Graeme Mackenzie MA was born in London and educated at The Leys School, from whence he won a scholarship to study history at Cambridge University. After graduation Graeme taught history part-time, and worked in a number of other jobs, including pulling pints at the historic “Eagle” pub – where he created a cricket team and helped organise the Cambridge Pub and Social Clubs Cricket League of which he was the first Chairman. In the early 1980s Graeme founded local music magazine “Blue Suede News”, and became a part-time presenter on BBC Radio Cambridgeshire. He was also involved for a number of years in the organisation and promotion of the world famous “Cambridge Folk Festival”. In the mid-1980s Graeme’s BBC work moved into the production and presentation of music and current affairs documentaries, and in 1986-87 he conceived, researched, wrote, and presented a major ten part historical series – “A Power in the Land” – which looked at national history from a regional perspective, and was one of the first such series to be networked on local radio. 
It was whilst researching East Anglian families for this series that Graeme began to take an interest in genealogy; and this was eventually to lead him to return to Scotland to investigate his own ancestry, and to learn all the Scottish history he'd missed whilst studying “British History” at an English university. In 1989 Graeme set up “Highland Roots” in Inverness with the intention of specialising in the history and genealogy of highland clans. Though he’s subsequently had spells living near Glasgow & Perth, and in Edinburgh (where his father and grandfather were born),  his family home remains in the “Capital of the Highlands” where he’s an active member of the Gaelic Society of Inverness. In 1993 Graeme was appointed Curator of the Clan MacMillan Centre in Renfrewshire, with a particular brief to organise the collection and publication of information on the clan’s history and genealogy (a connection stemming from his grandmother Catherine Macmillan whose family came from Glen Urquhart on the shores of Loch Ness). To help in this task he’s compiled the extensive Clan MacMillan International website www.clanmacmillan.org and initiated Project MAOL (Macmillan Ancestry On Line). Graeme’s also been instrumental in organising a number of successful clan gatherings, with tours, talks, concerts, pageants, and ceilidhs - including significant fund-raising elements for Macmillan Cancer Relief. Since 1995 Graeme has also acted as Seanachaidh for Clan MacKenzie, contributing an historical element to the clan video produced for the Millennium gathering, and compiling material on Mackenzie genealogy from published sources and through research commissioned from him by individual clanspeople. In the course of his work he's also collected a considerable amount of information on other Scottish families and names; and in his own private studies is pursuing a particular interest in the nature of the Scottish clan, and the evolution of the so-called “clan system”. In 2007 Graeme was elected Chairman of the Highland Family History Society - which boasts over 750 members worldwide - and for some years now he's been attending Highland Games and Clan Gatherings in Canada and the USA to meet and talk to MacMillans and MacKenzies, and to give presentations and lectures on Scottish history and genealogy at Celtic Events and to Scottish Interest Groups. See separate page for Graeme's main publications.