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Constance Lindsay Hope was born in Selkirk on 26 July 1922, the elder of two daughters of William
and Louisa Hope. Not long after this the family moved to Clackmannanshire, first to Devonside,
near Tillicoultry, and then, in 1926, to Alloa, where she would live for the next sixty years until
1986, when she and her husband retired to Stirling.

Throughout her life her defining characteristic was an optimism combined with the view that
life provides opportunities, and that opportunities should be taken. Prompted and encouraged
by inspiring school teachers, first at Alloa Academy, and subsequently at Dollar Academy, in 1940
Connie Hope went on to Edinburgh University to read Scottish history.

Her time at university was interrupted in 1943 when she was called up. She spent the rest of
the war in the ATS, deployed at Forest Moor, a wireless intercept station near Harrogate, as a traffic
analyst supervising operators listening in to German signals and then passing on these coded
messages to what is now known as Bletchley Park. After demobilization and return to university
to complete her degree, she joined the staff of the Scottish Record Office, where she worked until
her marriage to the Reverend Peter Brodie on 23 July 1949.

Peter Brodie was for almost forty years minister of St. Mungo’s Parish Church, Alloa, and Connie
fully embraced all that was involved in being the wife of a Church of Scotland minister, serving
on central church committees, and supporting his work as Moderator of the General Assembly
in 1978–1979. Earlier, together with her four children, she had accompanied her husband to the
United States on a pulpit exchange, in the days when that meant sailing from Greenock.

The Local Government (Scotland) Act, 1973 placed a responsibility on the new councils to make
proper arrangements for records in their custody. Following local government reorganization
in Scotland in May 1975, Connie Brodie was appointed as the new Central Region’s Archivist,
(with responsibility also for the records of the three Districts within the Region, namely Stirling,
Clackmannan and Falkirk), a post which she would occupy until her retirement in 1986.
Based in the Old High School near Stirling Castle, she set about building an archive service,
collecting in the records of the predecessor authorities to the Central Region, notably the Stirling
Burgh records and those of Stirlingshire County Council. She negotiated with the Keeper of the
Records of Scotland for the transfer from Edinburgh of the early Royal Burgh of Stirling records,
the Presbytery and Kirk Session records (Stirling Council Archives is the custodian of the earliest
surviving Presbytery minutes in Scotland), Customs and Excise records for the Upper Forth ports,
and the Region’s Justice of the Peace records. In addition to official records, she negotiated with
a wide range of private depositors, securing the deposit of, for example, the Murray of Polmaise
papers, 1450–1926, and those of the MacGregors of MacGregor, 1320–1921. The photograph
accompanying this obituary shows Mrs Brodie accepting the deposit, in c. 1985, of the bound
newspaper volumes of the Stirling Observer, dating from its first issue in 1836.

Retirement came in 1986, and Connie and her husband moved to Stirling. Peter Brodie died in
1990 but Connie continued in Stirling, supported by a network of strong and lasting friendships.
She was an active member of the Holy Rude Church, and worked as a church recorder, a role that
brought together her interests in history, architecture, and matters ecclesiastical. An engaged
grandmother, she enjoyed participating in family holidays in Scotland, France and Spain. She
maintained a lively interest in the Stirling Council Archives Service, and was pleased to attend the
official opening of the new premises when the Council Archives Service relocated to its current
premises at Borrowmeadow Road, Stirling in 2005.

Connie Brodie’s final years were spent in Edinburgh, in order to be nearer to her family, but it
is in Stirling that her archival legacy lives on, in the service that she established in its pioneering
years from 1975.

Susan Beckley & George Dixon (2016) Constance Brodie (1922–2015), Archives and Records, 37:2, 265-26

James Fraser McLuskey, MC (19 September 1914 – 24 July 2005) was a British Church of Scotland minister, who served as a military chaplain with the Special Air Service during World War II. He later went on to become the minister of St Columba's, the larger of the Church of Scotland's two congregations in London. He also served as Moderator of the General Assembly from 1983 to 1984.

Sir Alexander MacPherson Fletcher (26 August 1929 – 18 September 1989), sometimes known as Alex Fletcher, was a British Conservative Party politician.

He was born in Greenock in western Scotland. He was married to Christine Anne Buchanan (1926-2008). He was a company director and a chartered accountant and served as a member of East Kilbride Development Corporation from 1971 to 1973. He was also an Elder of the Church of Scotland.

Sir Malcolm Leslie Rifkind KCMG KC (born 21 June 1946) is a British politician who served in the cabinets of Margaret Thatcher and John Major from 1986 to 1997, and most recently as chair of the Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament from 2010 to 2015.

Lieutenant General Sir Alexander Crawford Simpson Boswell, KCB, CBE, DL (3 August 1928 – 13 November 2021) was a British Army officer. He joined the army as junior officer in the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders shortly after the Second World War and, following a series of regimental and staff postings, was second-in-command of 1st Battalion the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders during the Indonesia–Malaysia confrontation. He later commanded the battalion, then 39th Infantry Brigade, before taking command of the 2nd Armoured Division in 1978. He was later the General Officer Commanding in Scotland and Lieutenant Governor of Guernsey before retiring in 1990.

Professor John R. Hume OBE is an architectural and business historian, author and photographer. He spent 20 years at the University of Strathclyde, researching and lecturing on Economic and Industrial History, before being employed as the principal inspector of ancient monuments, and then of historic buildings, for Historic Scotland. He was chief inspector of historic buildings until retirement in 1999; whereupon he became chairman of the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland to 2015.

Sir Kenneth John Wilson Alexander FRSE (14 March 1922 – 27 March 2001) was a Scottish economist and university administrator. He also had strong links to the Scottish steel and shipbuilding industries. He also served as the Principal of Stirling University (1981–86), and the Chancellor of Aberdeen University (1986–96).

Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh (born Prince Philip of Greece and Denmark,[1] later Philip Mountbatten; 10 June 1921[fn 1] – 9 April 2021), was consort of the British monarch from 6 February 1952 until his death in 2021 as the husband of Queen Elizabeth II. He is the longest-serving royal consort in history.

Elizabeth II (Elizabeth Alexandra Mary; 21 April 1926 – 8 September 2022) was Queen of the United Kingdom and other Commonwealth realms from 6 February 1952 until her death in 2022. She was queen regnant of 32 sovereign states during her lifetime and was head of state of 15 realms at the time of her death. Her reign of 70 years and 214 days was the longest of any British monarch and the longest verified reign of any female head of state in history.

Born Perthshire, 1811, youngest son of Robert P., farmer. Educated at University of Glasgow; licensed by Presbytery of Dunblane, 25th Nov. 1834; pres. by William Forbes of Callander; ordained 26th Sept. 1836; died unmarr. 14th May 1845. Publication by him: New Statistical Account, September, 1844, Dalry, Vol.4, Kirkcudbright, p.369.