Early life Checkland was born at 20 Lyndhurst Avenue in the
Newcastle upon Tyne suburb of
Jesmond on 6 June 1920. She was the only daughter of the process engraver's traveller and former
Royal Navy cook Robert Fraser Anthony and the housewife Edith Anthony,
née Philipson. As the
Great Depression affected the country, the family relocated to
Birmingham, and enrolled on a geography degree at the
University of Birmingham in 1938, becoming the first member of her family to have a tertiary education. Checkland was active in
student affairs at the university. Checkland and Bob Cage wrote about the St John's poor relief experiment brought about by
Thomas Chalmers in Glasgow from 1819 to 1823. The publication of her first book,
Philanthropy in Victorian Scotland – Social Welfare and the Voluntary Principle, came in 1980. The book earned Checkland the
Scottish Arts Council Book Award. Two years later, she and Margaret Lamb co-wrote their joint study
Health Care and Social History, the Glasgow Case, and
Industry and Ethos Scotland, 1832-1914 with her husband in 1984. Checkland did not collaborate academically further with her husband after his death in 1986. She learnt she could find solace and happiness in researching and writing, and specialised on post-19th century British-Japanese cultural, economic and social relations. In 1989, Checkland's book, ''Britain's Encounter with Meiji Japan, 1868–1912
, studied how Japan sent their finest citizens to learn manufacturing abilities. This was followed by the publication of Humanitarianism and the Emperor's Japan, 1877–1977'' in 1993, which examines the good and poor behaviour of Japanese soldiers towards prisoners of war in 20th century warfare. Checkland, Shizuya Nishimura and Norio Tamaki co-edited the book
Pacific Banking 1859-1959: East Meets West in 1994, and authored ''Isabella Bird and 'a Woman's Right to Do what She Can Do Well
two years later. Her 1998 publication, Japanese Whisky, Scotch Blend: Masataka Taketsuru, the Japanese Whisky King and Rita, His Scotch Wife
, attracted press coverage in both Japan and the United Kingdom. It discusses how Masataka Taketsuru established the Nikka whisky distillery in 1934 after visiting Glasgow from Hokkaido to learn how to distil. The final book Checkland wrote was Building Cultural Bridges'' in 2003, which talks about the exchanging of artistic influences between Japan and the United Kingdom. Outside of her research, she was a four-time visiting professor at
Keio University in Tokyo, and, as associate editor for 19th-century East Asians, wrote five biographies for
Oxford University Press'
Dictionary of National Biography. ==Personal life==