, including caterpillars and guinea pigs.
Living in Bristol with her BBC producer husband Jeremy Bristow and their sons Sam, 13, and Ted, 11, she still regularly travels to Edinburgh to visit her brother Neil, head of the European Commission Office in Scotland, and her father, who lives near Dalkeith.
She was born and brought up in the city, attending Corstorphine Primary, St George's School and then Fettes in her sixth form. Her Manchester-born mother was professor of social history at Edinburgh University, where her father was professor of zoology. Naomi Mitchison and Labour MP Dick Mitchison were his parents and he was also the nephew of scientist JBS Haldane.
Such relatives made for an interesting life and school holidays were spent in Argyll with her grandmother, where often as many as 40 relatives would stay at one time – and where the novelist would hold an entertaining court.
"I remember one time when I brought a boyfriend to meet her when I was in my late teens. We were just sitting together when she suddenly told him he had a wonderful neck."
Then there was the moment when Naomi announced with great devastation, aged 84, that she would probably never have sex again. "She filled a room, that's for sure," smiles Naomi.
And Amanda admits she labours over every single letter she writes, following her mother's advice that a writer should be able to justify every word they commit to paper – the complete opposite of her grandmother.
"My grandmother could sit in a room filled with people and still churn out 4000 words at a time. It didn't matter that everyone was there," she says. "I'm completely jealous of that – I have to work at every word that comes out and am very slow at it."
Even so, there's a sequel on the way – My Pet Troll – as well as an adventure story for slightly older children, half set in Norway and half set in Scotland, including in a rather chilly stone-built school – inspired by her time at Fettes.
"It was full of draughty corridors. I would sit there with mittens on in class it was so cold," she laughs. "I'm sure it's got central heating these days though."
My First Pet Dragon is published by Catnip, priced £6.99
A DISTINGUISHED MEMBER OF THE CLANNAOMI MITCHISON, who was born in Edinburgh, was a distinguished member of the celebrated Haldane clan.
Her father was John Scott Haldane, son of a well-to-do Edinburgh lawyer. Educated at Edinburgh Academy and Edinburgh University, he went on to become an eminent scientist, willing to put himself at the heart of his own experiments.
His biographer Martin Goodman writes that daughter Naomi "had the task of standing outside her father's private gas chamber, peering in through the observation window in case her father should pass out, when she was to pull him clear and seek to resuscitate him".
Naomi's uncle, Lord Haldane, was Lord Chancellor in the first Labour Government and her brother was the late Prof JBS Haldane.
In 1916, she married Old Etonian Gilbert Mitchison while he was on a week's leave from the battlefields of Flanders. They were Fabian Labour campaigners and her husband went to become a Labour MP, then a lord – although no-one ever called Naomi Lady Mitchison. Theirs was an open marriage – she never made any secret about her lovers.
The couple had six children – one son died of meningitis in 1927, an event which she never got over.
Their homes in London and Scotland were always full of an eclectic mixture of guests from the famous, such as Aldous Huxley and EM Forster, to refugees and scroungers.
She wrote prolifically; letters, articles and books, her most famous work being 1931's The Corn King and the Spring Queen.
She died aged 101 in 1999.
